Published: October 23, 2006 11:54 pm

County health to measure radiation

By Aaron Besecker

County health officials will re-evaluate five “radiological anomalies” on a Niagara Falls roadway slated for reconstruction, the county’s director of public health said on Monday.

Before the end of the year, Niagara County Health Department staff will conduct a walkover survey of five areas of Lewiston Road identified in a 1986 federal report, Director Paulette Kline said.

The contamination issue, recently brought to the attention of city, county and state officials, will be studied “in every aspect,” according to Kline.

Part of that effort will be a collaboration between the city engineering department, the state health department’s Bureau of Environmental Radiation Protection and the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Bureau of Hazardous Waste and Radiation Management.

Kline said she expects the group to develop a protocol for use by contractors to deal with the contamination during construction.

Both state and county health officials have said the radiological hot spots present no public health risk.

A 1986 report from scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory identified 100 sites on Grand Island, Lewiston and Niagara Falls as having disparate levels of radiation.

About one-third of the sites were cleaned up, while the remaining sites were left unremediated. Five of the unremediated sites are found on Lewiston Road, which city officials plan to rebuild beginning in November.

The sites that were cleaned up were contaminated by material connected to the Niagara Falls Storage Site, a federally-operated radiological dump site in Lewiston and Porter, according to the report.

Most of the contaminated sites contain radioactive “slag” material, known as cyclowollastonite, a substance believed to be the product of an industrial process involving uranium-bearing raw materials.

The slag was believed to be used as fill material for roads around the area.

It would be one thing if the contaminated areas were to remain contained, but the planned excavation makes health department involvement more critical to the situation, according to Kline.

Now it’s “a whole different issue,” she said.

Health department staff will survey the sites with two pieces of equipment, rather than just a single device, Kline added.

Once the health department gathers its own data, the new information will be compared to what appears in the 1986 report.

Kline said her office will also look at why some areas weren’t tested and the results included in the original report.

She said she has no reason to believe what’s buried at the five Lewiston Road sites is not the slag material as referenced by Oak Ridge officials.

City Engineer Robert Curtis said utility work on Lewiston Road could begin next month, but the actual digging and repaving would take place following the winter months.

To view the original Oak Ridge report, visit www.ornl.gov/info/reports/1986/3445601478227.pdf.



Magilla: Now who was the genious behind this project?:


Most of the contaminated sites contain radioactive “slag” material, known as cyclowollastonite, a substance believed to be the product of an industrial process involving uranium-bearing raw materials.

The slag was believed to be used as fill material for roads around the area.

Magilla- This article in the Buffalo News on Friday 19 Jan. 2007 has a direct connection to the first posting above here.


'Hot spots' may delay work on city street



Radioactivity found under Lewiston Road

By GAIL FRANKLIN
NEWS NIAGARA BUREAU
1/18/2007

NIAGARA FALLS - Workers will be on Lewiston Road this week, but the $10 million reconstruction of the treacherous thoroughfare won't start until four radioactive "hot spots" beneath the pavement are cleaned up and tested.
"There is no danger," City Engineer Robert Curtis said of the excavation work being undertaken this week by subcontractor SJB Services of Hamburg. "We'll be excavating down to where we see the slag, put a shovel in and throw it into a cooler, which will be sealed off with duct tape and sent to a lab [for testing]."

A 1986 federal report identified higher-than-normal radioactive levels on Lewiston Road, assumed to be due to phosphorous slag that might have fallen out of trucks taking the waste to the former Lake Ontario Ordnance Works site in Lewiston and Porter.

Radium and uranium, two radioactive elements, occur naturally in that type of slag, said James J. Devald, Niagara County's environmental health director.

Some nearby residents have expressed concern over the material to city lawmakers and other officials.

Curtis said the state Department of Environmental Conservation responded to one homeowner with a letter that said the only way for the material to be harmful to a person is if they stood on the site for 12 hours a day for more than a year.

He said all the radioactive material - which is under the pavement and some driveway aprons - will be removed regardless of the outcome of the tests.

If the material is deemed to be a low level of radioactivity, it can be dumped at Allied/BFI Waste Systems of North America, the Falls landfill where waste was taken when Porter Road was rebuilt.

However, if it is deemed a harmful substance it will be shipped to Utah, which Curtis said is the only place in the country accepting high-level radioactive material.

"The difference between the two outcomes is that it costs $80 a truck for BFI," he said, "as compared to $100,000 to ship the material to Utah."

Devald and city officials agreed in October that when bid notices for the reconstruction of the street are released they will inform bidders of the radiation issue. The winning company must have a health and safety plan in place, and be prepared to remove and dispose of the nuclear waste.

Curtis said the project to reconstruct the pothole-filled road is being funded with 80 percent federal money, 15 percent state and 5 percent local.

The money secured for the project would cover the cost of dumping waste locally, but not if it is deemed hazardous, he said.

After the testing and removal, Curtis said, construction is expected to begin this spring or early summer, and wrap up by the end of 2008 or early 2009.

The sight of workers on the road was welcome to City Councilman Chris A. Robins, who lives in the DeVeaux neighborhood and asks about the status of the Lewiston Road project at almost every Council meeting.

"I have gone through many of the streets in Niagara Falls and if it's not the worst, it's got to be in the top three," he said Wednesday.

Robins said most of the neighborhood is aware of the promises from city and county officials that material will be disposed of properly.

"Some people are saying, "I might be willing to die a year early as long as I don't die of potholes,' " he quipped.

"Some people are saying, "I might be willing to die a year early as long as I don't die of potholes,' " he quipped"


Ha-ha-ha there is nothing like going to an actively charged funeral on a even surfaced road. Anybody know where Love Canal street is around here? Oh it's the one with the bright streets?

Silly me I should have known before asking.



"It is not a normal situation when the people who are in charge of the fate of a whole civilization lie quite openly to the whole world."
-- Dr. Vladimir Chernousenko, Scientific Director of the Chernobyl "clean-up"