Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Traces of nuclear waste left over from the Manhattan Project will soon be properly removed and disposed of from the federally-owned Niagara Falls Storage Site (NFSS).
The U.S Army Corps of Engineers - Buffalo District announced last week a $40 million contract awarded to Enviro-Fix Solutions LLC. for cleanup and disposal of low-level radioactive material.
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The first phase of work includes funds just shy of $12 million of the contract for remediating contaminated media in accordance with the Record of Decision for the Balance of Plan (BOP) and Groundwater Operable Units (OU). This work is being carried out under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP).
"This company is going to develop a work plan over the next couple of months to really understand safely how to move these contaminants out of the soil and the groundwater and make sure that they're able to move them safely out of the area into a containment center that is designed to hold these kinds of materials," explains Amy Gaskill, a spokeswoman for Buffalo's U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Enviro-Fix Solutions will complete their work plan by this fall, and a public information session is planned for February. The work is scheduled to begin next spring and be completed by fall 2024. Caskill expects a decent-sized turnout for the information session, as awareness of radioactive material has increased due in part to the success of the Christopher Nolan film, Oppenheimer.
"I have gotten more phone calls about our different sites, or what we call our FUSRAP, and it's really [an] exciting time right now, as we've received a lot of funding in our FUSRAP program, to be able to clean up these sites all along the Great Lakes. We're excited to get the ball rolling at Niagara Falls storage site, this was really one of the big first steps, cleaning up the soil and groundwater off of that site and then moving into the final remediation on other parts of the site," said Gaskill.
Following completion of excavation and off-site disposal, the site would be remediated to levels suitable for industrial use.
In the future, the USACE intends to utilize available contract capacity to support ongoing NFSS Interim Waste Containment Structure Disposal (IWCS) Remedial Design Activities. Activities may include environmental and geotechnical data collection and site infrastructure construction.
All documents (fact sheets, reports, video, etc.) related to the Niagara Falls Storage Site project can be found at: https://www.lrb.usace.army.mil/Missions/HTRW/FUSRAP/Niagara-Falls-Storage-Site/.
Administrative Record:
All documents used during the decision-making process for FUSRAP activities at the NFSS site are available at: