Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company is preparing to shut down its 56th Street facility in Niagara Falls, ending operations at a plant that has been the subject of years of environmental concerns.
In a statement emailed to the Gazette, the company said, “Following the sale of the majority of its chemical business in 2025, the company has made the decision to fully exit this business to focus on its core products and services. As a result, the company will cease operations at its remaining chemical facilities in Pasadena, Texas, and Niagara Falls, New York.”
Employees were notified of plans to close the facility when they arrived for work Thursday morning. As of early Thursday evening, it did not appear that Goodyear had filed a New York State Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN Notice).
WARN notices are required to be filed with the New York State Department of Labor whenever a company plans a “mass layoff, plant closing, or major (workforce) relocation.”
“We recognize this decision is difficult for those impacted associates,” the company said, confirming its decision to cease operations in the Falls. “The company is committed to treating all impacted associates with fairness, respect and transparency while providing comprehensive support during their transition.”
The facility, at the intersection of 56th Street and Niagara Falls Boulevard, is expected to operate through Oct. 31, with “decommissioning activities to follow.”
Mayor Robert Restaino said he was informed of Goodyear’s plans to close the plant in an email sent to him Thursday morning.
“I was surprised,” the mayor said, “I was aware of a transition, but had hoped for a possible reprogramming of the plant.”
Restaino said he believes the plant currently employs about 60 people, including members of the United Steelworkers union. Goodyear officials confirmed that 60 employees will lose their jobs.
“It seems they had been transitioning from this, exiting these types of (chemical) businesses since last year,” Restaino said.
The mayor also said it will not be easy to replace the lost manufacturing jobs.
“You’re probably not going to replace these jobs,” he said. “That’s why we are looking to attract light manufacturing to the land we have north of Porter Road and expand on our building trades training.”
But the mayor also said that “the environmental concerns (about the plant’s operations) are real.”
The 56th Street facility has been the subject of community concerns over the release of a known cancer-causing bladder carcinogen into the air of the neighborhood surrounding the plant.
A former lead air pollution permit engineer who monitored Goodyear’s airborne emissions between 2018 and 2023, Dylan Keenan, has charged in court documents that the plant was “willfully harming the local community.”
During that period, the DEC notified Goodyear that the Falls plant was operating in violation of its state clean air permit, with emissions of ortho-toluidine that were too high.
Both Goodyear and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation had reportedly been working on a plan to address the toxic gas release.
Residents of the neighborhood had also reached out to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to address the environmental concerns.
In December 2024, a Goodyear spokesperson said the Falls plant produced “low levels of ortho-toluidine emissions” and insisted that the company was in “full compliance” with its current permit to operate the facility.
“The DEC has updated its ambient air guidelines for ortho-toluidine going forward, and Goodyear is working closely with the agency to identify and implement any changes needed based on those new guidelines,” the spokesperson said at that time. “Goodyear is committed to maintaining compliance with state regulatory and permitting requirements.”
The state DEC has said the Goodyear plant was required to implement “state-of-the-art” pollution control technology to meet current air toxin standards and Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) disadvantaged community mandates.
Goodyear was reportedly cited, in July 2023, for using what were described as “two substandard pollution-control devices” that allowed ortho-toluidine and another chemical, diphenylamine, to be emitted in the air outside the plant.
Environmental advocates later released an aerial plume map from the DEC that showed what they described as a “cloud of toxic chemical emissions” over a roughly half-mile area surrounding the facility.
DEC modeling reportedly showed the plant was releasing Ortho-Toluidine, a chemical that studies have shown contributes to bladder cancer, at a rate of up to seven times higher than allowed under state guidelines.
The Falls Branch of the NAACP, among a number of organizations that have raised concerns over the Goodyear plant’s operations, issued a statement Thursday night warning that it will still hold the company accountable.
“In light of the potential closure of The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company’s Niagara Falls chemical plant, the NAACP Niagara Falls Branch issues a clear, unyielding message to corporate executives and state regulators: Goodyear will not be allowed to lock its gates, desert its workforce, and walk away from its toxic legacy,” Renae Kimble, president of the branch, wrote. “It must not be treated as a clean exit. It is a corporate retreat from accountability, and should be fought on every front.”