cleanup · Niagara County
CWM Chemical Services - Model City Facility
Porter
Operating hazardous- and industrial-waste treatment and storage facility on former Lake Ontario Ordnance Works land. Its RMU-1 landfill reached capacity in 2015 and was capped; New York's Facility Siting Board denied the proposed RMU-2 landfill in September 2025.
The documented story
What happened here?
The Balmer Road facility occupies land in the towns of Porter and Lewiston that was once part of the federal Lake Ontario Ordnance Works. ChemTrol Pollution Services began commercial hazardous-waste operations there in 1972; the operation later became CWM Chemical Services, a Waste Management subsidiary.
Because the facility is both an operating waste-management property and part of the former LOOW footprint, its story links to LOOW but does not merge the two regulatory histories.
The commercial operation evolved through corporate ownership and name changes after SCA Services acquired ChemTrol in 1973. Facility records describe waste-oil reclamation, spent-solvent distillation, aqueous treatment, stabilization, storage, fuel blending, and secure landfilling as parts of a larger treatment-storage-disposal complex.
RMU-1 itself is an approximately 47-acre, multi-cell engineered landfill with hydraulically separate cells and primary and secondary leachate-collection systems. This operating history is distinct from the proposed RMU-2 expansion, which never became an operating landfill.
A hazardous-waste proposal became a decades-long civic record
Model City residents carried the landfill question through hearings and a 2025 denial
2025year the state Facility Siting Board denied the proposed RMU-2 landfill
1972-2015
A former defense property became a commercial treatment and disposal complex
ChemTrol began hazardous-waste operations on former Lake Ontario Ordnance Works land. Through later owners, the facility treated, stored, recovered, blended, and landfilled industrial waste; the engineered RMU-1 landfill stopped receiving waste after reaching capacity in 2015 and was capped.
Public-hearing era
Residents debated both livelihood and cumulative burden
The RMU-2 proposal produced an unusually extensive state hearing record. Testimony addressed facility employment, hazardous-waste capacity, truck routes near the Lewiston-Porter campus, noise, community stigma, environmental conditions, and whether claimed economic benefits justified another landfill.
September-October 2025
Permits could not substitute for the required siting certificate
The Facility Siting Board denied the certificate of environmental safety and public necessity for the proposed 43.5-acre RMU-2 landfill. DEC later upheld associated permits but found their issuance moot because the siting certificate had been denied.
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.
The operating RMU-1 hazardous-waste landfill reaches capacity
Waste disposal ended in RMU-1 and the cell moved into closure and post-closure care, while treatment and storage operations continued elsewhere at the permitted facility.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ↗A decades-long public fight over a second landfill ends in a final siting denial
The Facility Siting Board denied the proposed RMU-2 landfill after an unusually long administrative and public-participation record. The decision concerns the proposed expansion, not closure of every permitted activity at Model City.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ↗Chronology
Timeline
- 1940s-1960s
The property formed part of the former federal ordnance complex and was subject to chemical and radiological investigation.
- 1972
Commercial hazardous-waste treatment, storage, and disposal operations began as ChemTrol Pollution Services.
- 1973-1980s
Acquisitions and name changes carried the operation from ChemTrol through SCA entities to the later CWM organization.
- 1992
DOE certified that the majority of the CWM property met the radiological decontamination criteria applicable to its review.
- 2015
The RMU-1 hazardous-waste landfill reached capacity, stopped receiving waste for disposal, and was subsequently capped.
- 2025
The Facility Siting Board denied CWM's siting-certificate application for the proposed 43.5-acre RMU-2 landfill.
Environmental record
Documented impacts
- Historic federal activity left chemically and radiologically affected areas within portions of the broader former LOOW property. The 1992 DOE certification applied to the majority—not necessarily every part—of the CWM property.
- DEC records describe corrective actions and a groundwater-monitoring network at the Model City facility. The atlas reports those controls without treating a permit or monitoring well as proof of a present off-site exposure.
- The closed RMU-1 cell and the denied RMU-2 proposal are different features: one contains historically disposed waste, while the other was a proposed expansion that did not receive a siting certificate.
Response
Cleanup and controls
- RMU-1 is capped and remains subject to hazardous-waste permit, corrective-action, leachate, monitoring, and post-closure requirements.
- The facility also operates under state air and wastewater-discharge permits. Wastes accepted for management may be treated or stored on site or shipped to permitted off-site disposal facilities.
Then and now
The site today
CWM remains a permitted treatment and storage facility, but the proposed RMU-2 landfill cannot proceed under the denied 2025 siting certificate. The related permit decision was described by DEC as moot because of that denial.