THE REAL CONTAMINATION IS IN THE REPORTING AND IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE SCIENCE, STOP PRETENDING…
You are scaring people, damaging the value of very expensive homes…for what…to fuel a few ignorant, “wanna-be” egos? That may come to be a VERY expensive mistake!!
I retired from the FBI as Supervisor of the Bank Robbery Squad, with a bachelor’s degree in Material Science (Metallurgist) and a minor in Organic Chemistry. In the late 1970’s after the President signed into law the “Big 8 Laws” and created the EPA, I was assigned the task of creating the EPA Task Force to enforce and prosecute the new Environmental Laws. The FBI Director loaned all of us who had a science background…there were about 20 of us. Because Niagara Falls is my home …and the Love Canal was boiling over …I volunteered.
I was handed the Western District of NY…WDNY…all 17 counties and put together the Task Force while we all alternated, a week at a time, training on the new laws at different EPA sites. The Task Force was comprised of investigators/prosecutors from the DEC, EPA, and several PDs. Judge Sheila DiTullio, representing the DA’s office and AUSA Marty Littlefield were our legal reps. We all had to attend school.
We decided on labs for testing and I wrote the search warrants. Marty and Sheila managed to successfully prosecute the first federal case in NY …thanks to Marty and Sheila!
We shut down a factory in Niagara Falls (Frontier Chemical) …which we/I did NOT want to do as they were an incineration setup, but they allowed the wrong people in and they ruined the operation …by taking dirty people with dirty money! Incineration is the preferred disposal means and there still is not enough!
I served search warrants on a DOD Site in West Valley with a cast of many and gave them a clean bill of health …thank God!
We executed search warrants on Hooker/Olin, and a few others, for documents. It was a mess, and I brought in FBI personnel from as far as California! Allow me to digress for a minute…
The Love Canal is a completely different story that impacts the entire City of Niagara Falls …and just a few lowlights-not highlights! In 1985 I filed a Motion to Intervene to FERC to force the PASNY to “Remove” all +/- 62,000 TONS of Dioxin, PCBS and some 16 other chemicals from the Love Canal. Why the Power Authority? Because every time they jammed up the river during an ice run, they caused the river to completely “flood”102nd Street! That’s how they completely eroded the cap at 102nd and I convinced FERC to get PASNY/NY State to do SOMETHING …to at least mitigate the situation and they did…12 inches of clay, again, over the entire cap! They should have used a waterproof wall at the very least…but they didn’t!!! Instead, they used a RIP-RAP (rocks) …unbelievable!
Chief Engineer over everything …to stop the damage they caused and to open the door on their operation. Because they ignored the ICE Manual, they ripped out the entire river of boat docks, flooding homes and most marinas! After 15 years, we settled outside of the court and FERC directed them to follow the Ice Control Manual …or else!
Regarding Cayuga Island:
First…I spoke to DEC today, 6/25/26, and this is for the 22 homeowners …they advised me that there will be no more tests unless requested by homeowners. They did the six who requested and they have no intention of placing the Island on any lists by DEC.
The best bet is to avoid talking to the press…not to hide anything…but to stop the know-nothing press from quoting residents incorrectly! Neither the Buffalo News nor the Niagara Falls Gazette nor any of the reporters are, in my opinion, honest, knowledgeable, qualified to even talk about anything scientifically or physically tied to what is at issue! All they will do is to pick what you said apart and use what they want. I’m used to that and told the “communication expert” to report what I say completely, and she reported that I refused to allow DEC to sample my property …not true …no explanation! That was not the truth, and I told her my house was done three times. DEC to sampled 3 times over some 12 years and retained a dual sample. Those three previous tests showed clean … “Not enough to move the needle”! The things they are writing are flat out, lies and are exactly WRONG! What they are doing is digging a hole alright…that they cannot climb out of because…I’ll let the rest of that sentence hang!
Their expertise is in the field of “communication” and for that …they all failed… they all get an “F”! And I’m not kidding. I’ll bet none of them even know what the Periodic Chart is. I asked one of them to define, “climate” …she didn’t know what to say!!!
Just relax and wait until they finish the water line as we don’t want to hold it up any more than what the fired previous Chairman did…
The testing is done, unless you want to prolong it!? I want you to know the elements that they discovered are natural, appear in almost every chemical test …because THAT’S WHAT PLANET EARTH IS MADE OF … and I would be surprised if there were NOT elements from the periodic chart …we would be in trouble. Mercury, potassium, lead (found at the corner of 86 and West Rivershore) FROM LEAD PIPES THAT ARE STILL IN USE … didn’t hear that either, did you!? Those sewer pipes that are still in service… are over 100 years old! Radon is natural and from the decay of Uranium… all the” ium’s” …Cadmium, Radium, Uranium and on and on.
I ran a program to see how Radon is doing… every Town-City -Township…was three times the norm in NY…WOW! In the 56 pages front and back, there was SIGNIFICANT … “dangerous levels” … across NEW York… NOT what it should be in almost every page! The HIGHEST, DEC wants is 4.0 …front page of run Albany/Berne12.47; page 2 out of 21 listed 17 are OVER 4.0; page 3 17 out of 21 OVER; page 4 17 OVER 21; page 5 19 OUT OF 21!? And on and on. There is NOT one page that’s “CLEAN” … there are dozens of pages that overwhelm the 17 out of 21 that are over 4.0 by a factor of 3!
have …in your kitchen waste! None of what they found buried would harm you or yours as bad as that cleaner.
“We smelled something” …undefined” …that smell came from drilling a 2-inch hole by 4 foot deep from a hole, filled with …get ready…sewer water!!! How do I know, you ask? Because I’ve been on the Island 50 years and know what to look for. As a site contractor with heavy equipment, I provided all dozer site work in general. I drilled post holes from 6” to 3 ft for school football goal post as owner/operator of a heavy equipment company for 15 years doing site work ..septic systems, laterals for builders …when the dozens of City workers open sewer water for repairs, I checked it out because I knew then and now more about what they were doing than they did! And that’s a fact! I tried to keep tabs on how the City workers did things… you don’t want to know! Taking samples of contaminated water is not really very accurate.
There is no way that a “clean sample” can be removed from any place that is under the blacktopped road because the sewer is clay, all the way down the street. Correction …used to be clay…now it is mud, drilled out to create a sewer going down the road.
These reporters that are writing columns like this have NO idea what they are talking about …none …and that is going to come back and bite you right in the ass! DEC is NOT going to bail you out!
“The DEC environmental remediation, database notes that prior to 1930, the western end of the island was extended by about 250 yards into the Niagara River by the placement of fill and industrial materials.”
LOOK AT WHAT THIS IGNORANT REPORTER AND PAPER GOT WRONG; “The DEC’s environmental remediation database notes that prior to 1930”. There was no DEC in 1930, and therefore there was no database that the DEC could refer to.
“The western end of the island was extended by about 250 yards”. NO, it was extended 250 “acres” with the spoils (FILL) of the Erie Canal.
“Fill extended by about 250 yards into the Niagara River by the placement of fill and industrial materials.” I defy anybody to prove that any “industrial materials” were dumped on any part of the Island as a waste depot on the “western end of the Island”, it just didn’t happen…
Let me go on…This same Nobel Prize winner states…. “The DEC notes that the area is contaminated with mercury, lead, BHCs and other organic chemicals…” All of those chemicals are in the earth naturally and “man” may have put some down to fertilize his peaches.
As far as the samples go… the batch DEC did in the Fall…I watched … those samples came from “the right of way”. What was NOT said, is that the “right of way” is blacktopped from 12 inches to 20 inches mostly closer to 20 inches the last +/- 1000 feet (I watched and measured the blacktop and 4 foot deep). The samples I saw drilled were odorless 2” by 3-4ft deep. There was only one, off the blacktop!
I witnessed the one-mile removal of sandy loam … and confirmed it was as Will Scherk, a long-time resident, who was also an engineer, told me was there before the dig started and he watched as they dumped, many times!
I would not worry about West Rivershore Dr. Who should worry is those who are damaging the values of our homes by writing that which they know nothing about… DEC will not get involved by any liable or slander because a “municipality” cannot pay punitive damages.
