cleanup · Niagara County
CECOS International Waste Facility
Town of Niagara / Niagara Falls
Large waste-management property used for disposal since 1897 and for hazardous-waste treatment, storage, and disposal beginning in 1977. Investigations found releases to fill, soil, and groundwater from historic waste-management units. Closed units are capped and maintained, contaminated groundwater is recovered and treated, and long-term monitoring and corrective-action controls continue under state and federal hazardous-waste permits.
The documented story
What happened here?
The CECOS property covers roughly 385 acres in the Town of Niagara and City of Niagara Falls. Waste disposal began there in 1897, decades before modern hazardous-waste law, and hazardous-waste treatment, storage, and disposal operations began in 1977.
EPA's facility description records an operating sanitary landfill, ten closed landfills, wastewater treatment, and container storage. Corrective-action investigations evaluated 47 solid-waste management units and areas of concern, showing why CECOS cannot be understood as a single landfill cell or one uniform plume.
Investigators identified releases to fill, soil, and groundwater, with the former Phase I wastewater-treatment impoundments described as the principal CECOS source in the central facility area. EPA separately notes that much contamination found near CECOS was attributed to the adjoining, upgradient Necco Park site; the atlas therefore keeps the two histories and responsible parties distinct.
A separate official history, summarizing the 1979 Erie-Niagara hazardous-waste task force, records Union Carbide Metals Division disposal of furnace slag, hydrated lime, and miscellaneous plant waste at a 56th Street and Pine Avenue facility. WNY Atlas maps that as a broader historical-complex point and does not relabel it as a modern CECOS unit, the Newco/BFI landfill, or DuPont's neighboring Necco Park without a boundary-specific record.
A regional argument over imported hazardous waste
Citizen groups and local government carried the dispute into federal court
1970s onwardorganized regional opposition documented in the public record
1970s-1980s
A disposal complex grew beside residential and recreational areas
Union Carbide sold the older industrial-disposal property in 1972. Successor operators added sanitary and chemical-waste units, treatment, storage, and recovery systems. That growth made facility permits and proposed new landfill capacity a recurring public issue.
1987-1990
Concerned organizations intervened in the company's lawsuit
When CECOS challenged New York's siting requirements, Great Lakes United, LaSalle and Niagara Demand, Campaign to Save Niagara, the Ecumenical Task Force, the Society to Oppose Pollution in Towns, the City, and the County entered the federal case to defend the state process.
Long-term corrective action
Public opposition and engineering controls answer different questions
Caps, groundwater recovery, treatment, monitoring, and hazardous-waste permits address existing units. Community participation addresses whether more disposal should occur and how decisions account for regional burdens; one does not substitute for the other.
News record
Major news events
Coverage selected here marks a turning point in public awareness, policy, enforcement, employment, or cleanup. Links open at the original publisher or archive; WNYAtlas does not reproduce restricted articles or images.
Reports of leakage put the CECOS hazardous-waste facility under national scrutiny
Reporting on an internal EPA assessment questioned the performance of a modern lined landfill receiving Superfund waste and intensified debate over how the country should dispose of hazardous material removed from other sites.
The Washington Post archive ↗Chronology
Timeline
- 1897 onward
Waste disposal began on the property long before modern engineered-landfill and hazardous-waste standards.
- 1977 onward
The complex operated hazardous-waste treatment, storage, and disposal units alongside other waste-management facilities.
- 1979 historical record
An interagency task-force history documented Union Carbide Metals Division slag, lime, and miscellaneous plant-waste disposal at a 56th/Pine off-site facility; the exact modern parcel assignment remains unresolved in the reviewed summary.
- 1984-1986
Federal and state permit actions required expanded groundwater monitoring and identification and evaluation of historic waste-management units.
- 1991 onward
CECOS began recovering and treating contaminated groundwater as an interim corrective measure.
- 1995
Regulators approved the final groundwater-recovery corrective action for facility-related soil and groundwater contamination.
- Long-term phase
Closed units, caps, groundwater recovery, treatment, monitoring, and post-closure obligations continue under hazardous-waste permits.
Environmental record
Documented impacts
- Historic waste-management units released contaminants to fill and soil.
- Groundwater contamination requires active recovery and treatment.
- The long operating history produced at least 47 investigated units or concern areas with different wastes, closure designs, owners, and regulatory status.
- Official records support industrial waste disposal in the broader 56th/Pine complex, while a separate 1979 interview's claim of a fenced radioactive-slag burial area remains unconfirmed testimony.
Response
Cleanup and controls
- Closed disposal units are capped and maintained to prevent contact and reduce infiltration.
- Contaminated groundwater is recovered and treated; EPA's archived facility summary reported more than 65 million gallons treated since 1991 as of that page's publication, not as a current running total.
- Corrective-action orders, hazardous-waste permits, monitoring networks, inspections, and institutional controls govern long-term performance.
Then and now
The site today
CECOS is a long-term hazardous-waste corrective-action complex, not a single completed excavation. Understanding current conditions depends on the status of individual units, the separate influence of neighboring Necco Park, and the performance of groundwater containment and treatment.