Tag: Environment

May 25

2017

Heaney talks ‘Billion abuses on ‘Pressroom

Published by

Jim Heaney tells Susan Arbetter of The Capitol Pressroom about the “outrageous” payments made by the Fort Schuyler Management Corp. to LPCiminelli on the SolarCity project. The reimbursements were reported Tuesday by Charlotte Keith of Investigative Post. Heaney and Arbetter conclude their conversation with a brief discussion on another Investigative Post story, this one done by Dan Telvock, about the state stocking a badly polluted creek in Niagara County with fish despite an advisory to not eat fish caught in the creek.

Posted 8 years ago

May 17

2017

Regulators at cross purposes at 18 Mile Creek

Published by

Eighteen Mile Creek in Niagara County is so polluted that the state Department of Health doesn’t want people to eat the fish caught there. It’s one of only six waterbodies in the state with such a warning. This hasn’t stopped another arm of the state, the Department of Environmental Conservation, from stocking the contaminated creek each year with an average of 160,000 of what are considered among the most desirable of fish: salmon and trout. As a result, a section along Eighteen Mile Creek in the Town of Newfane has become a fishing hotspot, part of the Lake Ontario watershed’s[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Apr 28

2017

A threat to Scajaquada Creek – and neighbors

Published by

It’s not the view from Virginia Golden’s front porch of the former General Motors plant that bothers her. It’s the toxic gunk – up to 110,000 gallons of it – that’s underneath the plant. Neighborhood residents have been waiting – and worrying – for a decade since state environmental regulators declared several acres of the plant on East Delavan Avenue a significant threat to public health. The contaminant of concern are PCBs – so toxic that the federal government banned the manufacturing of them in 1979. The residents want the property cleaned up, but have instead endured inaction from state[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Apr 17

2017

Cuomo: Expand study of Wheatfield landfill

Published by

Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed state environmental regulators to move “quickly and thoroughly”on an investigation of a toxic landfill with a Love Canal legacy in the Town of Wheatfield. Cuomo wants the Department of Environmental Conservation to collect soil and groundwater samples from residential yards in the neighborhoods closest to the landfill “to determine whether offsite migration of contaminants has occurred.” The DEC, so far, has maintained that chemicals have been confined to the landfill. Current and former neighbors of the landfill, and their attorneys, have contended in a lawsuit that their soil tests show that landfill chemicals already have contaminated their properties. “We[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Mar 27

2017

Wheatfield landfill subject of lawsuit

Published by

Current and former residents of neighborhoods near a toxic landfill allege in a lawsuit that “ultra-hazardous” chemicals migrated onto their properties, making some of them sick. The 65 plaintiffs contend the landfill off Nash Road, which is owned by the Town of Wheatfield, is the source of the contamination. Many of plaintiffs are or were residents of North Tonawanda, which borders the landfill. They are asking the state Supreme Court in Niagara County to award them damages, including money to cover medical care, because of what they claim is the town’s negligence. The lawsuit names the Town of Wheatfield and seven companies as defendants: Occidental[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Feb 9

2017

Paying price for radioactive hotspots in Niagara

Published by

John Raymond was about to sell his home in Lewiston until Environmental Protection Agency officials showed up last spring armed with radiation detectors. Turns out that Raymond’s basement had radon, a potent radioactive gas linked to lung cancer, at levels three times greater than regulatory limits. EPA officials said it’s possible Raymond has radioactive fill under his home that may be linked to similar material found across the street by Holy Trinity Cemetery. That’s where the EPA detected radioactivity more than 75 times higher than what’s normal for the local environment. “Basically I’m stuck,” Raymond said. “One of the guys[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Jan 26

2017

City schools want to test for lead poisoning

Published by

A Buffalo Public Schools official says that the district wants to respond to the city’s serious lead poisoning problem with a sense of urgency. But a district proposal to test children for lead in schools is not getting support from the Erie County Health Department. “It just seems it would be so easy to test the untested children,” said Will Keresztes, the school district’s chief of intergovernmental affairs, planning and community engagement. “Why can’t that happen when the school district is so interested in making that happen?” This was just one of many policies and best practices discussed at a roundtable Thursday[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Jan 25

2017

Telvock analysis on suspended EPA funding

Published by

Details are sketchy, in part because of a news blackout, but Dan Telvock told WGRZ on Tuesday that a presidential order to freeze contracts and grants made by the Environmental Protection Agency could disrupt work on a number of projects in Western New York.

Posted 8 years ago
Investigative Post