cleanup · Erie County
Billy Wilson Park / Hopkins Road Dump
Amherst
Former Hopkins Road municipal-dump landscape now associated with Billy Wilson Park beside Great Baehre Swamp. DEC reports landfill-groundwater exceedance without an identified downgradient receptor; EPA's separate Amherst Dump identifier remains unmatched at parcel scale.
The documented story
What happened here?
Billy Wilson Park, formerly Margaret Louise Park, lies on Hopkins Road beside the Great Baehre Swamp Wildlife Management Area. DEC identifies the park as the access point for a boardwalk connecting Town parkland with the state-managed wetland.
Williamsville Village Board minutes from November 1983 call the location the Hopkins Road dump. The minutes state that the Village owned 12 acres within the dump site, used its property for leaves and brush, and considered allowing Amherst to place 60,000 cubic yards of fill from the sewage-treatment-plant retention basin in a defined area.
DEC's statewide Inactive Landfill Initiative explicitly names Sgt. Billy Wilson (formerly Margaret Louise) Park as an Amherst landfill. The 2024 status report says groundwater sampling was completed with no residential sampling; the program's priority table places it in Group 3, meaning landfill-groundwater exceedance with no identified downgradient receptor and a recommendation for source monitoring and/or mitigation.
EPA separately maintains a non-NPL CERCLA record named Amherst Dump at Hopkins Road. The shared road and municipal identity make it a credible related record, but the available EPA profile supplies no parcel map or alias establishing that its evaluated boundary was the present park, the Village-owned 12 acres, or the entire historical dump. WNYAtlas therefore does not merge the EPA identifier into the park record.
Chronology in context
Turning points in the public record
Before 1983
A municipal dump operated along Hopkins Road; the reviewed minutes do not establish its opening date or complete waste inventory.
November 1983
Village trustees debated controlled placement of 60,000 cubic yards of fill from Amherst's sewage-treatment retention basin on Village-owned dump acreage.
1989
New York acquired the adjoining Great Baehre Swamp land for wildlife and wetland management.
2022–2024 landfill initiative
DEC classified the park in Priority Group 3 after landfill-groundwater exceedance, reported groundwater sampling complete with no residential sampling, and recommended source monitoring and/or mitigation.
Present
The Town park provides public access to the adjoining WMA while the precise historical waste boundary and its relationship to EPA's Amherst Dump record remain research questions.
Record distinction
What can be joined—and what remains separate
The records converge on the Hopkins Road municipal-disposal landscape, but they do not publish one surveyed boundary. WNYAtlas therefore joins the historical park/dump names while preserving the EPA identifier as a related, not yet parcel-matched record.
Hopkins Road Dump
The 1983 Village minutes place Village-owned dump acreage in the westernmost portion of the Baehre Swamp Conservation Area and document a proposed 60,000-cubic-yard sewage-retention-basin fill operation.
Basis: named location + contemporary municipal recordMargaret Louise / Sgt. Billy Wilson Park
DEC's landfill initiative uses the present and former park names for the Amherst inactive landfill, while DEC's WMA page places the park entrance on Hopkins Road beside Great Baehre Swamp.
Basis: DEC landfill name + official park geographyEPA Amherst Dump · NYD000513721
EPA lists “Amherst Dump” on Hopkins Road and records a non-NPL NFRAP outcome. The available EPA profile does not provide a parcel map or alias tying its boundary to the park or Village-owned 12 acres.
Gate: obtain EPA preliminary-assessment/site-inspection mappingEnvironmental record
Documented impacts
- Municipal dumping and a later fill proposal are documented at the Hopkins Road location.
- DEC reports exceedance in landfill groundwater, while identifying no downgradient receptor in the statewide priority classification.
- The reviewed records do not establish that all former dump acreage lies within today's public park or WMA, or that a drinking-water supply exceeded a standard.
Response
Cleanup and controls
- DEC reports landfill groundwater sampling completed and recommends source monitoring and/or mitigation.
- The available statewide summaries do not supply the site-specific analyte table, well network, waste boundary, or a completed-remedy determination.
Then and now
The site today
Billy Wilson Park and the Great Baehre Swamp boardwalk are public recreational landscapes; that current use does not erase or define the limits of the earlier disposal area.
Research status
Open questions
- Treat Hopkins Road Dump and Billy Wilson/Margaret Louise Park as names within the same documented disposal landscape, but do not assume their named areas have identical boundaries.
- Keep EPA ID NYD000513721 as a separate related record until EPA preliminary-assessment or site-inspection mapping supplies a parcel, coordinates, aliases, or an ownership description.
- Recover the full landfill groundwater investigation and document the waste footprint, monitoring network, analytes, concentrations, comparison values, flow direction, and recommendations.