DEVEAUX: Road nearly ready for makeover

Communities

March 20, 2008

Small traces of radiation must first be removed

By Dan Miner/minerd@gnnewspaper.com The Niagara Gazette Thu Mar 20, 2008, 11:45 PM EDT

Lewiston Road in Niagara Falls is set to be cleaned up and completely redone in an $11 million project beginning as early as August.

City Engineer Robert Buzzelli and several city consultants outlined the project to residents of the road and the general public Thursday, focusing specifically on the cleanup of elevated levels of radioactivity found in tests done in 2007.

“I’ve lived on Lewiston Road since 1963 and it hasn’t been reconstructed since then,” said Dr. Lawrence Wolfgang, who attended the first of two consecutive sessions. “It’s overdue.”

In all, the tests identified 34 elevated levels of radioactivity beneath the road and on top of it, including radium and uranium. But none of the hot spots are health risks to humans traveling on the road or living near it, and all of them will be cleaned up during the reconstruction, said Dennis Chambers, a certified health physicist for SAIC, a St. Louis-based consultant hired by the city.

“You’ve got to have prudence,” Chambers told the five people attending the second session. “It’s nothing that’s going to present hazards during the time that it’s (under construction).”

The project has been years in the making and needs only final approval by the state Department of Transportation to go forward, said Michael Leydecker, another consultant working on the project. But officials also cautioned that the process could face unforeseen setbacks again, given the involvement of so many agencies.

Once it begins, the will take two years and involve closing one lane at a time on the road. It will be funded 80 percent by the federal government, 15 percent by the state government and five percent by the city. It’s the exact same process being undertaken currently on Buffalo Avenue.

The radiological investigation was done because of several spots identified in an early 1980s federal study. In all, about 70 such spots are identified around the city, mostly from slag used in roadwork, and such cleanups are done whenever a new project begins, Buzzelli said.

“(The state environmental agencies) are happy with it,” he said. “And it’s the same procedure we’ll do anywhere, whenever we do anything.”

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