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Hearing set on removal of Love Canal waste

by jmaloni
Sat, Sep 13th 2014 08:40 am

by Susan Mikula Campbell

The State Department of Environmental Conservation will conduct a public availability session on Sept. 29 in Wheatfield on cleanup of old Love Canal material found at an inactive dumpsite off Niagara Falls Boulevard.

The session, designed to answer questions by the public, will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Wheatfield Community Center, 2790 Church Road, behind Town Hall.

Wheatfield Supervisor Bob Cliffe told the Town Board on Monday that he has been in contact with Greg Sutton of the DEC's Division of Environmental Remediation about the project that is part of a remediation of an old Class 3 hazardous waste landfill, located near the North Tonawanda line.

The material is believed to have been placed in the landfill in 1968 when the LaSalle Expressway was put in, Cliffe said.

The landfill is the Niagara Sanitation Company site (operated between 1964 and 1968), also known as the Nash Road Landfill.

Test bores done at the site in 2013 as part of a site characterization study to determine if it posed a significant threat to health or environment clearly identified the Love Canal wastes, according to the DEC. Elevated levels of various chemicals were found.

The excavation area will be 120 feet by 90 feet.

"One good thing from the test bores," Cliffe said, "nothing leaked out."

Cliffe said no town residential properties will be impacted by the work, although some homes in the Forbes streets in North Tonawanda will be affected.

Work will be conducted and paid for by Glenn Springs Holdings Inc., an affiliate of Occidental Chemical Corp. It is expected to begin in October and take about six weeks.

Temporary fencing will be installed and the excavation area will be isolated with the installation of sheet pile cutoff walls to prevent groundwater infiltration and allow for dewatering of the excavation area, according to the DEC.

As Nash Road is not a truck route, all truck traffic will have to turn north onto Nash Road and travel along Niagara Falls Boulevard to the appropriate disposal facility.

Project details are available on the DEC website at http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/37554.html. Project documents are available for review at the Wheatfield town clerk's office, 2800 Church Road, Wheatfield; at the DEC Region 9 office, 270 Michigan Ave., Buffalo; and at the North Tonawanda Public Library, 505 Meadow Drive, North Tonawanda.

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