What a toxic web we weave

My head has been swirling in toxic waste for weeks.

OK, maybe more. Friday, Aug. 21 it was sitting with Luella Kenny for 90 minutes. I need to do that again. Probably multiple times.

Mrs. Kenny left me inflamed with her passion over the toxic legacy in our midst and the inaction and lack of inertia in our government at every level. Her life's work will go one even after she leaves.

On Sunday, Aug. 23 I went to the Niagara Arts and Cultural Center to visit the opening of Natalia Neuhaus’s show in the Kudela Gallery.

It is on display now, and shows the string connecting every evil piece of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Our losses will always pale in comparison to those suffered in Japan but as Natalia’s art shows, but there is a blood red string flowing through all of it and the toxic legacy is spreading through our bedrock like nonaqueous phase liquid.

You can Natalia's work in person or visit her Website. https://natalianeuhaus.com/niagarafalls/

If her art shows anything, it is the deep, chaotic spread of radioactive waste. I remember in the 1990s working as reporter for the Tonawanda NEWS when we were consumed by activists worried about Pettit Flume, the toxic outlet from Durez in North Tonawanda and the landfill along Nash Road.

Then there were the crazy guys telling us about Praxair’s predecessor and delivering pages of evidence, stinking of cigarettes, blaming health problems on where they used to work, overweight and unfit with health fueled by a chosen lifestyle as well as vocation. Long life was unlikely.

I remember hearing some of them tell us about an underground city under the Town of Tonawanda. It seemed like a whacked out conspiracy theory even in the days before the internet when we'd get our real life science fiction late at night from Art Bell.

I know along the way, we never received an answer from the feds who said even though the radioactive waste in the vicinity of the South Grand Island Bridge exceeded the level of anywhere ever let stand by 100 times it still would cost too much to remediate.

I moved on before I ever saw that story reach its end. I still believe, as toxic as Buffalo Avenue is in the Falls, that area in the Tonawandas is just as bad or worse.

All of this stuff is so heavy I can write about it to deal with trauma I have never suffered but long feared. Then I made it to the Niagara Falls Book Circle on Thursday.

I lived it all over again as I listened to Christen Civiletto talk about the next revelations coming. The Balmer Road School in Lewiston was one she mentioned. Here is a link to what she told us was coming and like a bad infomercial, "but wait, there is more." There is always more. https://www.wgrz.com/article/tech/science/environment/temporary-school-toxic-niagara-county-classrooms-questioned/71-6964549c-0f57-4dce-94a9-988a91c92e29

I was flattered when Dr. Hope Russell of the Niagara National Heritage Area read my writing quoting Luella in her introduction of Christen.

Every time I hear Christen speak, I learn a bit more, it sinks in a bit deeper and I give thanks we bought our home where we did. The McKiernan family and Love Canal are one bit of concern. Another is the entire Gill Creek watershed, including the homes in the Town of Niagara as well as the Industrial Estates commercial development which the Niagara County IDA built on rather than cleaning up.

The revelation I have been coming to embrace is that, as evil as Robert Moses was, Hooker Chemical's Armand Hammer was worse, a misogynistic Soviet spy who used fine art and philanthropy for money laundering, bribed presidents and viewed corporate responsibity like taxes, something that needed to be minimized and avoided.

Once in a while I think I can just escape it all, like Friday when Beth and I visited Tifft Nature preserve watching the egrets and a distant duck, seeing a plover picking insects from the mud. Then I scanned the QR code on the fence and realized Tifft, too, is contaminated. See the info sheet below.

Maybe I should just go back to writing about Main Street as well as the $500 million in investment from the last 5 years and the next 5 combined in the Niagara Falls tourism district.