More soil sampling likely at site of Niagara Falls public housing project
NIAGARA FALLS — The Niagara County Health Department expects to receive state approval Monday for plans for more soil sampling around the site of a major public housing project here.
Environmental Health Director James J. Devald said a two-hour conference call Friday did not settle the issues surrounding the Health Department’s plans for testing at the site of the first phase of the Niagara Falls Housing Authority’s HOPE VI project at Center Court.
Devald said the issues were “scientific,” but declined to give details.
“By noon [Monday], we’ll have something about it,” Devald said.
The request for further testing of the site led Mayor Paul A. Dyster to ask the City Council on Wednesday not to commit $2 million in Seneca Niagara Casino revenue to the project for the time being.
That money was to be used to clean up ash, believed to be from a municipal incinerator that operated in the 1930s, which is on the site of the $72 million, 282-unit project.
“They’ll have to remove it,” Devald said. “The proposal is, the whole site will be covered with two feet of fresh soil.”
Devald said Friday’s conference call involved his department, the city, and the state Health Department and attorney general’s office.
He said the project cannot proceed until the new soil samples the county wants are analyzed.
Stephanie W. Cowart, Housing Authority executive director, said Friday that was news to her.
The authority suspended the project in early August after a test conducted by a company hired by Norstar Development USA, the company that will build and operate the housing complex, turned up contamination.
“My concern is that delays are very costly,” Cowart said. “We wanted to ensure there were no safety issues and reassure our constituents and the public that we can supply safe housing, as we’ve been doing for 65 years.”
Devald said the tests paid for by Norstar, carried out by Panamerican Environmental, showed one hot spot.
“They didn’t find anything except one hit that they characterized as an anomaly,” Devald said. “They did three additional samples.”
Devald said those all were clean, but he’d like to double-check that by doing his own samples at other sites, checking leachate from the old ash. The county would use a different laboratory from that used by Panamerican to test the samples.
Devald said the Housing Authority is allowed to continue working on houses they started to build before the discovery of the apparent contamination.
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