For smells of a truly insinuating and repulsive character, such as are almost susceptible to the touch seemingly, no locality within the extended limit of the city can furnish stronger specimins than the most northerly section bordered by Newtown Creek. This may, perhaps, be qualified by the statement that these odors emanate from premises mainly located on the opposite side of the creek, or the surface of the creek itself, the fact remains undisputed that residents of this city are suffering under an intolerable nuisance.
The principle effluvia very likely arises from the rendering or other factories permitted to exist and send forth noxious vapors from the Queens County side of the creek, yet it is possible that a part of the nuisance is emitted from places situated in this county.
Take last night, for instance, as a sample, and within a radius of from two to three miles south from the creek there cannot probably be found a single person living inside the limit designated, whose windows faced to the north, who did not realize the presence of a sickening odor that could not be escaped from except by tightly closing doors and windows to the exclusion of the wished for breeze.
—
Brooklyn Eagle, August 6, 1873
emphasis my own (obviously all smelly things emanate from queens and not brooklyn) in recognition of the Superfund status bestowed upon this creek 137 years later!
