WASHINGTON – A radioactive remnant of the Cold War – the Guterl Specialty Steel plant in Lockport – will be cleaned up earlier than originally planned under President Biden’s proposed budget for the federal fiscal year that starts in October.
While many of any president’s budget priorities never survive the congressional approval process, Army Corps of Engineers projects typically do. And Biden’s budget, released earlier this month, proposes jump-starting the $206.5 million Lockport cleanup with $57.5 million in funding for fiscal 2025.
That proposed allocation dwarfs funding for other local projects for the current fiscal year announced by local lawmakers in recent weeks.
The announcement of the funding for the contaminated Lockport site, also once known as Simonds Saw & Steel Co., comes three years after federal officials said work on the project would not begin until 2032.
But with the Biden administration deciding to accelerate funding for several similar nuclear cleanup projects around the country, “there’s a good chance the work will start sooner rather than later,” said Andrew Kornacki, public affairs officer for the Army Corps’ Buffalo District office.
The Lockport cleanup is by far the largest among the $101.4 million the Biden administration proposes to spend to clean up former military nuclear sites in the Great Lakes region. That includes $9.6 million to continue the $40 million cleanup of the Niagara Falls Storage Site, a nuclear storage facility in Lewiston, and $200,000 for continuing work at the Seaway Site along River Road in the Town of Tonawanda.
The Lockport project eventually will lead to the demolition of nine buildings and the removal of 18 inches of tainted topsoil. The Army Corps also plans to build a trench at the site to gather contaminated groundwater.
The site is contaminated because from 1948 to 1956, Simonds – which operated the Ohio Street facility at the time – used 25…
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