BIG ATOM WASTE SITE REPORTED FOUND NEAR BUFFALOBy RALPH BLUMENTHALPublished: February 1, 1981 The Army and a defense contractor dumped more than 37 million gallons of radioactive caustic wastes from the World War II atomic bomb project in shallow wells at Tonawanda, N.Y., near Buffalo, between 1944 and 1946, a New York State toxic waste task force reported yesterday. The disposal method was specifically chosen, the panel said, to hide the source of the contamination. The report, by the New York State Assembly Task Force on Toxic Substances, also offered new data to dispute an earlier Army denial of involvement in dumping at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, N.Y. There have been no reports of health problems around Tonawanda directly linked to the waste, and the task force said it did not know if there had been any consequences among the surrounding population. But it called on the Government to acknowledge the matter for the first time and to accept responsibility for further testing and any cleanup. A Defense Department duty officer in Washington read a statement saying that the report was under review and that the Army stood by an earlier finding that it had no direct involvement in dumping at Love Canal, in Niagara Falls, N.Y. A spokesman for the former contractor, Linde Air Products Company, which is now the Linde Division of Union Carbide Corporation, said that to this date we are unaware of any damage to people or the environment from work on the atomic bomb project, but that the company would continue to cooperate with the task forces investigation. The disclosure came in a two-volume report capping a 15-month investigation into the alleged complicity of Federal agencies in the pollution of the Niagara Frontier region, including Love Canal. Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink, who released the report in an unusual Saturday news conference at state offices in Manhattan, said it was based on interviews and hundreds of thousands of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, including 67,000 pages of material from the Federal Energy Department alone. Citing what it called other environmental crimes the panel also reported the following: - The Army never sufficiently decontaminated the former Lake Ontario Ordnance Works eight miles north of Niagara Falls in Lewiston and Porter, leaving behind TNT wastes and radioactive residues after most of the property was sold off, in one case for the states largest chemical dump site, which the panel now finds endangered. The site, where 20,000 tons of residue from the atomic bomb projects centers around the country were deposited on the ground and in makeshift buildings, was singularly ill-suited for radioactive storage from the start, the report said. - At about the same time, the Government also sold nine other former ordnance plants around the country that the panel suggested may also remain contaminated by explosives and acids. The sites are in Point Pleasant, W. Va.; Sandusky, Ohio; Paducah, Ky.; Pryor, Okla.; Weldon Springs, Mo.; Baldwinsville, N.Y.; Rosemont, Minn.; Baraboo, Wis., and Meadville, Pa. - Civilian workers at various facilities working on the Manhattan Project, as the atomic bomb program was called, were exposed to excessive levels of radiation, at one point to raise production for the war effort. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, who attended the news conference along with an aide representing his Republican colleague, Senator Alfonse M. DAmato, pledged efforts to get the Government to look into the allegations. If there was no satisfactory response, he suggested to the State Attorney General, Robert Abrams, who was also present: Sue us and we might respond. Secret Plants for A-Bomb Project But Senator Moynihan, noting that the Tonawanda waste disposal had begun three months before the Normandy invasion, added: Im glad there were people up there in Lewiston making TNT and nuclear energy. According to the reports account, Linde operated two secret plants for the Manhattan Project in Tonawanda, one a former ceramics plant converted to uranium ore processing, the other called the Chandler Street plant, whose operations have never been disclosed and remain classified. In a letter dated March 29, 1944, and included with the reports appendix of documentation, a Linde superintendent, A. R. Holmes, wrote to the area Army Engineer, Capt. Emery L. Van Horn, about disposing of liquid caustic wastes contaminated by radiation. The options, he wrote, were to discharge the material into a storm sewer, which empties into Two Mile Creek and eventually into the Niagara River, or to discharge this material into a well on our Tonawanda factory property, which he said was already unfit for drinking. Plan 2 Is Favored The Linde official then added: Plan 1 is objectionable because of probably future complications in the event of claims of contamination against us. Plan 2 is favored because our law department advises that it is considered impossible to determine the course of subterranean streams and, therefore, the responsibility for contamination could not be fixed. The report also cited new eyewitness accounts and other documentation to back up previous contentions that Army personnel had dumped drums of toxic chemicals from various defense contractors, including what was then the Hooker Electrochemical Company, into a ditch called Love Canal beginning about 1942. In a 1978 report, the Army disputed the allegations but the task force called the Army report materially deficient and inaccurate in overlooking or misreading available documentation. With regard to the 7,500-acre former Lake Ontario Ordnance Works, the task force said that TNT from the facilitys short-lived production might still be in underground pipes and conduits at the site, part of which is now the states largest toxic waste dump, operated by SCA Chemical Waste Services. The report quoted a chemistry professor who reviewed the documents and concluded there was still a slight but not insignificant danger posed by the waste pipelines under a chemical dump. It also found indications of radioactive contamination from Manhattan Project wastes in the area where SCAs offices and laboratories are situated. The company has said it has seen no evidence of TNT or other contamination.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 14:36:46 +0000