NYC to pay U.S. $1.6 million as part of EPA effort to clean radioactive former chemical plant in Queens
The city has agreed to pay the feds $1.6 million to help with radioactive cleanup at a former Queens chemical plant that played a role in the Manhattan Project and the nuclear arms race.
The agreement, filed in Brooklyn Federal Court Monday, provides for the city to aid the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to clean up the city property associated with the former Wolff-Alport Chemical Co. on Irving Ave., which shuttered in the early 1950s.
The Ridgewood site, which later housed several businesses on Irving Ave. at Cooper St., including a deli and auto body shop, became a Superfund site in 2014 after the discovery of potentially dangerous levels of radioactive contamination. It’s one of four Superfund sites in the city.
Chemists at the company — which operated from 1920 until 1954 — developed materials for the Atomic Energy Commission. The company dumped radioactive thorium waste into the sewer and on the property, until it was ordered to stop in 1947.
“This action protects New York City residents and communities from exposure to hazardous substances including radioactive waste at the Wolff-Alport Site,” said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace, whose office announced the agreement Monday.
New York City, which own the sewers, sidewalks and streets around the property, has also agreed to perform the engineering design for the contaminated sewers and the contaminated soil removal beneath the streets and sidewalks, according to EPA records.
“We are pleased to have reached agreement with the federal government on the next steps,” a spokeswoman for Mayor Adams said in a statement. “We remain committed to working expeditiously to remove the hazardous materials that have lingered in city sewers and sidewalks, and look forward to EPA’s cleanup of the contaminated facility itself.”
In 2017, the EPA rolled out a yearslong, $39.4 million plan to relocate the tenants on the property, demolish the buildings, dig up and remove contaminated soil and sewer sediment, jet clean the sewer system and dispose of all contaminated materials.
The court is still in the process of removing the commercial tenants. In May, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Frederic Block gave several of them three months to clear out, and directed the federal government to give them funds to relocate.
With Chris Sommerfeldt
