Oil Spill Threatens Bird Sanctuary Off Staten Island

Petty Officer 2nd Class Jetta H. Disco/U.S. Coast Guard The Coast Guard responded to a discharge of fuel oil from a barge in Kill Van Kull at Mariners Harbor, Staten Island, on Saturday. The barge's tank holds approximately 147,000 gallons of fuel oil.

Oil from a barge spilled into the waters off Staten Island, spreading to a bird sanctuary on an island in Newark Bay, the Coast Guard said on Saturday.

The spill was detected shortly after 11 p.m. Friday at May Ship Repair, said Petty Officer Erik Swanson, a Coast Guard spoke sman. Petty Officer Swanson said that fuel oil was being transferred from a barge called Boston 30 to another barge, DBL 25, when workers noticed that it was also darkening the water between the vessels.

Workers placed a boom on the surface of the water to contain the oil, added absorbent materials and notified the authorities, Petty Officer Swanson said.

The oil was coming from one of the Boston 30's tanks, which was carrying 112,000 gallons. The barge is owned by Boston Marine Transport of Massachusetts.

The Coast Guard has not yet determined how much oil had leaked from the tank or what caused the leak. Petty Officer Swanson added that Coast Guard helicopters surveyed the area and saw that an oily sheen had spread to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, about six miles to the east.

Petty Officer Swanson said that the oil had also reached the Shooters Island Bird Sanctuary and the Richmond Terrace wetlands, both of which are controlled by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and are within several hundred yards of where the leak took place.

Shooters Island, which is closed to the public and is only visited by scientists and government employees, is a breeding ground for several species of wading birds. Birds that frequent the 35-acre island include the glossy ibis, black-crowned night heron, and species like the snowy egret and great egret, which were nearly extinct before legislation protecting them and their breeding grounds was signed into law.

May Ship Repair occupies the site of the former Bethlehem Steel Shipyard, in the Mariners Harbor neighborhood on the northwest end of Staten Island. The company's Web site said it had three dry docks and could accommodate ships up to 300 feet long.

No one answered calls placed to the company on Saturday.

By Saturday, the Coast Guard said, Boston Marine Transport had hired the Miller Environmental Group, a Long I sland company, to help with the cleanup. Workers from Miller Environmental had placed additional booms and absorbent material around the two barges and begun further cleanup efforts, according to Petty Officer Swanson.

Workers from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection were also joining the cleanup effort.

A spokesman for the parks department said the agency had not yet been able to assess the spill's effect, if any, on Shooters Island.

At Brooklyn Gun Buyback, Shooting Is Not Far From the Minds of Participants

The shootings in Connecticut sent a few ripples into a Brooklyn church on Saturday, with at least some people saying that they gave up their weapons after learning about what happened in Newtown.

The church, Mount Ollie Baptist in Brownsville, was one of two places in the borough that took part in a gun buyback program run by the Police Department and the Brooklyn district attorney's office.

“That took a little toll on me,” Samuel Price, 56, said of the Connecticut slayings. He had brought in a .38 caliber revolver that he said he found in a drawer used by a grandson.

The weapon might not have been his, but Mr. Price said that mattered little: “I did the right thing.”

Nearby, the church's pastor, the Rev. Reginald Lee Bachus, said that a woman turned in three guns that had belonged to her husband. “Because of what happened yesterday,” he added. “She did not want that on her conscience.”

Outside the church, a man who declined to give his name said that what happened in Newtown was “a bit of a catalyst.”

Under the buyback program, participants are paid up to $200 a weapon. As participants entered the church they turned over the weapons, many in plastic shopping bags, to uniformed police officers, who took the guns to a separate area where they were inspected and, if necessary, unloaded. People then waited for payment in the church basement where red and gold tinsel covered the walls.

Those who had turned in functioning weapons were given a debit card worth $200. Guns that did not function were good for $20.

On Saturday evening, the Brooklyn district attorney's office reported that the police had accepted 134 working guns, including 80 revolvers,
31 semi-automatic pistols, four rifles, three shotguns and a sawed-off shotgun.

One woman who turned over a pistol said she had been spurred by cases of children being shot much closer to home.

“In our area there have been many incidents,” she said. “Here it's been more than twenty.”

Big Ticket | Sold for $11.5 Million

A well-preserved brick town house in the West Village that was built for a sea captain in 1842 and had been owned since 1987 by the publishing magnate Timothy C. Forbes, a son of Malcolm S. Forbes, sold for $11.5 million and was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

The four-story town house at 60 West 11th Street and its equally antique, though not identical, twin next door were built by Andrew Lockwood in the prevailing Federal style with piquant Greek Revival flourishes. It has five bedrooms, six fireplaces, three and a half bathrooms, and a serene south-facing garden with a fountain as a centerpiece.

There are roses indoors (old-fashioned plaster roses adorn the ceilings) and out (the real things bloom in the garden). The meticulously restored and impeccably maintained house has double parlors, pilastered windows and mahogany doors, spread over 4,680 square feet of space including the attic and a staff room. But not all of it is de signated a 19th-century time capsule.

Mr. Forbes, the president and chief operating officer of the Forbes publishing empire, also added some modern touches, like a 1,200-bottle wine cellar, an entertainment room, sound and security systems, and expansive glass doors that open from the living room into the garden.

The house was listed at $12.5 million in June through Chris Infante, Paul Kolbusz and Sara Gelbard of the Corcoran Group. Deborah Grubman of Corcoran represented the buyer, who was shielded by a limited-liability company, 60 West 11th Street.

Running a close second to the Forbes sale at $11.3 million, but its opposite in décor, locale and length of time on the market, was the four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath co-op at 995 Fifth Avenue, a k a the Stanhope, owned and outrageously decorated by Daphne Guinness, th e brewing company heiress and style-setter. The unit, No. 11N, at the 1926 Rosario Candela-designed building enjoys sweeping views of Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, features a Smallbone chef's kitchen, and has a heady monthly maintenance charge of $17,950.

Dan Neiditch, the president of River2River Realty, took on the languishing listing last spring and gradually reduced the price to $11.5 million from $14 million; the buyers, also represented by Mr. Neiditch, are Matthew McLennan, a portfolio manager at First Eagle Funds, and his wife, Monika. Ms. Guinness, whose chronically overflowing bathtub provoked a lawsuit from her downstairs neighbors in 2010 after the leaks damaged their bedroom, took a small loss on the co-op, which she had acquired in 2008 for $11.7 million to use as her New York pied-à-terre.

Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.

The Week in Pictures for Dec. 14

See the slide show

Here is a slide show of photographs from the past week in New York City and the region. Subjects include the auction of a piano from “Casablanca,” a settlement in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, and a peek behind the scenes at “The Nutcracker.”

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in Sunday's Times, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times's Chester Higgins Jr., Sam D olnick and Eleanor Randolph. Also appearing, David Nasaw and Hedrick Smith. Tune in at 10 p.m. Saturday or 10 a.m. Sunday on NY1 News to watch.

A sampling from the City Room blog is featured daily in the main print news section of The Times. You may also browse highlights from the blog and reader comments, read current New York headlines, like New York Metro | The New York Times on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Man Sentenced for Role in Plot to Blow Up Subways

The cousin of a man who plotted to blow up the New York subways was sentenced to 40 months in prison on Friday for introducing his cousin to an imam connected with Al Qaeda and destroying evidence of his cousin's involvement in the plot.

Amanullah Zazi, 25, whose cousin was the mastermind of what prosecutors called the most serious terrorism threat since the Sept. 11 attacks, faced up to 30 years in prison. But a federal judge said Mr. Zazi had not known about the plot; he only helped his cousin out of filial duty.

Mr. Zazi's cousin, Najibullah Zazi, and two of his friends from his high school in Queens, Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay, flew to Pakistan in 2008 planning to wage jihad by joining the Taliban in their fight against American troops. But they were unable to reach the front lines.

Amanullah Zazi, an Afghan citizen who was living in Pakistan at the time, volunteered to introduce his older cousin to a local imam . The imam later introduced the men to members of Al Qaeda.

The three Americans followed the Qaeda members to a terrorist training camp, where the Qaeda membership persuaded them to return to the United States to carry out an attack rather than join the fight against American troops. At the training camp, they learned to make bombs out of household chemicals and hatched the plot to bomb the subways.

The three friends from Queens returned to the United States to carry out the attacks, but they abandoned their plans days short of their target date in September 2009 when they learned they were being watched by law enforcement officials. Amanullah Zazi, who had moved to Colorado to live with his cousin's family, destroyed his cousin's bomb-making materials to prevent law enforcement officials from finding them.

A federal prosecutor, James Loonam, said in Federal District Court in Brooklyn that Amanullah Zazi spent his days drinking, smoking hashish and just han ging out, and volunteered to help his cousin out of devotion to his family. “He did not know the specifics of any plot,” Mr. Loonam said. “Najibullah Zazi lied to him.”

In 2010, Najibullah Zazi and Mr. Ahmedzay pleaded guilty to terrorism charges. Mr. Medunjanin was convicted after a trial and sentenced to life in prison.

Mr. Loonam said Amanullah Zazi, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to obstruct justice and aiding and abetting military training, also provided information that led to the arrest of Mr. Ahmedzay and testified for the government in a case against his uncle and Najibullah Zazi's father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, who also destr oyed evidence when law enforcement officials were encroaching. Mr. Loonam argued to the judge that Amanullah Zazi deserved leniency as a cooperating witness who had no direct knowledge of the crimes.

The judge, Raymond J. Dearie, said he struggled with how much time to give Mr. Zazi and consulted with his colleagues before meting out the sentence at the low end of the sentencing guidelines.

“This kind of battle makes strange bedfellows,” Judge Dearie said.