Published: November 12, 2009 11:37 pm      

TOWN OF TONAWANDA: Nuclear material to remain in Seaway landfill

TOWN OF TONAWANDA — The Army Corps of Engineers will be digging up some of the radioactive material around the Seaway landfill, but most of the contaminated area will be left how it is.

Maj. Gen. John Peabody, the Corps’ Great Lakes and Ohio River division commander, approved the decision to move ahead with plans to extract radioactive material that had leaked off the River Road landfill site. The cleanup will stop there, leaving the remaining contamination still contained within the landfill to be capped under soil, fabric and geomembranes for the next 1,000 years.

Town Supervisor Anthony Caruana, City of Tonawanda Mayor Ron Pilozzi and plenty of other elected officials think that’s the wrong move. Caruana wrote in his comments to the Corps that the best way to remedy the problem is “removal, not containment.” He acknowledged that containment at $30 million is substantially cheaper than the $113 million full removal option, but argued that the long-term cost of monitoring, health concerns and further cleanup operations if more radioactive material leaks out far outweigh the cost up front. His opinion hadn’t changed Thursday upon hearing that the containment option had been chosen over local objections.

“They’re putting the money before the health and economy of the local area,” Caruana said.

During Tuesday’s Common Council meeting, Pilozzi said the Tonawandas are still fighting World War II, referring to the area’s involvement in the Manhattan Project that created all the radioactive material now held in various local landfills. His comments on file with the Corps criticized the notion that the expense of clearing out harmful material should outweigh the concerns of residents’ health.

“Compromising and qualifying public safety considerations with financial ones is bad public policy, and simply the wrong thing to do,” Pilozzi wrote.

The Corps disagrees with that characterization. Steve Buechi, the project manager for the Seaway site and remediation of other radioactive landfills in the area, said containment is less dangerous to local people than digging out the hazardous materials buried deep inside the landfill.

“There would potentially be risks to workers and the public from excavating that buried (hazardous) material,” Buechi said.

Some of the waste is up to 80 feet deep, and the Corps’ decision says getting it out could create “hazardous dust, emissions, and odors.”

Despite the objections, the Army Corps maintains that this is both the safest and most cost-effective way to address the site.

“By eliminating exposure, it makes the remedy safe for the environment and the surrounding public,” Buechi said.

Local leaders are skeptical that the capping process is as safe as the Corps says since materials have leaked out before. But even if the health concerns are kept at bay for the entire 1,000-year life of the monitoring program, Caruana said the existence of the material is still hurts economic development in the surrounding area. The site itself is situated near the town’s industrial district and just off the I-290 — prime real estate for new development if it weren’t for the contamination issue. And while Buechi said the Corps’ monitoring doesn’t prohibit all uses on the site, anything that would require excavation or construction is off limits with the capping project in place.

“Any use that would put an impact on the cap would not be allowable,” he said.

But it’s not just the Seaway landfill that’s affected. The supervisor said the town has already lost two potential business ventures in adjacent areas just because the idea of being near such an area made investors uneasy. And as other areas of the town work to expand, the entire municipality has a stigma that is difficult to shed.

“A lot of it is just perception, and that’s what we’re trying to get rid of,” Caruana said.

Pilozzi has urged residents to continue writing to their federal and state representatives in an effort to keep attention on the problem, but the record of decision issued this week looks to be the Corps’ final word on the matter. Buechi said the operation will begin once federal funding becomes available, but was unable to say when that would be.

Contact reporter Daniel Pyeat 693-1000, ext. 158.