Ask Expert Vienna Laurendi: Do your due diligence when considering older commercial or industrial parcels

Guest editorial by Vienna Laurendi

THE QUESTION: “Vienna, I keep hearing about radioactive land in Niagara Falls. Should I be worried about that if I’m buying property in the area?”

THE SHORT ANSWER: For the vast majority of homes and land in our area, no. The radioactive material people are talking about comes from a specific World War II and Cold War-era federal site in Lewiston, not from Niagara Falls neighborhoods or Grand Island in general, and the handful of nearby properties it once touched were cleaned up and certified clear by the federal government more than 30 years ago. The one real takeaway for buyers: On older industrial parcels anywhere in our region, environmental due diligence is always worth the cost.

In greater detail: Where this story began:

During World War II, the U.S. Army built the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works, a roughly 7,500-acre TNT plant straddling Lewiston and the Town of Niagara. When the war ended, the Manhattan Engineer District used part of that land, from 1944-47, to store uranium ore-processing residue, the leftover material from refining uranium. The Atomic Energy Commission kept about 1,500 acres afterward and continued storing uranium residues there into the 1950s. Between 1955 and 1975, the government sold off most of that acreage to private owners. What's left, a 191-acre parcel off Pletcher Road, is known today as the Niagara Falls Storage Site, and it's still federally owned.

How far the contamination spread

Over the years, wind, water and drainage ditches carried some contamination onto nearby land, what the government calls “vicinity properties.” Surveys in the 1970s and 1980s found radium, thorium, uranium and cesium in the soil on a couple dozen of these properties. The good news for anyone buying in the area: nearly all of them were remediated and officially certified clean by the Department of Energy back in October 1991. A small number of properties still under federal review were never opened to the public, so they were never part of anyone's backyard to begin with.

What's happening right now

The remaining work is at the 191-acre federal site itself, not in any neighborhood. Since 1986, the most contaminated material there has sat in a clay-lined containment structure that was only ever meant to last 25 to 50 years, so the Army Corps of Engineers is now removing it for good. The project started in 2024 with lower-level soil and groundwater, and it's expected to run in phases for more than a decade, with the most contaminated material not fully cleared until sometime around 2038. Along the way, there was a legal detour worth knowing about: Some of the excavated soil was originally headed to a landfill near Detroit, but Michigan courts blocked that shipment, and the material was rerouted to a licensed disposal facility in Texas, instead. If anything, that's a sign the oversight process is working the way it's supposed to.

A reminder that old industrial land can surprise you

The Lewiston site gets the headlines, but it's not the only place this history has turned up. Years ago, when a paper mill company redeveloped a former industrial site elsewhere in the City of Niagara Falls, radioactive soil was discovered during demolition, left behind decades earlier by a prior operator. It added millions to the cleanup cost and ended up in a lawsuit between the companies involved. Nobody expected it, which is exactly the point.

What this means for you

If you're buying or selling an ordinary home in Niagara Falls, Lewiston or Grand Island, this is regional history, not a daily concern; none of our typical residential neighborhoods sit on the federal footprint described above. But if you're ever looking at an older commercial or industrial parcel anywhere in our region, especially one with a manufacturing past, build an Environmental Site Assessment into your due diligence before you close. It's a small cost next to the alternative.

One last thought

Western New York has an industrial past, and every so often that past resurfaces – literally. Ask good questions before you buy, especially on land with a history you don't already know.

Vienna Laurendi is a NYS associate real estate broker with Howard Hanna Real Estate Services and leads The Laurendi Home Selling Team on Grand Island. she is immediate past president of the Buffalo Niagara Association of REALTORS. Questions can be directed to Vienna@Laurendi.com or 716-484-3662.

This article was written with the support of A.I. and reflects current market insights.