In total, NCA engaged over 10,700 individuals through our educational, volunteer, and public programming in 2025. We saw major advancement in key areas relating to remediation, restoration, and community engagement. Major thanks to all our volunteers, partners and supporters for making this work possible. See some of our highlights below.
Healing Environmental Harms:
In January, EPA released the Early Action Cleanup Plan for the East Branch section of Newtown Creek, representing the first major step in physical remediation of the waterway. Since the Superfund designation in 2010, NCA, in conjunction with the Community Advisory Group (CAG) has strongly advocated for a comprehensive and lasting cleanup of Newtown Creek.
NCA advocated for beneficial redevelopment of the 10 acre former ExxonMobil site at 400 Kingsland Avenue with various scenarios to utilize the waterfront, implement green infrastructure, address local environmental harms, and create high quality jobs.
NCA continued our work as a member of the Last Mile Coalition, and 2025 saw major progress in our goals to reduce the environmental justice harms brought forth by the unregulated proliferation of last mile shipping facilities around Newtown Creek and NYC. This included advocacy for the Indirect Source Rule and the Comptroller’s Fast Shipping, Slow Justice report.
2025 was a major year for the planning of the Newtown Creek Sewage Overflow Storage Tunnel. NYC DEP finalized the final scope of work for a draft EIS, and initiated steps in the ULURP process to make this long awaited and desperately needed project a reality. NCA released a new Sewersheds t-shirt and led CSO tunnel themed bike tours to raise awareness.
With air pollution issues persisting at the Green Asphalt facility, a major groundswell of press coverage, support from elected officials, and most importantly new enforcement from NYSDEC eventually led to a suspension of operations in December.
Over the summer, NCA completed our Trees in the IBZ advocacy project, outlining the opportunities and value in expanding tree canopy in the extreme heat areas of the surrounding Industrial Business Zones.
In October, NYC DEP broke ground on the Gateway to Greenpoint, an open space and storm water management project that grew out of NCA’s community planning process from 2018.
NCA and it’s dedicated volunteers completed another year of the Community Water Quality Testing Program, taking home the notorious Golden Toilet Award at the end of the season.
Planting & Planning
In April, we successfully replanted a NYCDEP pilot salt marsh in Dutch Kills. We spent the spring, summer, and fall overseeing extensive maintenance such as fencing repair, trash removal, and tree pruning.
NCA partnered with Phelps Dodge (PDRC) to launch a new restoration project, creating additional habitat for ribbed mussels underneath their shoreline structure in Maspeth, Queens. The project utilizes a NYSDEC permit to seed custom designed structures (built from reclaimed lumber) in an effort to accelerate future mussel settlement.
NCA expanded our planting efforts, with new high marsh plantings at the Newtown Creek Nature Walk, planting of DOT provided planters at Apollo Street and the newly opened 29th Street LaGuardia Community College Plaza.
Our street-ends saw additional love as ExxonMobil removed a long standing remediation shed at Penny Bridge, and Brooklyn Community Board 1 and Queens Community Board 2 provided letters of support for street-end revitalization at key sites on both sides of the Creek.
In total, our restoration team led over 350 volunteers to help clean and green numerous Creek locations including the planting of over 4,000 plants and removal of 2,700 pounds of trash.
Educating & Engaging:
In addition to regular public programs such as Open Hours, Biking and Walking tours, Autumn Evenings and the Annual Kingsland Wildflowers Festival, NCA led a number of new public events such as Critters After Dark, and Queens Landing Open Hours in conjunction with Hunters Point Parks Conservancy. In total, we hosted 47 free public educational events and engaged over 3,200 members of the public.
Our education team had a record year for student engagement – teaching over 5,600 students total through school visits and over 140 field trips to Newtown Creek! We prioritized deeper engagement with local schools and also launched a “Civic Engagement on the Creek” themed field trip.
In June, we kicked off the first year of our new summer fellowship: TIDALS. The cohort gathered hands on restoration experience and led intertidal based research projects over their 10 weeks with NCA.
NCA joined Queens Public Library to celebrate the renaming of the Hunters Point Library and Environmental Education Center, and partnered with the branch to launch a virtual exhibit focussed on local estuary based topics.
