Education Animations

This past year Newtown Creek Alliance has been collaborating with local artist Wyatt Bertz and his creative studio, Heavens Cafe, to craft educational animations and illustrations that tell the story of the creek. This collaboration has allowed us to visually communicate the Creek’s rich history and ongoing restoration efforts in a more engaging and accessible way.

The shoreline of the creek is shown being hardened and deepened, as concrete barriers replace natural tidal wetlands and native find cialis vegetation. As the area around the creek has been changed the creek’s has been changed into a rigid channel, and forever has transformed the creek’s natural flow and displaced habitat.


Two fish swim cautiously through the murky waters, passing over the thick layers of toxic muck and sediment that have built up on the creek bed due to decades of industrial pollution. As they move, we can see how harmful contaminants like heavy metals and oil residues have settled and built up into the sediment, posing ongoing risks to marine life and water quality, emphasizing the need for continued remediation efforts.


The animation above shows three different depictions of how our city’s sewer system impacts and interacts with our waterways. Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) is one of the biggest sources of pollution affecting Newtown levitra at walmart Creek.

Like most of New York City, the large upland areas surrounding Newtown Creek are serviced by a combined sewer system, which sends both sanitary sewage and stormwater to local wastewater treatment plants. Unfortunately, during wet weather events, the system can become overwhelmed, causing untreated sewage and stormwater to flow directly into local water bodies through CSO outfalls. As little as 1/10 of an inch of rain in an hour can trigger CSO http://www.newtowncreekalliance.org/candian-viagra/ events in Newtown Creek. According to the most recent models, over 1.2 billion gallons of CSO are discharged into the Creek each year. 

In the third stage a city scape is imagined with major investments into green infrastructure, like green roofs and permeable building materials that have a http://www.newtowncreekalliance.org/best-levitra-online-price/ huge impact on mitigating these sewer overflows and managing stormwater.


Newtown Creek Alliance is actively working towards the restoration of the waterway, maintaining projects that both improve water quality and create habitat for the existing wildlife of the creek. These projects include oyster and mussel habitat installs and floating wetland grasses that have been deployed out onto the water. Despite poor conditions wildlife is returning to the Creek, and native habitats like the Living Docks are critical to supporting their growth and development.


The animation above vividly depicts the creek’s transformation, beginning as a thriving, biodiverse pre-colonial wetland, then shifting to industrialization and habitat displacement, and culminating in what we hope the future of the creek could look like—showcasing both environmental renewal and ongoing restoration efforts in a playful and student friendly way.


Urban Heat Island Effect or UHI is visualized above, two cityscapes side by side under the intense sun. On the right, the city has minimal green infrastructure, with dark, heat-absorbing surfaces like asphalt and concrete radiating heat back into the air, causing temperatures to soar. On the left, a greener urban landscape with parks, trees, and green roofs appears, where vegetation absorbs and dissipates heat, cooling the surroundings.


This animation is an interpretation of historic petroleum contamination in the creek, and depicts the various ways oil has entered the waterway, from mishandling of product to poor shoreline structures that allowed oil to seep into the creek over time. The visualization highlights the cumulative impact of these failures, demonstrating how decades of abuse and neglect have led to widespread contamination. Newtown Creek is the site of one of the largest oil spills in North America, with between 17 and 30 million gallons of oil spilled and leaked from ExxonMobil’s historic refinery and storage facilities into the soil and groundwater in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.


Animation and Illustrations by Wyatt Bertz (@wyatt_bertz) & Heavens Cafe

For a hands-on learning experience, explore our educational programming and field trip options to see the creek’s transformation up close! Visit the education page on our website for details.