NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. (WIVB)- Leaders in Wheatfield are staying quiet after a lawsuit was filed against the town. Dozens of people who live near an old landfill say the town didn’t do enough to keep them safe.
This suit seeks money for personal injuries and property damage. It also calls for medical testing to determine what residents have been exposed to.
The town attorney told News 4 on Monday he can’t comment until they’ve had time to review the complaint.
A lawyer for the neighbors told us more lawsuits will be filed.
Bright yellow signs up and down Nash and Forbes Roads make their position hard to ignore.
The inactive Niagara Sanitation Company landfill is right in their backyards. It’s owned by the Town of Wheatfield.
More than 160 people have filed paperwork with the town claiming contaminants from the landfill are making them sick and not enough was done to prevent exposure.
Now dozens of residents are moving forward with a lawsuit against the Town, Niagara Sanitation Company, and seven other companies they say disposed of chemicals at the landfill.
“All of this time people were never told, they didn’t know what the nature of this site really was and what was in there,” said Louise Caro, partner and head of the environmental law department for Napoli Shkolnik.
Napoli Shkolnik, Smith Stag LLC and local lawyer Christen Civiletto are representing the neighbors.
The complaint lists more than a dozen chemicals they say are coming from the site, which can cause cancers, respiratory problems and other health effects.
“We continue to do testing and we’re finding more contamination” said Caro. “We’re finding contamination in people’s homes that’s making them unlivable.”
People are now leaving their homes. They’ve been fighting for years to make the neighborhood safe.
The landfill was active in the 50’s and 60’s and contained industrial waste, most notably from Love Canal.
Occidental Chemical Corporation removed the Love Canal waste in 2014. The DEC said that year that there was no off site contamination.
The DEC has been looking at the landfill’s effect on health for more than 30 years and has had over again it’s unlikely contaminates traveled off site.
In a statement on Monday, the DEC said this spring it plans to test to see if toxins moved into the neighborhood and develop a cleanup plan for the landfill.
In a fact sheet on its website, the DEC said it will use State Superfund money to complete the investigation. It will take legal action against the parties who operated and disposed of the waste to get that money back.
The site is listed as Class 2 on the State Registry of Inactive Hazardous Waste Sites.
