cleanup · Niagara County
Vanchlor Company Landfill
Lockport
Approximately five-acre former quarry disposal area used from 1957 to 1982, principally for silicon-tetrachloride manufacturing by-products reportedly placed in drums and trenches with crushed limestone. The landfill was capped in 1988 and remains under monitoring and institutional controls.
The documented story
What happened here?
Vanchlor's landfill occupies about five acres of a former quarry at 600 Mill Street. From 1957 through 1982, the company reportedly placed by-products of silicon-tetrachloride manufacturing in 55-gallon drums and trenches, mixing in crushed limestone to neutralize acidic material.
That disposal method explains why the modern site looks deceptively simple. The quarry was graded and closed in 1988 beneath a layered cover rather than dug out, leaving the chemical-waste history below a maintained grassy surface near Lockport's wider Mill Street industrial corridor.
The current remedy is therefore a stewardship system. A 2023–2024 periodic review describes the Class 4 site as governed by a state-approved management plan and deed restrictions, with inspection, sampling, reporting, and repair obligations passing to future owners.
Chronology in context
Turning points in the public record
1957–1982
Manufacturing by-products were reportedly placed in the former quarry disposal area.
1988
The landfill closed under a DEC-approved plan with a final cover system.
1999
Deed restrictions were recorded for the property.
2014
A consent order became the basis for continuing operation, maintenance and monitoring obligations.
2023–2024 review
The periodic review documented continuing cover, monitoring, institutional-control, and reporting obligations for the Class 4 site.
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.
A quarry becomes a drum-and-trench chemical landfill and is capped
Historical records describe silicon-tetrachloride by-products placed with crushed limestone before the five-acre disposal area was closed under a cap; monitoring and institutional controls remain necessary because waste stayed in place.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ↗Environmental record
Documented impacts
- The disposal record identifies silicon-tetrachloride manufacturing by-products placed in drums and trenches.
- Periodic monitoring evaluates groundwater, surface water, and the cover system for evidence that contained waste or drainage conditions are changing.
- The hydrologic setting creates a research connection to the escarpment and Eighteen Mile Creek, but does not establish that every downstream condition originated at Vanchlor.
Response
Cleanup and controls
- The cover system includes a two-foot clay layer, drainage material, topsoil, vegetation, and a clay-lined perimeter ditch with an interceptor trench.
- Deed restrictions limit disturbance and incompatible use.
- Inspection, maintenance and environmental monitoring remain required.
Then and now
The site today
DEC classifies the landfill as properly closed but requiring continuing management. What visitors see as open ground is an engineered containment surface, and its condition is part of the remedy—not evidence that the buried waste disappeared.
Atlas connections
Connected places
These collections explain documented material, facility, waterway, ownership, or cleanup relationships. Inclusion does not imply that every place shares one contaminant source or plume.
Lockport industrial and disposal history
Automotive manufacturing, battery production, chemical processing, municipal disposal, and canal-side industry created several separately managed cleanup sites around Lockport.
The closed landfill represents the city's long-term disposal and containment history.
Automotive manufacturingHarrison Radiator Division, GMCHarrison Radiator preserves the environmental record of a major regional automotive employer.
Battery manufacturingElectruk BatteryElectruk adds a smaller controlled industrial property with an environmental easement.
Manufactured-gas plantTransit Street Former Manufactured-Gas PlantTransit Street represents the city's earlier gas-manufacturing infrastructure and recurring MGP contaminants.
Creek and sediment corridorEighteen Mile Creek Superfund SiteEighteenmile Creek links multiple Lockport source areas to a much longer sediment-cleanup record.
Ravine landfill and creek cleanupOld Upper Mountain Road LandfillThe former municipal disposal area connects Lockport's waste history with documented Gulf Creek sediment, floodplain and sewer-infrastructure work.
Former quarry landfillVanchlor Company LandfillThe capped Mill Street landfill adds a separately managed chemical-manufacturing waste record within the broader Lockport industrial corridor.