New York - State Plans to Sue Exxon Over Underground Oil Spill in Brooklyn

New York - State environmental officials said they would sue Exxon Mobil over a big underground oil spill in Brooklyn that is still seeping sticky goo into a city waterway, decades after the leak was first noticed.

An estimated 17 million gallons of petroleum once lay in a vast plume beneath the streets of the Greenpoint neighborhood that was home to many oil refineries for more than a century.

The oil business has largely moved elsewhere, but countless small and large spills went unnoticed for decades and eventually formed a subterranean blob of more than 50 acres. Authorities have been aware of the problem since 1978. Exxon Mobil accepted responsibility for much of the damage in 1990 and has since pumped some nine million gallons out of the ground. The slow pace of the cleanup, however, has increasingly angered Greenpoint residents and elected officials, who have launched a series of lawsuits against Exxon in the past year.

The Department of Environmental Conservation said yesterday that it has joined the fray, and asked New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to initiate legal action against Exxon "to ensure that the company fulfills its obligation to clean up petroleum contamination" in Greenpoint.