Primary-document dossier · May–June 1979
Inside the Pine Bowl investigation
Probe Services interviewed contractors, haulers, former workers, and business owners about slag sources and fill destinations. These investigator-reported recollections are research leads—not sworn testimony, sampling results, or proof of one source for every later radiological finding.
Witness-by-witness record
LaVay Melnot: Friona hauling and the Union Carbide dump
The report records Melnot saying Philip and Nazarino Friona operated a trucking company whose early-1960s work included hauling waste and slag from Union Carbide grounds to the Union Carbide dump, later Newco.
Independent check and limit: Government records support the old Union Carbide dump/Newco geography, but WNY Atlas has not found a hauling contract or load record confirming Melnot's account.
Armand Cerrone: Regional slag sources and contractor access
The report records Cerrone identifying Union Carbide, Airco Alloy, and Buffalo Slag as major 1962 sources and saying contractors obtained Union Carbide slag through Friona, by pickup or delivery.
Independent check and limit: The named industrial operations are documented, and other 1979 interviews describe the same Friona relationship. No reviewed invoice or exclusive-rights agreement confirms the commercial arrangement.
Vince Farina: Twin Fair and Michael's Pizzeria
The report records Farina naming the former Twin Fair parking area and Michael's Pizzeria as places where Union Carbide slag was reportedly used. He also described high-lime material lifting or damaging blacktop.
Independent check and limit: Historical geography supports both named places. WNY Atlas has not found radiological sampling that confirms the material, source, quantity, or present conditions at either destination.
Angelo Marchetti: King's Plaza and wider parking-lot use
The report records Marchetti describing broad use of Union Carbide slag beneath Niagara Falls parking lots and identifying the former King's Plaza on Military Road as one example.
Independent check and limit: The exact former plaza parcel has not been independently resolved, so the account remains searchable but intentionally has no map pin.
John and Joseph Seprelli: Who placed the original Pine Bowl fill
The report records the Seprelli account that low spots had already been filled with slag before their stone, gravel, and blacktop work and that they did not believe their company supplied the original slag.
Independent check and limit: This is a material qualifying account: the report does not resolve who placed the original slag and cannot support assigning Pine Bowl solely to Seprelli.
John Friona: C.A. Hackett, Friona, and Union Carbide
Kenner records his June 4 interview with Friona, who described a C.A. Hackett/Friona arrangement involving Union Carbide slag beginning around 1955-56 and identified the 56th/Pine dump as the later Newco property.
Independent check and limit: Federal and state records support Union Carbide industrial-waste disposal and possible Electromet rubble at the old dump. The specific Hackett/Friona arrangement remains testimony without a reviewed corporate record.
John Friona: Reportedly segregated radioactive slag
The report records Friona recalling radioactive slag isolated roughly a quarter-mile from other slag, buried, and fenced or cabled. He believed Bruno Scrufari excavated the burial area.
Independent check and limit: A federal record separately documents 505 tons of thorium- and uranium-bearing commercial slag buried on Electromet plant property from 1965-72. It does not establish that this was the same burial area Friona described at the dump.
Clarence Frangione: Pittsburgh Metallurgical and Vanadium slag
The report records Frangione describing slag associated with Pittsburgh Metallurgical and lime slag from the old Vanadium plant, along with a recollection of radioactive-material stockpiles at a Lockport Road dump.
Independent check and limit: Government records confirm the large Vanadium/Airco slag-production and disposal history. The radioactive-stockpile portion remains unconfirmed testimony.
Joseph Johnson: Other possible sources and haulers
The report records Johnson identifying Union Carbide, Airco Alloy, and Oldbury as slag sources and directing investigators toward Walter Kozdranski as a possible hauler.
Independent check and limit: The industrial sources and Kozdranski business identity can be independently placed in the period, but WNY Atlas has not found records connecting Kozdranski to a specific load or radiological destination.
What later records add
Commercial radioactive slag is documented
A federal Electromet record says Union Carbide produced 505 tons of commercial slag from 1965 to 1972 containing 9,212 pounds of thorium dioxide and 1,293 pounds of uranium oxide, drummed and buried in a designated area on plant property.
Limit: This does not establish that the buried material was distributed as ordinary fill or that it was the burial area described by John Friona.
DOE Former Electromet elimination report ↗The old dump connection is plausible but bounded
The same federal record says some demolished-plant rubble may have reached the 200-300 acre old Union Carbide dump north of Pine Avenue, later Newco/CECOS.
Limit: A 1976 screening found mostly near-background levels at the two sites, and the 1978 and 1979 aerial surveys reported no former-Electromet-site anomaly. 'May have' is not a mapped disposal cell.
DOE Former Electromet elimination report ↗A later commercial-fill encounter is confirmed
During 2014 Fashion Outlets/Sabre Park construction, a work-plan appendix documented slag about one to three feet below grade, readings of 35,000-52,000 counts per minute in the excavation, and 65,000 at a returned truckload against 5,000-7,000 background.
Limit: The record identifies historical backfill and a roughly 25-cubic-yard trench area but does not attribute the material to a testimony witness, hauler, or industrial source.
NYSDEC file: Fashion Outlets/Sabre Park final engineering report, Appendix F ↗The single-source theory does not hold
The 2020 court record summarizes fingerprinting that found Union Carbide predecessor slag markedly different from material recovered at Niagara Falls Boulevard and Holy Trinity.
Limit: The 1979 distribution evidence remains historically useful, but it cannot establish Union Carbide as the source of every later radiological-slag finding.
New York appellate decision ↗