Superfund

Superfund is shorthand for the programs addressing the most serious contaminated sites: the federal program with its National Priorities List, and the state's registry-based counterpart. Listing documents contamination significant enough for governmental cleanup machinery, long remediation timelines, and liability frameworks that reach responsible parties across decades of ownership history.

In New York City, the listed waterways are analytically notable: proximity to a listed canal or creek — with its remediation schedule, its dredging, and its redevelopment pressure — is a neighborhood-scale fact for nearby lots. Site listings are public, mapped, and dated; for any lot near one, the cleanup's status and the lot's relationship to the contamination are checkable questions with documentary answers.