Marcellus Shale Press Coverage

State insists that it aggressively pursues clean-up, sanctions

The Albany "slow walk" is a time-honored tradition, where an issue can linger unresolved for years. A report released Thursday showed how that could apply to petroleum giant Exxon Mobil, which has been responsible for 3,500 oil spills — from a gallon of gas to thousands of gallons of crude oil — over the past several decades.

Ranging across 58 of the state's 62 counties, the array of spills have yet to be cleaned up to state standards, according to state Department of Environmental Conservation records released Thursday by the state Public Interest Research Group and Ithaca-based Toxics Targeting.

"The state might be trying, but this shows endless negotiations with Exxon that just drag on and on," said Walter Hang, director of Toxics Targeting. His firm reviewed DEC reports of spills at gas stations, oil storage farms and pipelines owned by Exxon or its corporate ancestors.

Spills included several at a petroleum tank farm at the Port of Albany that's now owned by Global Partners, a Massachusetts company that receives crude oil trains from the Bakken fields of North Dakota. For example, a 28,000-gallon kerosene spill reported in 2011 at a former Mobil facility in the Port of Albany has never been cleaned up to state standards.

Most spills were concentrated in metropolitan New York and Long Island, with other clusters in the Capital Region, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo.

While not disputing any of the report's specific findings, DEC spokesman Sean Mahar called it "an irresponsible act by a few headline-grabbers to shamefully feed New Yorkers with misinformation."

He said while the records indicate the spills were not cleaned to state standards, such spills are not migrating and are contained. He added, "DEC rapidly responds to and cleans up thousands of contaminated sites ... while aggressively pursuing and holding those accountable for the contamination."

Several spills in the report apparently came from an oil pipeline built in 1881 by Standard Oil — an Exxon predecessor owned by John D. Rockefeller — to run oil from Olean, Cattaraugus County, through the Southern Tier and ultimately to a refinery in Bayonne, N.J.

While the 315-mile pipeline closed in 1925, a spill from it was found in 2013 in the small Delaware County village of Hancock, where oil is pooled underground beneath a former factory that once made the Louisville Slugger baseball bats.

Oil was found about eight feet underground near what had been a pumping station for the pipeline.

NYPIRG Legislative Director Blair Horner said the report showed the historic legacy of petroleum spills in the state, and underscored the need for faster enforcement against polluters as well as increased state funding to clean up spills where the polluter cannot be found or refused to do the work.

Hang said the historic Exxon spills likely would take years and "billions of dollars" to clean up completely. Currently, there are about 350,000 petroleum spills recorded by the DEC, and the list is growing by about 12,000 spills a year.

State rules require all such spills, regardless of size, to be reported to DEC within two hours.

NYPIRG's Blair Horner and Toxic Targeting's Walter Hang present documents on unfinished oil spill clean ups in New York.






Environmental advocates say that New York State officials could do a better job of cleaning up pollution sites caused by the fossil fuels industry that they say in some cases, have dragged on for decades. Cuomo’s environmental aides defend their record.

An Ithaca based environmental research group analyzed data on dozens of alleged toxic spills for just one company- Exxon Mobil.

Walter Hang, with Toxics Targeting, says he got the idea to file a freedom of information act request for all of the company’s sites being investigated by state officials when he was doing work last year against the proposed expansion of a gas pipeline across wide swaths of the state.

Hang says he discovered the remains of a pipeline first constructed in the 1880’s by Exxon Mobil’s predecessor, Standard Oil Company. It stretches from Olean, across the Southern Tier and into New Jersey. According to Governor Cuomo’s Department of Environmental Conservation records, least half a dozen oil releases have been reported in towns above the ancient pipeline, but according to they have not been cleaned up.

“This is very disquieting,” said Hang. “Many of these problems have been known about literally for decades, and they still haven’t been cleaned up. And that’s what you see time and time again.”

Other un-remediated sites include oil storage plants in Buffalo, Rochester, and Albany, where, in 2011, 28,000 gallons of kerosene were spilled and, according to the documents, never fully cleaned up.

In Brooklyn, one of the nation’s largest oil spills in an almost century old tank site originally owned by Standard Oil, has not yet been fully dealt with.

Toxics Targeting also found in the state environmental agency’s documents that numerous un-remedied spills could threaten groundwater on Long Island, including reports in Sag Harbor that oil was seeping up through asphalt near a boat yard that was once an oil tank farm.

Hang says the state does have strong laws for polluter liability, once it’s determined who is responsible for a spill. But he says there are no deadlines on when the state has to make a decision, and the paper trail shows years and decades of delays in the investigative process, with in some cases, references to key notes being mysteriously “lost”.

“The companies are just dragging their feet,” Hang said. “They are studying everything to death.”

Blair Horner, with the New York Public Interest Research Group, which collaborated on the story, says Governor Cuomo and state lawmakers need to “crack the ship” to get the clean ups finished faster , and should hold public hearings and if necessary, pass new laws to achieve that.

“We’ve only identified, in a sense, the tip of the iceberg,” Horner said. “This is not something that we should sweep under the rug.”

Hang says there is an existing state remediation fund for oil spills, but the money is limited.

“That’s why you see these endless negotiations year after year,” Hang said. He recommends that state government take the lead and preemptively clean up the spills and contamination, then bill they company and seek legal action against the polluters, if necessary.

The groups stress that they are not assessing who is liable here, they are merely reporting what the Department of Environmental Conservation has said in the documents, which assign no penalties to the company. The data is on the website, toxicstargeting.com.

Exxon Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A spokesman for the DEC Sean Mahar, in a statement, defended the agency’s track record.

“DEC rapidly responds to and cleans up thousands of contaminated sites every year in every corner of the state,” Mahar said. “To ensure that the environment and public health are protected at all times while aggressively pursuing and holding those accountable for the contamination”.

Mahar did not specifically explain why the documents appear to show years of delays in some of the incidents, though DEC officials say none of these spills highlighted by Toxics Targeting are immediately threatening public health.

And Mahar personally attacked Horner and Hang, calling them “irresponsible” “headline grabbers” who are promoting “misinformation” .

​Exxon Mobile concurs with the DEC's account . ​In a statement, William Holbrook, Corporate Media Relations Senior Advisor, said "Allegations made by NYPIRG are inaccurate. Where historical impacts exist as a result of its own or its predecessors’ operations, the company works under the oversight of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to address those impacts. Remediation of legacy sites is a broad issue for industry and ExxonMobil is an active participant. ExxonMobil takes its environmental responsibility seriously and is committed to meeting its compliance and remediation obligations."