Buffalo News
Long-awaited cleanup work is set to begin in May on a former TNT plant and radioactive waste storage site in the Town of Lewiston .
The 191-acre Niagara Falls Storage Site, formerly part of the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works property, was used to manufacture TNT, or trinitrotoluene, in 1941 for about nine months and then decommissioned in 1943. The site was then used from the 1950s to the 1980s for various activities including manufacturing of fuel and storage of radioactive materials from the development of the atomic bomb.
The Balmer Road School saw 900 third graders walk through its doors on the Ordnance Works property from 1967 to 1970. Many of those school children have said they now have health impacts — ranging from deadly cancers to debilitating muscle diseases — perhaps from the radioactive waste stored just yards away from their schoolhouse.
The full cleanup of the site is necessary to protect human health, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided in October 2018 , because some of the waste there emits radiation at dangerous levels to human health. In the late 1970s, very high levels of radiation were found emitting from the soil, surface water and in drainage ditches in various areas around the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works property.
"I didn't think this (cleanup) would happen in my lifetime," said Tim Henderson , a longtime resident of Lewiston who has been involved in advocating for the site's cleanup for at least 30 years. "The only sensible solution is to remove it (the radioactive waste). We won't feel total relief until it's all out of here."
Henderson is one of many in the site's surrounding community who have served on the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works Restoration Advisory Board . Members of the board pushed for the government to remove the radiation-contaminated materials from the site since the board's formation in 1999, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a decision in 2018 to fully remove all radioactive and otherwise contaminated materials at the site.
"This is a real hallelujah for us," said Amy Witryol , who has long served on the Restoration Advisory Board .
"I'm thrilled they're finally doing something," echoed Vincent Agnello , who served on the Restoration Advisory Board and is the president of Residents for Responsible Government, a nonprofit that is fighting the expansion of the CWM toxic waste landfill located just north of the Niagara Falls Storage Site. "This is going to be a long, long process, but at least they're addressing it and made the good decision to get rid of all the radiological material."
Cleanup in three phases
The cleanup will be done in three phases. The work set to begin next month is the first phase and will include complete removal of "lower activity waste" not contained in the central Interim Waste Containment Structure, according to Army Corps of Engineers project manager Brent Laspada .
The lower activity waste includes buildings, foundations, contaminated soil and polluted groundwater in various spots on the 191-acre site. Work by Enviro-Fix Solutions to clean up the waste will cost $12 million and last through January, Laspada said.
An estimated 6,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and 4,000 gallons of polluted groundwater are expected to be removed during the cleanup, according to Laspada. The contaminated waste will be transported on trucks to a licensed disposal facility outside of Detroit , he added.
Once the material is removed, holes left in the ground will be refilled with clean dirt and seeded with native plants, Laspada said.
"This site has a really long history, and so it's truly exciting to see it all come together and for work to begin soon," he said.
The plan for the next cleanup phases are expected to be completed in 2027, Laspada said. Those phases consist of cleanup of the roughly 10-acre, 34-foot-tall Interim Waste Containment Structure.
The Interim Waste Containment Structure is an engineered landfill built to hold highly radioactive materials gathered during the 1980s and 1990s from other areas of the Niagara Falls Storage Site as part of a cleanup effort. The landfill was designed to keep radiation from escaping into the nearby community.
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