U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completes Phase 1 of Niagara Falls Storage Site Radiological Remediation

LEWISTON, N.Y. (WKBW) — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed the first phase of a radiological remediation of the Niagara Falls Storage Site, a place where Manhattan Project waste is stored.

“We’ve made huge strides on this project,” Niagara Falls Storage Site Project Manager Brent Laspada said. “We’ve reached all of our radiological cleanup goals for the first phase.”

WATCH: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completes Phase 1 of Niagara Falls Storage Site Radiological Remediation

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the Niagara Falls Storage Site in the Town of Lewiston was formerly part of the U.S. Army’s Lake Ontario Ordnance Works.

Beginning in 1944, the Manhattan Engineer District stored uranium processing residues, uranium metal and radiological waste at the former Lake Ontario Ordnance Works.

Now the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been tasked with remediating the Manhattan Project-associated property. In 2021, an Army study estimated the cost of remediation at $490.6 million.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

This is a different project than the DEC and EPA's Niagara and Erie County Radiological Assessment that is stopping in many neighborhoods across the county.

Laspada tells me his crews finished removing 26,000 cubic yards of contaminated material and disposed of it at licensed facilities. That’s enough material to fill about 8 Olympic-sized swimming pools. 

Phase 1 is now complete, but Laspada tells me he still has under 280,000 cubic yards of contaminated material to remove and remediate. That’s about 85 more Olympic-sized swimming pools of material.

WKBW

He said Phase 2 is already underway, which is designing the plan to clean up what he called “higher-activity waste.”

“That design is scheduled to be completed in 2027,” Laspada said. “That open footprint allows us to eventually build the facilities needed to do the active remediation that we will be doing for phases 2 and 3 [the cleanup of the Interim Waste Containment Structure].”

Laspada tells me full completion of the project, in all of its phases, is still about 10 to 12 years away.