The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will soon be looking to expand its cleanup efforts along the Eighteenmile Creek Corridor Superfund site.
Remediation of the site, which extends from lowertown in Lockport to Olcott where the creek flows into Lake Ontario, is a four-phase, long-term project that began in 2015. The EPA is currently soliciting community input for phase three, which includes remediation of an approximately five-mile stretch of the creek from Harwood Street north into Newfane
Mike Basile, community involvement coordinator, acknowledged that the EPA also plans to do additional soil, water and fish tissue testing on the remaining 10-mile stretch that is north of where the current remedial site ends in the current project.
“When we started working on it, we had hoped that this operable unit would take us the entire route of Eighteenmile Creek, up to Lake Ontario. Once we started doing the testing that we did during the remedial investigation and feasibility study, to get to this proposed plan, we decided to only go five miles of the 15-mile juncture,” Basile said.
The timeline of that project will be solidified as the current phase moves into the planning stages. Basile estimates those next steps could take anywhere between 12 to 15 months to complete.
“We could start looking at the other areas that we want to go beyond this operable unit, the other 10 miles, we can start doing more sampling and testing as we develop the work plan for this one right here. It could happen simultaneously,” Basile said.
At a public hearing held Thursday on the third phase of the project, personnel from the EPA, state Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of Health discussed a series of options regarding the removal of contaminated sediment and floodplain soil from the five-mile stretch that runs from Lowertown to Newfane.
In total, five different options to remove contaminated sediment and three different options to remove floodplain soil were proposed to residents at the meeting, all with varying amounts of how much sediment and floodplain soil would be removed from the area.
The EPA’s preferred alternative for the removal of sediment is to excavate approximately 54,000 cubic yards of sediment, 39,000 cubic yards of floodplain soil of the area with estimated tabs of $60.7 million and $131.3 million respectively.
The EPA could change or modify its proposed alternatives based on the public input they receive.
However, 10 of the approximately two dozen residents in attendance at Thursday’s meeting were overall receptive to the agency’s recommendations.
Meanwhile, work will soon commence on the portion of the project which will see removal of contaminated soil at 33 residential lots in Lockport.
“The staging area has been set up and the goal is in two weeks that the shovel should be in the ground,” Christopher O’Leary, remedial project manager said.
The required 30-day public comment period on the proposed cleanup plan opened July 19 and closes on Aug. 19. The plan can be viewed online at https://tinyurl.com/2p8f22k5.
Written comments on the plan can be submitted to O’Leary at OLeary.Christopher@epa.gov or U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 290 Broadway, 19th Floor, New York, NY 10007.