The first atomic bombs exploded more than 80 years ago, and their destructive impact has been receding from the world’s collective memory for decades now.
But not in Niagara County, where the aftereffects of building the first atomic bomb still fester today in the form of radioactive backyards, driveways, house foundations---and unexplained clusters of chronic illness, often fatal. The problem has persisted for generations alongside the county’s well-documented chemical waste disasters like Love Canal. It all began with the Manhattan Project, the massive, top-secret World War II effort to beat the Germans, and later the Russians, in the race to create the first atomic weapons; Niagara County played an important part through the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works, a former TNT plant sprawled across 7,500 acres in Lewiston, Porter and Ransomville, which in 1944 was converted to store radioactive residues and wastes from uranium processing. That radioactive waste was often stored in oil drums dumped haphazardly on the site.
While the 2023 film “Oppenheimer” renewed interest in the Manhattan Project, concerns surrounding the LOOW were publicly raised much earlier, in a 1981 state Assembly report, a 2005 Niagara Gazette article, a 2008 book and a 2014 Army Corps of Engineers study. But none of them sparked the level of house-by-house research currently being undertaken by New York State, which involves more than a thousand property owners in Niagara and Erie counties.
Yet the LOOW, it turns out, is only part of the problem. More than 40 plants produced radioactive materials that still plague WNY today. For example, Linde Air Products in Tonawanda processed raw uranium ore from the Belgian Congo into uranium black oxide used for early weapons development. Simonds Saw and Steel Company in Lockport was later contracted by the Atomic Energy Commission for extensive rolling mill and foundry operations on uranium and thorium metals. ElectroMet in Niagara Falls (like Linde a division of Union Carbide) converted uranium tetrafluoride, so-called “green salt”, into pure uranium metal.
Later, the radioactive waste from these companies’ operations found its way into local homes as cheap construction fill. The gravel-like slag was sold through the 1960s and reused as fill material for roads, driveways and home foundations throughout Niagara County.
The upshot? Radioactive waste could be anywhere, and everywhere. As one activist homeowner, Lexi Hawk, told a reporter as they walked through her backyard: “Back here we have over 7,000 micro-roentgens per hour.... What does that mean? I wish I knew.”
Cast (in order of appearance):
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Mike Dugan
Narrator: Susan Banks
New York State inspector: Bily Logan
Niagara County homeowner: Mary Craig
Script: Jeff Z. Klein
Sound recording: Charles Gilbert
Sound editing: Micheal Peters
Piano theme: Excerpt from “Buffalo City Guards Parade March,” by Francis Johnson (1839)
Performed by Aaron Dai
Produced by the Niagara Frontier Heritage Project
Associate producer: Karl-Eric Reif
Webpage written by Jeff Z. Klein (Niagara Frontier Heritage Project)
Special thanks to:
Kathryn Larsen, vice president, content distribution, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
S.J. Velasquez, director of audio strategy, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Jerry Urban, senior radio broadcast engineer, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Councilmember Mitch Nowakowski and the Buffalo Common Council for their generous support