Niagara neighborhood not alone in radioactivity exposure

Niagara, N.Y. (WBEN) - One Town of Niagara neighborhood dealing with potential radioactive exposure is far from alone says one area attorney and author.

"One of the biggest concerns I have is that we have multiple sources of potential radiation exposure throughout Niagara Falls, and we don't know exactly where this radiation has come from that's being found in homes that are in the town of Niagara, and we've got to find out what are we dealing with," says Christen Civiletto, author of Thundering Waters. She and Dr. Caitlin McShane have created an interactive map to show how many neighborhoods face potential exposure.

Civiletto grew up on Devlin Avenue in Niagara Falls, which she says was underneath the Goodyear plume. "There were multiple high carcinogens that were being spewed out over the neighborhood. But when I was growing up at that time, nobody really was zeroing in on what was happening. We had actually in 1968 a group of women who stood up and said, "There's a lot of air pollution. We're very concerned. This has to stop. They were shut down pretty quickly," notes Civiletto. She then moved to a place on Cayuga Drive, near the Love Canal area. "As we watched that whole disaster unfold, and I remember it well because I had students that were my friends who were in and out of class. That's where we played, so we saw that unfold in real time. And to the extent that we have the same situation going on now with the radioactivity, I am very concerned because we're seeing the same lack of appropriate response by the state and federal authorities, but we are also seeing people rise up, just like it that happened at Love Canal."

Civiletto says it's unclear how widespread the exposure is. "There has been a flyover study that has been done over portions of Niagara County in 1979. There was one done in 1985, reported in 1986, and that was early equipment, and that was only portions of the county. But recently, in 2023, another flyover study was done because the authorities were very worried about new spots that they were uncovering that had radioactivity. They were homes that were on certain parts of Niagara County, on in Wilson, Upper Mountain Road, and because of that, they decided to do a more thorough study. Took a couple years. They did that in 2023, and unfortunately, they got thousands of hits, so these areas of concern were widespread. It took them two years to start zeroing in further on the houses in the town of Niagara, and in March of this year, letters were sent to residents saying, "We need to command your property. We have found these high numbers, and you know the map that we put together.,"" says Civiletto.

Civiletto worked with Dr. Caitlin McShane on putting the map together. "Digging around in all of the documentation that I have scraped in order to build the interactive platform, you can see a lot of effort has been put into trying to clean up and contain, but the number of sites and the number of wells that over time have or recently have been found to have high levels or higher than the recommended levels, shall I say, of of radiation, it is a little stunning," notes McShane.

Civiletto says the residents in Niagara are doing the right thing by putting safety first. "They are pressuring the governor right now to get this neighborhood or at least these homes listed as a state Superfund site. They need to get to safety. These residents, as of today, are still trying to figure out how to get relocated. EPA and DEC have told them they are being relocated, but they don't have the ability yet. They haven't gotten organized yet to be able to actually physically move them to homes. So some of these families right now, their first priority is safety, getting to a place to stay. But next after that is 100% getting the governor to put this on the state Superfund site list because that will release funds for all the neighbors to get some of the relocation and testing that they might need," says Civiletto.

She says those who blew off the matter in the past are now demanding answers and transparency. "I think that is a really good thing for Niagara County," says Diviletto.