Merits of county Health Department’s Community
LOOW Project discussed

Story and photo by Terry Duffy Lewiston Porter Sentinel, September 30, 2006 Area residents and community officials received an update this past week on the Community LOOW Project, an ongoing data collection effort conducted by the Niagara County Health Department, which seeks to identify and catalogue the numerous past activities associated with the former Lake Ontario Ordnance Works site in Lewiston and Porter. Begun in 2005 by the county Health Department under Paulette Kline’s direction, the $200,000 detailed information collection effort, funded in part by U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-28th District, seeks to ensure the entire land area encompassing the once 7,500-acre former government-controlled LOOW site is thoroughly investigated, and all activities and problems identified. It aims to set the stage for the future ultimate remediation of the massive land area, which borders the eastern side of Creek Road in Lewiston, extends northward into Porter, and includes such current land use operations as the entire Lewiston-Porter Central School District campus, CWM Chemical Services, the Modern Corporation, the Niagara Falls Storage Site, various military operations, and numerous private businesses and residences.

Paulette Kline, director of the Niagara County Health Department, details the work performed thus far on the Community LOOW Project to attendees at the Lewiston Senior Center.

Many Sources

In their presentation, both Kline and Scott King, Community LOOW coordinator, told the dozens in attendance Monday at the Lewiston Senior Center their primary objective was to once and for all assemble a comprehensive study of a wealth of material on past LOOW activities. It comes from such groups as the LOOW Restoration Advisory Board, the CWM Community Advisory Committees representing the towns of Lewiston and Porter, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. departments of Energy and Defense, the Lewiston-Porter School District, Lewiston Museum Archives Project, the New York State Health Department Cancer Incidence study of Lewiston and Porter, Niagara County Health Department and others with past involvement at the site.

“It’s never been compiled like this in one site before,” said Kline who reported county health department officials are months along in creating a comprehensive GIS database, which, once established, will provide a continuous interactive mapping capability of literally all LOOW investigations for future use by government agencies and the public.

“It’s phenomenal technology,” said King, as he offered numerous examples of the GIS layer building of information and its interactive communication capability to the attendees, documenting the many LOOW studies and reports, which include radiological contamination, chemical dumping, groundwater and wetlands impact, soil monitoring and hazardous waste concentrations in the central and northern ends of the LOOW property. “We can pinpoint areas of concern, and the potential hazards.” King termed GIS “an effective tool” on its capabilities of analyzing and mapping data, and its spatial distributions of information.

Gap Analysis

He also reported on the Gap analysis capability of the GIS system, which when organized into a working information database, can be disseminated to allow for further investigations by independent scientists, agencies or others in their various LOOW research endeavors and future remediation.

Offering an example of its capability, King described the 800 past bore samplings performed over the past years by the Army Corps on the LOOW site, and how the new GIS/Gap information analysis allows for the samplings to be broken down further to determine in-ground depth locations of the bore sites, the types of soils found and their properties, their geology as potential pathways for contaminants, their current and impact on groundwater flows, and the ability for further study and long-range remediation. “It’s an indication of the different types of information we can gather,” said King, as he reviewed some of the findings on borings conducted at the highly radioactive contaminated 191-acre NFFS site, one mile east of the Lew-Port campus on Pletcher Road.

In response to questions heard regarding the health of the Lew-Port school district campus itself, a concern voiced by many over the years, King said that while GIS data and Gap analysis performed thus far reveal a clean campus, the studies continue and the health department’s overall determinations on the campus health are not final. “We’re not convinced of the data compiled thus far,” King said, adding that Gap analysis could provide still further data. “However there are no serious risks,” as to the Lew-Port campus, he stressed.

Work Continues

As the session wound up, Kline said the GIS data collection effort remains a work in progress. She reported that the county expects to wind up its role in developing the Community LOOW Project in 2007, and beyond that, she hopes the data collection effort will continue. Kline said that Niagara County may opt to continue it, and more federal government funding assistance may be directed towards it, but nonetheless, what has been assembled thus far already serves as an exceptional resource for future uses.

“It (the Community LOOW Project database) is a great opportunity for others to add to,” said Kline. “This is very state of the art. It’s too good to let it go.”

Area residents will have an opportunity to learn more about the Community LOOW Project as well as the continuing developments concerning the LOOW site, with the LOOW RAB community conference day, Saturday, Oct. 21, at the Lewiston Senior Center. Stay tuned for updates in the Sentinel.