NIAGARA FALLS — Radioactive material similar to what contractors encountered beneath Lewiston Road has apparently been detected at the Tract II site in the city’s North End.

Officials involved in a redevelopment plan for the brownfields site off Beech and Highland avenues said Thursday a preliminary survey of the area has revealed pockets of a substance believed to be radioactive slag — a stone by-product of metal or ore processing that contains varying concentrations of naturally occurring radium, thorium and uranium.

Representatives from the state departments of health and environmental conservation who were on hand for a community meeting at the Doris Jones Family Resources Center, said the material, left undisturbed, poses no risk to residents living in the area.

Because the proposed redevelopment plan for Tract II involves an extensive cleanup of lead-contaminated soil on the eastern end of the property, state officials and representatives from two private firms working on the project say they now intend to develop a detailed plan for removing the radioactive material as well.

“It is sound practice to deal with it now,” said Greg Sutton, a representative from the state Department of Environmental Conservation office in Buffalo.

Sutton said the decision is based on the findings of an initial walk-over survey which detected low-level radiation in some areas within Tract II. The DEC believes the material is likely slag, a material commonly used decades ago as fill for construction projects in Niagara Falls, Lewiston and other parts of Western New York. More extensive testing is needed confirm what the DEC and other project partners strongly suspect.

“It’s very preliminary in our assessment because we just found this a couple weeks ago,” Sutton said.

The discovery comes as the city and the DEC is attempting to put the finishing touches on a large-scale redevelopment plan that would allow the site to be cleaned and re-used under agreements with Honeywell International, Inc. and the firm, Brightfields, LLC. The DEC held Thursday’s hearing to allow residents to comment on a newly revised cleanup plan for the former home of Moore Business Forms.

The DEC has proposed spending $6 million to address lead-contaminated waste and fill materials found on the eastern portion of the property. The tab for the cleanup would be covered by Honeywell, which is not directly responsible for the contamination but has been identified as a “potentially responsible party” because it acquired firms with ties to the property years ago.

Sutton said the DEC granted Honeywell’s request to perform a radiation survey of the property before the cleanup plan was approved. The initial survey found several areas, mostly near the roadway along the Beech Avenue portion of the property, where radioactive materials were present. Sutton described the radiation from the material as “low-level” and said it appears from the DEC’s initial investigation that it is consistent with slag.  

John Morris, remediation manager for Honeywell, said he the area does not contain higher-level radioactive waste consistent with the type of material stored by the federal government at the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works site in Lewiston.

“It’s not Manhattan Project waste,” Morris said.

Tract II starts at the intersection of Beech and Highland Avenues and runs along Beech to 17th Street. The eastern end of the property curves up 17th Street behind what is known as the Tract I parcel, an area next to the Tulip Corp. building on Highland Avenue that includes the old Power City Warehouse building. The city acquired both properties through tax foreclosure years ago. Earlier this month, Brightfields entered into an agreement to purchase them both for $1. As part of the transfer agreement, Brightfields would retain 18 acres for use as commercial property, with the remaining five acres to eventually be turned back to the city as a new community park.

Sutton said he would not expect the radiation cleanup work to be a “deal-breaker” for the overall project, saying he does not believe the type of cleanup that will be required will be too expensive for the project partners to handle.

Brightfields’ associate Jon Williams said his company remains committed to the project and believes the project partners will be able to work together to resolve the latest issue. He noted that it is something the city has dealt with before, including most recently with the reconstruction of Lewiston Road.

“I think the good news is the DEC and the city have done this previously,” Williams said.

As a result of the new findings, the DEC’s proposed cleanup plan will need to be revised to include a detailed account of how the radioactive materials will be addressed. Jon Williams, an associate with Brightfields, said the first step will be to conduct a more detailed analysis of the materials in question. From there, he said, the project partners will prepare a formal remediation plan. Both Morris and Williams told residents their companies are committed to making sure the radioactive materials are handled appropriately at every level of the cleanup process.

“Together, we can take a site like this and put it back into productive use,” Morris said.