LEWISTON, N.Y. — In August the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was awarded a contract to begin the removal of Manhattan Project waste from the Niagara Falls Storage Site on Pletcher Road in Lewiston.
Residents of Niagara County were able to learn more about the plan as the USACE hosted an information session at the Lewiston Senior Center Tuesday night.
"Right now we're reviewing work plans and we're anticipating spring timeframe for getting that cleanup started," said Niagara Falls Storage Site project manager Brent LaSpada.
More than 390,000 tons of waste have been stored in the Interim Waste Containment Structure (IWCS) since the mid-1980s. It was first stored at the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works site in 1944.
Phase One of the project will see the removal of radioactive material that is present throughout the 191-acre Niagara Falls Storage Site. The Army Corps says that work will begin in the spring of 2024 and take several years to complete.
'We've been doing a consistent monitoring program for over 25 years at the site that's going to continue, it's gonna be modified to fit the work that we're gonna be doing at the site," LaSpada said. "The anticipation is that safety is our number one priority, and we're going to maintain that by continuing that sampling and monitoring and keep everybody up to date on what we're doing."
Design work for Phase Two of the overall remediation of the site is underway. That work will include removing all the radioactive material from the IWCS.
"We have a couple of years for the design still to go before we get clarity on that on that timeframe," LaSpada said.
However, based on preliminary timelines published by the USACE, the full removal of the Manhattan Project won't be complete until sometime between 2038-2040.
The estimated cost, right now, to remove the waste is more than $500M.
"I ran cross country in the 60s, and we ran over the site, there weren't fences back then,' said Tim Henderson. "We always kind of had an idea what was there."
Henderson is a lifelong resident of the village of Lewiston. He says that many cross-country runners would have burns on their legs and arms from brushing up against the vegetation on the former LOOW site they ran on.
"It's good that it's leaving," Henderson said. "It's the first time that waste is going in the right direction, as far as Lewiston goes."
The USACE says that the waste will be removed out of Niagara County by truck, in a concrete-like sarcophagus. The routes or destinations of the radioactive material have not been publicly released yet.