Source: http://www.wgrz.com, August 25, 2016
By: Kelly Dudzik
Neighbors who live near two former U.S. Army Nike sites in Aurora and Orchard Park have concerns about possible environmental contaminants. Thursday night, a representative from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers met with them.
There is an old launch area and an old control area. Both were used by the U.S. Army in the late 50s and early 60s.
Both sites are now privately owned, and the Army Corps of Engineers is looking through documents to see how the land has been used since the Army left it to see if there are any contaminants.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representative said Thursday that they are going to test one of the sites for possible PCBs this year. He says they want to make sure any existing Army liabilities of an environmental nature are addressed.
One neighbor shared video with us of a sewer line spewing out water near her home, which she built in 2005. She lives 13-hundred feet from the control site on Transit Road in Orchard Park and is very worried that the water could be contaminated.
“I have two children. My daughter is here this evening, and as the neighbors had said, it’s not just my children, they have children. The roadway is giving away. There’s a sinkhole forming underneath where the pipe crosses the road. So not only is my family at risk now, the general public is that travels on this road,” says Laura Piccillo.
“What we’re going to do is make sure that anything that we may have had at the site is not something that might be flowing down in through those manholes,” says Gregory Goepfert with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Piccillo is suing the control site’s current owner, Health Research Inc., a public benefit corporation of the State of New York. She wants her driveways fixed and says the water coming from the sewer has damaged them.
A formal report on the environmental investigation is expected to be released this fall. There will also be another community meeting at that time. A citizen advisory group is being formed. Many of the people there Thursday night plan to join it.