AMHERST TIMES
When the Second World War ended in 1945 there was a huge amount of atomic waste to be disposed of throughout America. There was a map with the location of where the Atomic Commission placed the atomic waste. New York, as well as New Jersey, received a great amount of atomic waste that was contained in barrels. Most of the atomic waste was dumped in the oceans and lakes, including the Finger Lakes and well as Lake Erie.
The area from U.B. on Niagara Falls Blvd., all the way to Tonawanda Creek as well as Ellicott Creek were depositories for barrels of atomic waste. These barrels laid dormant from 1946 t0 1970 until they started to leak into the land from Niagara Falls Blvd. from U.B. on Main street down Niagara Falls Blvd. contaminating all the land north of U.B. to the two creeks.
Anyone who plans to build in this area should first check with the Atomic Energy Commission to see where atomic waste was spread in the area I describe and how much still has to be removed. The EPA has done a good job cleaning up the radioactive material but there is still much more to be removed.
Barrels of atomic materials were dumped in the Finger Lakes area as well as Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and many creeks like Tonawanda and Ellicott Creek.
In 1946 when WW2 ended, the world had tons and tons of Atomic waste. The public must understand that as the bombs were being made there was already a great deal of radioactive material that had to be disposed of. The government hired a company to handle this.
The company failed to notify the Atomic Energy Commission that they could no longer find places to safely dispose of the material. A decision was made to dump it into the local waterways of America.
One example was just 6 years ago in 2011. By the mid-1940s, Mallinckrodt Chemical Works had run out of space to store the radioactive waste left behind, so in 1946 they began to ship the leftovers to a relatively underpopulated area north of St Louis, next to a creek by the name of Coldwater. It was here that approximately 250,000 barrels of radioactive material were dumped in shallow pits and exposed to the elements. Eventually, the barrels leaked into the water.
The people of St. Louis and the people of our area have similar levels of illness that could be caused by radiation in the area they live in.
Originally published on Amherst Times. Republished with permission.
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