
Oil spill in Long Island's Mill River forces around-the-clock environmental cleanup
It was all hands on deck as PSEG Long Island contractors kept working to contain the spill Thursday in East Rockaway after an underground electrical transmission cable surrounded by a cooling oil started leaking Monday.
With state oversight, PSEG Long Island contractors removed hundreds of gallons of oily water and set up containment booms in the East Rockaway Channel after fluid leaked into the Mill River.
"Literally, it looks just like a rainbow on the water and you can see the oil," Joey Leggio, an Oceanside boat captain, said.
"A lot of people used to go swimming here. Now, how are you going to go swimming in this water now?" Dominic Decrescenzo, of East Rockaway, said.
PSEG Long Island said the source of the dielectric fluid leak was discovered Wednesday night. The fluid is similar to mineral oil, which is nonhazardous, the utility said.
The flow of fluid was stopped and crews started repairing the cable, the utility said.
Environmental crews also took time to wash off greasy swans and ducks. Though the fluid was deemed nonhazardous, at least two ducks died and good Samaritans have been finding other injured birds.
"Any sort of foreign substance on a bird's feathers is extremely hazardous to them. It negates their ability to control their own temperature, it stops them from being buoyant. So that they can sink down into the ocean and actually drown," John Di Leonardo, with Humane Long Island, said.
"It's a shame. It's really sad, these poor birds," Leggio said.
Several Long Island rescues, including the Wildlife Center of Long Island and Sweetbriar Nature Center, have stepped up to help rehabilitate the birds.
PSEG Long Island also said it understands residents' concerns about the cleanup and that it was working to address the issues, while emphasizing the fluid is not hazardous.
The utility's full statement is as follows:
On Monday, July 14, PSEG Long Island removed an underground transmission cable from service because of a leak of nonhazardous dielectric fluid. Crews have located the leak and are working around the clock to make repairs to the affected cable. The flow of dielectric fluid has ceased.
This transmission cable running beneath the Mill River Bridge along Atlantic Avenue in East Rockaway provides critical electric service for customers throughout western Nassau County. PSEG Long Island is working in cooperation with the U.S. Coast Guard and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to remediate the nonhazardous fluid, which is similar to mineral oil. PSEG Long Island has also been in close contact with town and village officials to keep them apprised of the work being performed.
PSEG Long Island is also working with our partners in wildlife conservation. They are aware of the situation. If members of the public believe they have encountered birds that have come into contact with remaining dielectric fluid in the containment systems, they can call the Wildlife Center of Long Island, which accepts larger birds such as swans, at 516-674-0982, or Sweetbriar Nature Center at 631-979-6344. We ask the public not to interrupt our crews so they can remain focused on safely completing this intensive, emergency work as quickly as possible.
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Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
New bins rolled out in national parks to tackle deadly Aussie issue
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Bloomberg
12 hours ago
- Bloomberg
An Environmental Crisis Haunts the Ruins of Gaza
The bombardment of Gaza has left contaminated soil, blackened water and mounds of garbage spreading disease and pollution; a toxic legacy that will last generations, and extend beyond its borders. By Fadwa Hodali Caroline Alexander Denise Lu Before the war, Souk Feras in central Gaza City was packed with rows of small shops and stalls where people came to haggle for fresh local produce: olives, tomatoes and peaches. Today, the market has been replaced by a landfill. Souk Feras now holds around 200,000 metric tons of trash, according to Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO's Network, PNGO, who is based in Gaza. Shawa is working with municipalities and United Nations agencies to try to identify new landfill sites, but he says that's not easy — around 45% of Gaza City has been forcibly evacuated, the rest is now effectively inaccessible. Fuel is scarce and roads are destroyed. The trash is 'piling up uncontrollably,' he said. 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Experts say the toxic legacy of the war will linger for generations, overshadowing any of the plans that the region's key powers have proposed for the territory. And, it will inevitably have consequences far beyond Gaza's borders, as drug-resistant pathogens emerge from the polluted soil and unsanitary conditions, and toxic chemicals spread on the wind, in water, by migrating wildlife and the movement of people and vehicles. 'What happens in the environment in Gaza isn't restricted to Gaza,' Doug Weir, head of The Conflict and Environment Observatory, a UK-based research group, said. 'All the different issues… they rarely respect boundaries.' Black Water When Basil Yasin feels it's safe enough to leave the tented camp he reluctantly calls home, he walks along the sand dunes in Deir al-Balah to look out at the Mediterranean Sea. Before the war, Yasin, a 56-year-old environmentalist, often visited the area, in the middle of the territory's 40-kilometer-long shoreline. He felt hemmed in in Gaza City in the north or Rafah to the south, but at Deir al-Balah, he had 'a strange sense of freedom' — even as he worked at testing the water for bacteria and pollutants. Now, Yasin, a field coordinator for EcoPeace Middle East, a regional environmental organization, feels only despair. All along the coast, and especially in the afternoons when the tide is low, the water is 'blackened by raw sewage,' he said. Access to clean water has been a perennial concern in Gaza, which relies heavily on groundwater from the aquifer that runs the length of the territory. Supplies have been dwindling and deteriorating for years, mainly due to overuse. Gaza is densely populated, with 5,500 people per square kilometer before the war. As residents sunk boreholes for water and agriculture, they helped deplete the aquifer, which led to seawater intrusion. 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Trash Piles Found Above Gaza's Main Water Source 'In Gaza, there isn't a single device for testing,' said Butmeh, whose organization is a coalition of environmental and developmental groups, including ActionAid. 'All universities and labs were hit, leaving no laboratory operational.' Many of the territory's specialists are also gone. Yasin's other Gaza-based colleague, an engineer, was killed along with 38 other people in an airstrike that destroyed an apartment block in 2023. Yasin still receives a salary, but his work wound down about a year into the war — after the house he had just finished building for his family was flattened in the air raids. 'Safe Zones' Hani Abu Tarifa, 40, has been collecting trash for most of his life. He has moved around the strip 10 times since his home was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in December 2023, and currently lives in a tent in Al Qarara Port with his wife, four children and parents. 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The prices of staples have skyrocketed, with a kilogram of flour costing around $41, according to the World Food Programme. For his work collecting trash for Unicef, Abu Tarifa earns 800 shekels, or $239, every 50 days — just under $5 a day. With Israel accused by the UN and aid groups of restricting the entry of food and water, many families are surviving on just one meal a day — rice, lentils, or pasta, with no access to bread, fresh vegetables or enough protein. More than 100 aid organizations, including Oxfam International and Doctors Without Borders, said in an open letter on July 23 that 'mass starvation' was spreading in Gaza. Abu Tarifa says he rarely sees animals anymore. On days of intense shelling, trash either isn't picked up at all, or it's dumped in large containers placed in the camp, for collection later on. Before the war, garbage was collected daily, he said. 'The situation is very difficult nowadays.' The humanitarian and environmental crises in Gaza overlap and reinforce each other. Forced into refugee camps in ever shrinking 'safe zones' declared by the Israeli military, people have no choice but to dig holes for sewage that are further contaminating the groundwater supply — leading to outbreaks of waterborne diseases, including dysentery and Hepatitis A. Tents Identified Side-by-Side With Mounting Waste 'In a place like Gaza where there is such an intense humanitarian crisis, people wonder whether it's right to talk about the environment, but it's a false dichotomy,' Weir, from the Conflict and Environment Observatory, said. 'It's really clear that so much environmental damage has been caused that it is undermining the basic life support systems that people rely on — whether it's clean air, water for drinking or land for agriculture.' 'Russian Roulette' In Israel, authorities are aware that the environmental devastation in Gaza has consequences that cannot be constrained by the border fence. Hospitals are under instruction to monitor patients for so-called 'super-bugs' — bacteria, fungi, parasites or viruses that are resistant to medication. Under the protocols, war injuries are to be treated with specialized antibiotics. War is often a breeding ground for these pathogens. When people are forced from their homes into crowded and unsanitary conditions, infections spread fast. People weakened by lack of food and clean water are more susceptible to illness, and the destruction of medical infrastructure means that they receive inadequate care. Infection control, monitoring and surveillance collapses. Without access to a range of medications, doctors overuse or wrongly prescribe drugs. The destruction of war can even cause bacteria to evolve. Heavy metals are naturally antibacterial, and when they are released into the environment, bacteria exposed to them sometimes undergo genetic changes to survive. Pathogens can linger in the environment for decades after fighting ends, and people can carry them across borders. Very high levels of antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, were reported in Gaza before the war by organizations including Medicins Sans Frontières. Dorit Nitzan, a professor in the School of Public Health at Israel's Ben-Gurion University said she has 'no doubt' they're even higher now. Although there haven't been many cases in Israel so far, 'we see it in the military personnel, we see it in hospitals,' she said. 'I am proud of the Israeli protocols… I think that many countries will learn from us in the near future how to manage very complicated battlefield wounds,' she said. 'What I'm worried about is Gaza.' Nitzan worked in Ukraine as a WHO emergencies director following Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. She was among a group of leading Israeli health experts who last year called for a ceasefire in Gaza in an open letter published in the Haaretz newspaper, after a toddler in the Palestinian territory was partly paralyzed by the highly infectious polio virus. The letter said the case was a reminder that 'pathogens and toxic exposures know no borders.' Israel agreed to several humanitarian pauses in the fighting so that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians could be vaccinated. Environmental experts Bloomberg spoke to said that other pollutants released by the conflict can lead to public health concerns. They said that carcinogenic substances and toxic particles can rise into the atmosphere where they can be carried in the wind or fall as rain, that animals can spread contaminants, and that currents can move polluted water around the Mediterranean Sea. The cross-border nature of the crisis means that cooperation and information sharing between health authorities is vital. Health officials from Israel, the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are still collaborating; as are UN OCHA and COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry unit overseeing civilian needs in Gaza. But officials in the region told Bloomberg that the conversations have become less warm and more complex since the war began. Decision makers are playing 'Russian roulette with health on both sides,' Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director of EcoPeace in Tel Aviv, said. 'Animosity and a complete lack of trust has put in peril cooperation between the governments essential for water, energy, and environment issues.' The Israeli Ministry of Health didn't respond to a request for comment. Restoration During one of Yasin's last big projects for EcoPeace, in 2022, he took school groups to meet farmers in Abassan, south of Deir al-Balah, where he was concerned by irrigation with greywater — household wastewater — and the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides. The teenagers, he said, enjoyed working with the farmers to help find new ways to cultivate their grains and orchards. 'Some of them became teachers and environmental engineers, imagine. The environmental and water situation was improving, and heading in the right direction — I noticed that each visit. I was really very happy.' Those fields no longer exist, and all his work on keeping Gaza's water clean is gone. 'Unfortunately everything is over,' he said. Wadi Gaza, a fragile wetland and nature reserve to the north of Deir al-Balah, had suffered from years of neglect, but grassroots projects backed by international organizations were starting to make a difference. Now, it's a wasteland. Other ecosystems across Gaza have also been destroyed, including orchards, olive groves and the vast majority of the territory's tree cover. Nearly All of Gaza's Trees Have Been Destroyed UNEP has warned that simply making a comprehensive assessment of the damage, and then removing contaminants, might take years. The UN estimated in February that the reconstruction of Gaza will cost at least $53 billion and last around a decade. Since the war began, Yasin has moved around eight times, seeking shelter. In June, he described displacement as 'a kind of living death,' but said he was resolved to stay in Gaza after the fighting ends and rebuild. As the IDF began expanding their military campaign into Deir al-Balah this week, Yasin said the extent of the destruction makes it harder for him to see a future in Gaza. 'The situation is worse than ever,' he said. 'I never imagined that it would get to this point.' Photos edited by Maria Wood With assistance from Salma El Wardany Marissa Newman Methodology Imagery Collation For comparative analysis, we constructed two strip-wide, high-resolution satellite imagery mosaics; a pre-conflict period using images from May and June 2023, and a current period with images from June 2025. Each mosaic was assembled by stitching 10 separate image acquisitions to ensure complete and cloud-free coverage, and we performed a color correction process known as histogram matching. This procedure corrects for atmospheric differences and variations in sun angle between the collects, resulting in a seamless and consisent dataset. Mapping Waste Sites We mapped waste sites in the June 2025 satellite mosaic by developing and applying a specialized deep learning model. Initial labeling was informed by geolocated sites from War and Garbage in Gaza, a July 2024 report by the peace organization PAX. Many of these sites had moved or expanded since the report's publication, and we conducted a comprehensive manual labeling effort, identifying additional sites by closely examining the satellite imagery. We then fine-tuned a ResNet18 semantic segmentation model to identify and outline areas corresponding to waste sites across the entire 2025 mosaic. Following the automated detection, every computer-generated result was manually validated to ensure the highest possible accuracy. This review process involved removing false positives, which primarily consisted of rubble fields. Our analysis cannot measure the volume of trash at a site, distinguish smaller waste sites and identify trash that is mixed directly with rubble. The resulting map of waste sites should be considered a conservative estimate, and the true extent is likely greater. Mapping Tents To map the proliferation of tents, a proxy for displaced populations, we employed a machine learning classification model. The model was trained on a multi-temporal dataset created by 'stacking' the pre-conflict (2023) and current (2025) image mosaics. Training points were manually labeled by visually identifying tents and tent clusters in the 2025 imagery. All automated detections were subjected to a rigorous manual validation process to confirm their accuracy and minimize errors.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
Aussies warned over common camping mistake after 400-year-old trees destroyed
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