For months, the big blue trailer type thing from which exuded a strong smell of oil, has been parked on N. 11th Street next to the Roebling Oil Field site where McCarren Park Mews is (quickly) rising. It was part of the site clean up effort and, now it’s gone, so we can only assume that all is well and clean at Roebling. We can say that if you walk by the blue trailer or stood atop the thing, it smelled like an oil field in Kuwait. (Also, if you look at the photo, you’ll notice that a street light has been removed, but we’re assuming the de-lighting of N. 11th Street is cool, right?)

What we do know is this: No results from the many test wells drilled around N. 11th and Roebling that have become public or that have been passed on to public officials by the Department of Environmental Conservation. Consultants hired by the developer to do environmental monitoring of the site have reported that oil seems to be entering from the north and east although no one can determine the source of what they euphemistically, and without irony, call “free product.” They also found what one would expect to find in the soil in the industrial part of Williamsburg: some arsenic, barium, cobalt, mercury, nickel, zinc and other things. (The contaminated soil was all removed, the consultants say.) There was measurable benzene in the groundwater too, but not a significant amount.

We think it’s worth noting that there doesn’t appear to have been much in the way of intensive hands-on testing or monitoring by the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Related Posts:
Environmental Officials Still Unsure of Source of Roebling Oil Field Oil
Potential Roebling Oil Field Neighbor Says Information Difficult to Obtain
Another Gusher at the Roebling Oil Field