Toxic waste, past and present, haunts Niagara Falls couple 14%
By Geoff Kelly28%
7/31/2026, 3:00:32 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 29 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Recency Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 25.4% saturation with 505 hits. Analysis detected 2,663 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,985 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 29.1% and a BS Rank of 14% (19,700 of 22,831 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 86.30% of the article peer group.
A “white chemical material” Daniel and Jocelyn McKiernan observed outside their Niagara Falls home after a recent rainfall.
Photo: Daniel and Jocelyn McKiernan.
Niagara Falls homeowners Daniel and Jocelyn McKeirnan were already worried sick on Tuesday when they formally asked Gov.
Kathy Hochul and other top officials to relocate their family so environmental regulators could perform more comprehensive testing on their property and in their house near the Love Canal containment site.
On Wednesday morning, the 99th Street couple’s sickening feelings grew after they received a copy of an old report describing how, more than three decades ago, a private contractor working for the state removed contaminated soil from four properties in the neighborhood.
The project included a partial cleanup on a piece of land the McKiernans now own.
It is next to the house they have called home for the past six years.
Another section of the report, which was issued by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation on Oct. 18, 1993, offered details on a related project the McKiernans also found interesting.
The section described cap repair work and liner replacement that occurred in a 30-by-60-f00t area on the south end of the Love Canal site itself.
For the McKiernans, reading the report underscored concerns they’ve been having for weeks about whether potentially hazardous materials are present in their yard, under their house or even inside of it.
“With everything that’s coming out, I’m sick to my stomach right now,” Daniel McKiernan said during an interview with the Niagara Gazette on Wednesday morning.
“We’ve taken years to turn this house into a home.
For this to happen, it’s like someone telling you your house is on fire while it’s still standing.
You know it is burning down while there is no visible flames.
I honestly broke down in tears last night.
Now it’s putting my family at risk and I’m just sick about it.”
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As the Niagara Gazette previously reported , the McKiernans went public earlier this month with concerns about carbon rods and other materials found in dirt excavated from their property as part of a pool installation project.
Follow-up testing by a representative from the DEC’s spill response team showed readings within “safe limits”; however, the couple was cautioned to keep themselves, their children and their pets away from the piles and to have the materials removed as soon as possible.
In their letter to Hochul, which was also addressed to the head of the DEC, the state health department commissioner and the regional director for the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, the couple noted that the pool excavation work revealed a “significant” amount of “unusual” soil and granular fill material.
They described for the officials soil with dark staining in multiple spots, with a “thick, dark layer” appearing to be present across their yard.
They also reported a strong odor emanating from the backyard area.
In recent weeks, the couple has been pushing officials from the DEC and EPA to conduct additional on-site testing.
So far, they say, their requests have not been fulfilled and have been largely ignored.
Report details past remediation efforts
Before obtaining a copy of the DEC’s 1993 report, the couple was not aware of the prior removal of contaminated soil at 9903 Black Creek Drive, a property owned by the McKiernans that is adjacent to their residence.
According to the report, the state Department of Health reviewed results of field investigations in the area and recommended “certain areas of the fill surrounding” four houses and a portion of the lot at 9903 Black Creek Drive be “excavated and disposed of off-site.”
The report notes two of the four lots — one located at 1044 100th St. and a second located at 9909 Black Creek Drive — contained elevated levels of benzene hexachloride, a commonly used insecticide.
According to the report, the DEC conducted a subsurface investigation to identify the limits of the material and collect samples for analysis.
The report indicates that the investigation found black ash containing elevated concentrations of mercury deemed “not hazardous.”
The private contractor removed the ash material, with the DEC inspecting and accepting the work on Aug.
24, 1993.
The report’s finding, including “black ash material” that was “encountered” during the Black Creek Drive excavation, alarmed the McKiernans, who, as they noted in their letter, fear their home may be “sitting atop a much larger dump site,” potentially exposing them to volatile and semi-volatile organics, pesticides and high levels of lead concentration.
“These are extremely lethal substances.
We cannot be exposed to these poisons for one more day,” the McKiernans wrote.
The DEC document’s reference to the “Love Canal Cap repair area” also caught the McKiernans’ interest.
In their letter, they noted a “black substance” has been leaching into the basement of their home, especially following rain.
The couple installed a sump pump and outdoor drainage system in 2023.
During installation, they said an “orange sludge/mud” began leaching through a fracture near their home’s chimney stack.
They said a representative from a local company, Frank’s Basement, identified it and brought it to their attention.
The McKiernans believe the liquid, which they say has “surfaced many times,” may be leachate, a liquid formed when water seeps through a substance such as landfill garbage or industrial waste and picks up dissolved or suspended chemicals.
The Love Canal cap repair portion of the DEC report describes a “small area” of the landfill that had settled by about a foot and where, as a result of the settlement, water had started to pond on the cap surface.
According to the report, the cap repair was performed by excavating the topsoil and removing the high-density polyethylene liner.
“The area was then filled and compacted to achieve uniform grading with the surrounding area, and the HDPE liner and vegetative cover were replaced,” the DEC noted in its report.
According to the DEC report, the cap repair and liner replacement followed past investigations tied to the earlier discovery of contaminated storm sewer pipe bedding on Frontier Avenue, near the southern boundary of the Love Canal site.
The report outlines how, decades ago, contamination specifically identified at the intersection of Frontier Avenue and 100th Street and east along Frontier Avenue from the intersection was the subject of prior removal and replacement of storm sewer piping and contaminated bedding.
Concerns about Love Canal waste
Christen Civiletto, a local attorney and author of the book “Thundering Water: The Toxic Legacy of Niagara Falls,” said the DEC report came to light thanks to the work of one of her fellow researchers, Dr.
Caitlin McShane, a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder.
Civiletto maintains the report is significant as it suggests something she and dozens of her clients have been saying for years — all may not be necessarily well with the Love Canal liner, which was installed by the DEC more than 40 years ago.
Civiletto joined the McKiernans in calling on the DEC and the EPA to move swiftly to test the black material found in the couple’s basement and to consider a more thorough investigation.
“We don’t know for sure without the complete testing, but our concern is that it is related to Love Canal,” Civiletto said.
“This is the same type of material that I have been observing in many homes in that area.”
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
In multiple reports filed over the course of decades, state and federal environmental regulators and representatives from Glenn Springs Holdings, the private company currently responsible for monitoring operations at the Love Canal landfill, have consistently held for years that the site’s liner remains intact and fully functional.
Civiletto cited a 2013 report from the Buffalo News in which Glenn Springs representatives were quoted as saying they “never found any holes or cracks in the thick cap of clay or the plastic liner that covers the Love Canal toxic waste.”
In light of the 1993 DEC report, Civiletto described the statement as false, or at best, misleading, noting that the state agency documented the cap’s required repair, liner replacement and re-grading of the landfill area.
She said it would “incomprehensible” that Glenn Springs, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, would not know about a prior liner failure.
“I think that is cause to be very concerned and take these situations very seriously, which, up to this point, the DEC and the DOH have failed to do,” she said.
In seeking a request for comment on Wednesday, the Niagara Gazette contacted Glenn Springs Holdings’ local office by telephone and left a message with a company representative that included contact information for a reporter and an offer to share a copy of the DEC’s 1993 report via email.
As of Wednesday evening, Glenn Springs Holdings did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment.
A spokesperson from the DEC issued a statement on Wednesday evening in response to questions from the newspaper, indicating that the agency is continuing to investigate industrial fill recently found during the McKiernan’s above-ground pool installation.
The spokesperson noted that the agency received an initial report about the discovery of fill material containing graphite rods, ceramic, brick, glass, and some small electrical components on July 15 and dispatched staff from the DEC’s Bureau of Spill Response and Prevention to survey and document the report.
“Upon arrival, Spills personnel did not observe immediate chemical or petroleum odors but did note the industrial fill at the site and contacted DEC’s Environmental Remediation personnel for follow-up,” the DEC said in an emailed statement.
On July 22, the DEC said it conducted sampling of fill material and liquid from the McKiernans’ basement sump pump “for a suite of potential chemical constituents.”
Results are expected next week.
No radiation detected on site
The DEC noted that, in keeping with ongoing radiological survey work being conducted in coordination with the EPA, a surface radiological scan has also been taken of the McKiernan’s property.
The scan did not detect radiological readings above background, according to the state agency.
“DEC is working with the homeowner as well as the New York State Department of Health on this matter to ensure human health and the environment are fully protected,” the DEC said in its statement.
Anne Rabe, a spokesperson for the statewide environmental advocacy group Don’t Waste New York, said the decades-old remediation work outlined in the DEC report, coupled with the issues the McKiernans are currently experiencing on their property, warrant immediate attention from the DEC, the EPA, the state health department and the governor’s office.
She said she was particularly disturbed by language in the report describing how the DEC acknowledged limiting the scope of its 1993 investigation and cleanup based on recommendations from the state health department following a review of DEC field work.
“We have the Department of Health making recommendations about the limits of which a remediation should be taking place instead of doing a compressive investigation,” she said.
“This was haphazard.”
Carbon rods and debris dug up during excavation work for the McKiernans’ pool.
Photo: Daniel and Jocelyn McKiernan.
Rabe joined the McKiernans and Civiletto in calling on Hochul and state and federal authorities to immediately relocate the couple and their children and to declare their Falls neighborhood a Superfund site so a more thorough and comprehensive investigation can take place.
Rabe also believes, in light of a recent spate of environmental concerns in Niagara Falls and Niagara County, the time has come for state lawmakers to hold legislative hearings to get to the bottom of what the DEC and state health department have done, or may have failed to do, to address significant environmental concerns raised by residents and homeowners.
“They have immediate measures that have to be taken.
This is an immediate public health threat,” Rabe said.
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