Documented
Love Canal
Full history of chemical and municipal disposal, the 21,800-ton Hooker inventory, public-health response, cleanup, and continuing site management.
Read the place record →Founding edition · 2026
Western New York Industrial & Environmental Atlas
What happened here?
Follow the evidence across factories, waterways, waste sites, cleanup projects, and the places Western New Yorkers know today.
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Landmark stories of the region
Six well-known places that open onto Western New York's larger industrial and environmental history.
Documented
Bethlehem Steel
Former integrated steel complex where Seneca Steel began production in 1902 and Bethlehem Steel operated from 1922. About 440 acres of the present property are manmade land built with slag and manufacturing waste. Cleanup, monitoring, groundwater treatment, habitat work, and land-use controls continue across separately managed portions of the site.
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Documented
Tonawanda Coke
Former coke manufacturing facility documented as a major historical benzene source, where shutdown response, removal work, state cleanup, and redevelopment followed the 2018 closure.
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Documented
West Valley Demonstration Project
Federal cleanup and decommissioning project at the former commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing facility.
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Documented
Buffalo River
Industrial corridor where an oil-fed 1968 river fire became a stark symbol of severe pollution, followed decades later by contaminated-sediment cleanup, habitat restoration, and long-term recovery work.
Read the place record →Documented
Hooker / Hyde Park Landfill
Former Hooker Chemical landfill that received about 80,000 tons of chemical waste, including dioxin-bearing material. The landfill and perimeter are capped, contaminated groundwater is hydraulically contained and treated, and community monitoring wells remain in use.
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Cleanup Industry Waterway Radiological PFAS documented PFAS under review
New historical investigation
The Burning Years →
Follow Western New York’s incinerators, industrial waste burning, complaints and buried ash through the original records.
Living public record
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Built as a public record
Document the past. Understand the present.
WNYAtlas connects industrial history with environmental records, cleanup decisions, ongoing management, and redevelopment. Proximity is context—not proof of causation—and every meaningful claim will lead back to a source.