It’s Not Pretty: New York Before the EPA Cleaned It Up
by Sonam Velani 
The Twin Towers behind an illegal dumping area off the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. Photo by Gary Miller/Documerica
These aren’t just warm sepia tones on the latest instagram filter. These are photographs of New York City before the Environmental Protection Agency was created in the 1970s.
Last week, the Supreme Court stripped the EPA of a crucial tool to regulate GHG emissions, thereby removing its power to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time. In the 6-3 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. failed to address the harms caused by climate change, while Justice Elena Kagan began her dissent with a long passage detailing the devastation our planet faces - from hurricanes and floods to famines and mass migration.
Today we’re going back in history to show what New York City looked like before we cared about our air, water, and soil - and what we need to do to ensure our past doesn’t turn into our future.
In a photo series called Documerica, the EPA captured the state of America’s environment from 1971 to 1977, producing over 81,000 images from New York to California. Many of these images have now been digitized by the National Archives.
An oil slick creeps up on the Statue of Liberty in 1973. Photo by Chester Higgins/Documerica
In the first six months of 1973, more than 300 oil spills occurred in the New York City area. More than 800 oil spills occurred across the waters of the mid-Atlantic region during that same time period. The spills ranged from one gallon to 450,000 gallons, and about 40% of the oil was burned up in resulting explosions and fire. The Coast Guard tabulation was the first such compilation for all oil spills in navigable coastal and inland waterways.
Smog obscures a view of the George Washington Bridge in New York City in 1973. Photo by Chester Higgins/Documerica
A historic smog event blanketed New York City on a hot summer day in 1966 when a mass of warm air trapped pollutants from vehicles, factories, and chimneys sent the air pollution level into the danger zone. This was so detrimental for public health that local officials updated their air quality laws to address the crisis and it took many decades to clear the air of nauseating pollution.
A NYC Sanitation truck dumping trash at the Jamaica Bay landfill in 1971. Photo by Arthur Tress/Documerica
Over the years, the EPA has led mass trash removals across the US, aiming to clear sites of toxic chemicals dumped over decades. Many New York city residents worried about pollution and ecological damage stemming from landfills in the 1970s, ranging from the Jamaica Bay landfill in Queens (the longest continuously operating dump in the United States, accepting waste from 1938 to 1991) to the Gravesend Bay landfill in Brooklyn, which still suffers from high concentrations of toxins that have since been banned by the EPA. The Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, once the largest in the world, is now reclaimed as a beautiful new bucolic park. The EPA has estimated that the Clean Air Act prevented over 160,000 early deaths, 130,000 heart attacks, and millions of cases of respiratory illness across the country.
We’re not turning back. In New York, we’ve led the charge to design and implement OneNYC 2050, the most comprehensive climate action plan in the US. It starts by putting people at its core: “Everything we do to combat climate change and support growth must also advance human rights, public health, and economic prosperity for all New Yorkers.” With bold actions to confront our climate crisis and achieve equity, we’re on the way to building a resilient city for tomorrow, #nofilters needed.
by Sonam Velani