Free to take more hazardous waste at CWM

   Hazardous waste weighing about as much as 478 Statues of Liberty will soon be coming to Western New York from one upstate cleanup site.

  As reported in today's Buffalo News, work has begun north of Glens Falls in the Town of Queensbury, and the PCB-contaminated material is coming straight to CWM Chemical Services in Porter.

   It will take about 1,500 truckloads to transport the waste by truck, criss-crossing area highways and roadways to get here over the next year or so, state environmental officials said.

   At 74,600 tons, it is one of the biggest single projects to have waste shipped here in a while.

   No one could immediately be clear on just how much these shipments will affect remaining capacity at the CWM facility.

   Company officials said residents should see no spike in truck traffic on area roads.

   The cleanup site in Queensbury includes an existing landfill and former salvage yard used by General Electric Co.

   General Electric is paying hundreds of millions to dredge a portion of the Hudson River, which swallowed PCBs dumped by two of the company's plants prior to the suspected carcinogen's ban in the late 1970s.

   GE has denied responsibility for the PCB contamination at the Queensbury site, meaning this one's taxpayer funded, at least for now.

   The state can sue the company if it so chooses.

   While only half of the contaminated material is coming to the landfill in northwest Niagara County, the Northeast's only hazardous waste dump, at first none of it was supposed to come here at all.

   Initial plans called for all of the waste to undergo a process called thermal desorption. But because the only bid that came in exceeded original cost estimates, the backup plan means half of the material stays on-site to be cleaned with the rest buried at CWM.

   Hazardous waste disposal operations at the CWM site started in 1972, with CWM taking over in the early 1980s. A 10-acre interim storage cell for radioactive waste, which sits on a portion of 7,500 acres of land taken by the federal government for weapons production during World War II, neighbors CWM.

  —Aaron Besecker

Comments

[Rick Nielsen]

I think nothing could be more responsible than the DEC taking a waste that is not being properly managed and placing it into a secure, state of the art hazardous waste disposal facility. The NYSDEC should take a more proactive approach such as this to environmental clean ups.

[Jerry Moss]

"Hazardous waste weighing about as much as 478 Statues of Liberty will soon be coming to Western New York from one upstate cleanup site."

This form of measurement is much harder to decipher than let's say the metric system that Canada uses...

[Art Klein]

This is just another example of the spineless and totally ineffective state legislators who supposedly represent Western New York.

Imagine- thirty some years after Love Canal brought National Attention to Western New York about the neglect that created one of the most toxic waste site in the United States our elected leadership in both Niagara And Erie County is allowing the State of New York to build an even bigger toxic waste site next to a school complex, and over waterways the carry the poison to Lake Ontario.

Besides this incredible nightmare the trucks carrying the poison will share roadways that carry children to school. We all know from the terrible impacts of lead paint and herbicides that their insidious impacts will not be known until our current legislators are long gone.

Perhaps we should erect a monument to the destroyed lives this decision represents as a warning to the future. if our elected officials think the Love Canal gave Western New York bad publicity they had better be ready for the avalanche of comment this latest insult provides.

if any of these jerks is re-elected we deserve the fate with any despised community .

[Ryan Sceckler]

Jerry, the reason why you are having difficulty understanding the volume is because the unit of measure is French.

[gfy]

in the end, the risk to the general public will be reduced. right now these contaminated sediments are in contact with surface water that eventually will have contact with humans. when buried in a secure landfill, the risk to humans and the ecosystem, has but all been eliminated. nimby's will always complain, but these landfills need to be somewhere. btw, the gas you pump into your car, the weed killers you put on your pretty lawn, and the asphalt on your roads all contain nasty chemicals that have about the same chance of giving you cancer as these pcb laden sediments. it is all about minimizing your exposure.

[TWH]

It strikes me as somewhat hypocritical to fund an environmental cleanup project that will utilize over 3000 trucks running across the state without considering rail. This site has rail structures nearby and this waste could easily be loaded for rail transport, reducing the carbon footprint of the project, eliminating trucks from the roads, saving precious fuel, and saving taxpayers money.

In my opinion this is another example of bureaucrats unwillingness or inability to think creatively.

[Texas Kid]

Wow..some NYS legislators must have visited Buffalo and Western New York recently. They must have seen the nation's third highest vacant home rate and the 2nd poorest large citry in the U.S. and thought the area was a dump to anyways. Albany, Westchester County, NYC and Long Island have felt that ways towards you for the last 40 years. Seems natural to me they locate a hazardous waste site in WNY. People are moving out left and right and really..you can't expect downstate to put their crap in their backyards. Just another way they're giving you the middle digit in my opinion.

[Diane Bruening]

Thank you, Senator Maziarz! WNY has had enough of everyone else's garbage! We can only hope the rest of our local elected officials will jump on the Senator's bandwagon. Where are you now, Hillary Clinton?

[Art Klein]

I admire George Maziarz' attempt to bring attention to the threat of the DEC decision.
But I also hope he can delve into the innards of the DEC and discover exactly why there is such a difference between the cost estimate and the bid price. There should rarely be more than a 10% difference. Either somebody is just not doing their job or the true scope of the work was not understood by all parties.

There is something very wrong in this and why should Western New York become the toxic dump as a result of bungling in Albany.

Everybody in WNY must join RRG and take NYSDEC to court on this one.

Ii is not ironic that Lois Gibbs will be here August 1 to mark the thirty years since Love Canal made us more famous than did Niagara Falls?

[Curious]

Is this the same Senator Maziarz who has been fighting the people in Lewiston who are closest to the CWM waste site for years & years about this toxic dump. Is this the same Senator Maziarz that has accepted campaign contributions from CWM....money talks and you know what walks. Well it must be an election year. Only during an election year does Maziarz talk about issues that are near and dear to the people. It's time to get rid of him. His time is l-o-n-g overdue.

[Niagara County Resident]

Wow, all of a sudden Senator Maziarz ia concerned about this toxic waste coming into Niagara County?We didn't hear anything from him until now. This man talks out of both sides of his mouth; When Pataki was governor, the Senator had much more influence but what did he do to help the people of Lewiston & Porter besides giving them "lip service"? He also talked up a great deal about the NYPA but do we see our electric rates reduced? same at the tolls of the Grand Island Bridge all talk! He is been in office for 14 years and just take a look at the economic disaster Niagara County is in. I agree with Curious, because its an election year he will say anything that sounds good to the taxpayer. He should have been addressing the 75,000 tons of toxic waste coming into Niagara County long ago. I find it very difficult to believe that he just found out about this recently.

[Judith Mokhiber]

Stop the 75,000 tons of most toxic PCB's to WNY. Join our group. Instructions on how to send letters via snail mail and e-mail to Commissioner of DEC.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19732631051