DEC Commissioner Amanda Lefton and regional EPA Administrator Mike Martucci fielded questions from local reporters during telephone interviews on Monday. In their interview with the Niagara Gazette, they both said their agencies are open to relocating families as needed and cost is not a prime consideration. Instead, they said, decisions about relocation are being driven by data from testing and that is why they are interested in continuing to investigate potential contaminants on the McKiernans’ property.
“What we are really committed to doing is doing an investigation and sampling to understand what is there,” Lefton said.
“We’re not at all hesitant to relocate people, but we’re only doing it when data shows there’s a reason,” Martucci added.
Lefton and Martucci addressed another contamination controversy, with both officials saying the same standard has been applied to homeowners living in the Town of Niagara where high levels of radioactivity have been detected on some properties.
To date, Lefton said the DEC and EPA have, as part of their ongoing investigation into radioactive hot spots in Niagara and Erie counties, “made tremendous progress” in the work they have been doing.
Lefton said the number of property access forms obtained as part of the ongoing radiological survey has jumped from just 39 months ago to more than 1,000. The agencies have conducted screening at 726 properties, with 476 determined to involve no further action. She said 220 properties remain under review and a smaller subset of 30 properties have been referred to the EPA for further investigation.
The DEC commissioner said both agencies want residents to understand that the effort does not mean everyone is unsafe or being exposed to something and is instead a bid by the state and federal government to be more proactive in trying to identify and address potentially harmful radioactive waste.
“We want to do right by these communities,” she said.
Martucci said screening data drives all decision-making where relocation is concerned and all of the sites being examined are handled on a case-by-case basis.
“No two locations are the same,” he said. “This is not uniform contamination.”
Both Lefton and Martucci acknowledged that while four homeowners living on Chester and Fox avenues in the town have been authorized for relocation amid high radiological readings, none have actually been moved out of their homes to date.
Martucci said the agencies are still working with the homeowners to find suitable confines. He said the placement process involves considerations for families being impacted. He also said the EPA and DEC anticipate the cleanup work in question will not be large-scale, involving years of work but rather isolated to individual properties, which would involve a remediation process that could take weeks or, at worst, months.
“Our goal obviously is to find everybody a suitable location,” he said.