For more than a month, Daniel and Jocelyn McKiernan have demanded New York State officials relocate their family, upon the discovery of toxic chemicals beneath the soil of their 99th Street home.
On Thursday, more was discovered.
“We were paying for private testing. The company came out and started doing some boreholes because we know what's here, so we wanted to just have more proof,” said Jocelyn McKiernan, who lives on the property with her husband and three children. “They were putting in a monitoring well, and they stumbled upon the silver running liquid coming out of the ground.”
McKiernan says they didn’t know what it was, but they knew it had a foul chemical odor. They notified the Niagara Falls Fire Department and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. The McKiernans hoped this would finally be enough for the state to act and move them, as they’ve demanded for more roughly a month and a half.
Daniel McKiernan provided a back story of their property, located not far from the Love Canal environmental disaster site.
“We've had testing done by the DEC. We've had communication with the Department of Health. We found reports from 1993 that were cover-ups, contamination on the property that they left on the property. They tested the property and found exceedances in heavy metals, SVOCs, carcinogens, and other fingerprint chemicals from the landfill,” he explained. “The reason we hired the private test is because we no longer can accept the fox guarding the henhouse. We wanted to have our own company come in and get our own results that we can stand behind and know that they can't be downplayed.”
Daniel McKiernan had not been feeling well, and soon after speaking took himself to Erie County Medical Center for evaluation.
Jocelyn McKiernan, meanwhile, says it’s not safe for her children, ages 6, 4, and 1. One of their children is special needs but therapists have refused to come on the property since the revelation of contaminants.
“Our oldest son still cannot receive his in-home services; massage therapy, nursing, and his service coordinator is not allowed here because their organizations have looked at our accepted test results and said we will not subject our employees to exposure,” she said.
The Buffalo office of the DEC issued a written statement about Thursday’s developments at the property: “The safety and the wellbeing of the family at the 99th Street property remains a top priority and New York State is committed to a full investigation and remediation of the property. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) laid out a plan for the residents that we believed would effectively investigate the contamination to ensure a full remediation. The property owners have not yet signed off on the plan. Instead, the residents hired a private contractor whose work we can't control and the quality of which we can't guarantee. Performing this work was not consistent with the recommendations provided to the residents not to disturb the material prior to DEC's investigation and cleanup so that exposure of potential contamination could be minimized.”
A DEC official on site informed the family he was unable to order the emergency evacuation. He did, meanwhile, notify residents of adjacent properties to avoid being in their backyards pending further investigation. Earlier, as Mrs. McKiernan was speaking with the DEC official, a child could be seen playing on a swing set on a property behind their home.
Environmental attorney Christen Civiletto came to the property and, along with Mrs. McKiernan, attempted to reach the New York State Health Commissioner for immediate action to relocate the family.
“Emergency responders were here, and a DEC representative is here,” Civiletto explained to the DOH staffer who picked up the call. “But he says he cannot authorize a relocation today.”
They were unsuccessful in reaching the commissioner, or even a deputy commissioner. Meanwhile, Civiletto told BTPM later in a text message that a Niagara Falls City Council member and the office of Congressman Tim Kennedy were working the phones, the latter attempting to reach Governor Hochul’s office.
In the meantime, the McKiernan family’s frustrations only grow.
“I can only hope that they stop allowing history to repeat itself and stop allowing us to continually be exposed by unknown and known substances,” Jocelyn McKiernan said.
