A project aimed at removing contaminated Manhattan Project soil in Lewiston is still moving along, even after a Michigan Judge blocked the disposal of the waste near Detroit last week. Brent LaSpada, the project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Niagara Falls Storage Site, said that after the initial injunction was filed in September 2024, the group pivoted to moving 1,500 cubic yards of material that had already been excavated to a site in Texas.
“Earlier this spring, going into the summer, our contractor that we partner with out here to do the phase one work proposed taking the material to waste control specialists in Texas,” LaSpada said. “So we approved that plan and made that switch to take the material we were excavating from the site for phase one.”
LaSpada said that phase one will act as a “balance of the plant,” cleaning up material outside the most contaminated sites, known as Interim Waste Containment Structures (IWCS). Those sites house the most contaminated materials, which include Uranium, Radium and Thorium. Phases two and three are expected to address the IWCS, which will involve moving nearly 300,000 cubic yards of higher-activity waste.
LaSpada says a remedial design is being crafted to address those formations. That design is expected to be 90% done by fiscal year 2026, and 100% completed and approved by fiscal year 2027. Cleanup of the ICWS sites is expected to be a 10+ year effort.
