The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Buffalo District has awarded a $40 million contract to Enviro-Fix Solutions LLC for cleanup efforts at the Niagara Falls Storage Site, located in Lewiston, N.Y. (Andrew Kornacki/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
(Tribune News Service) — A California-based company has been hired to perform remediation work at the Niagara Falls Storage Site in Lewiston, N.Y.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Buffalo District has awarded a $40 million contract to Enviro-Fix Solutions LLC for cleanup efforts.
The first phase of the project comes with an upfront cost of $11.9 million which involves remediating all contaminated soil and groundwater at the site, outside of a 10-acre Interim Waste Containment Structure holding the most radioactive materials. The remaining $28.1 million will be for remaining cleanup work.
Army Corps spokesperson Amy Gaskill said that Enviro-Fix will be working with them to make sure the cleanup is done safely.
The site on Pletcher Road in Lewiston was first used in 1944 to store radioactive residue and waste from uranium ore processing from the Manhattan Project until 1952. In 1982, the U.S. Department of Energy began cleanup and consolidating the waste in an earthen containment cell on the property, which was completed in 1986.
In 2015, the Army Corps released a feasibility study and proposed plan for removing the containment structure, making the final decision to remove it and ship contaminated materials out of state in 2019.
In 2021, the Army Corps awarded a $35 million contract to Jacobs Engineering to design a plan for moving the containment structure offsite. Gaskill said the Army Corps has not yet decided where the contaminated materials will go, with several facilities in the U.S. available.
The work plan is estimated to be complete by this fall. The Army Corps plans to host a public information session in February to describe the remediation activities before cleanup starts the following spring.
Cleanup is anticipated to be complete by the fall of 2024. Following that, the site would be suitable for industrial use, with five-year reviews to ensure protectiveness of the remedy.
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