Story continued ... as written in the Niagara Gazette by Aaron Besecker

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including those from the Manhattan Project during WWII-era federal weapons program.

"Consideration should be given to declaring the site and some surrounding areas as off-limits and closing it to all public access," Sherman wrote, in an e-mail to local environmental group Residents for Responsible Government.
"Wells to measure ground water contamination, monitoring at the outfall of Four Mile Creek and air monitoring for chemical and radiological emissions should be put in place."

Sherman worked in radiation and biologic research at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory at Hunter's Point in San Francisco and at the University of California nuclear facility. She served on the advisory board for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Substances Control Act from 1976 to 1982. She also worked as an advisor to the National cancer Institute and the EPA.
Bertell also founded the International Medical Commission Chernobyl and was a founding member of the International Commission of Health professionals.
Both scientists eliminated other potential sources of plutonium in the river, including weapons testing done in the 1960s and the general proximity of the West Valley nuclear facility in Cattaraugus County.

The 1988 Environment Canada report concluded the plutonium in the Niagara River must have come from West Valley. At the time the report was written, however, plutonium in LOOW had not yet been discovered by the Army Corps.
Environment Canada was investigating water quality in the Great Lakes for its 1988 report.
In 2002, the Army Corps investigated a part of the LOOW site known as the Rochester Burial Site, and found quantities of plutonium in an animal bone, buried laboratory debris and subsurface soils.

Niagara County Public Health Director Paulette Kline, who was unaware of Environment Canada's 17-year old report, said the scientists have no proof of any local water contamination.
"They are valid concerns based on the type of site (the LOOW)... but I believe it's premature to make any kind of conclusions," she said.
Water and soil samples tested by the county in the past have never come up with plutonium, Kline said, However annual tests conducted by the county health department do not test for plutonium.
Kline dismissed the scientist's claims because they are based on "incomplete scientific evidence."

Sherman, who recently appeared on "Dialogue," a radio show on WLVL, with local environmentalist Lou Ricciuti to discuss their concerns about the plutonium, is a very respected scientist but is unnecessarily alarming the public, Kline said.
"I just don't feel that she's been a part of that ongoing dialogue," Kline said. "I wouldn't make assumptions for another community."

A state health department representative said the agency is aware of tests conducted by the U.S. Army Corps at the LOOW site. Based on those tests, the "trace amounts" of plutonium found are isolated to the site and have no impact on the local drinking water supply, said Jeffrey W. Hammond, spokesman for the state Department of Health.
An Army spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.

Army Corps reports have indicated that ground water in the region flows northwest from the LOOW site toward Lake Ontario.

Meanwhile, the county health department is moving forward with its "LOOW initiative" to gather together all existing data on the site. Officials are also currently more than a year into the planning of a well testing program, Kline said.
The initiative is based on residents' general health concerns about living near the LOOW site, and is not an outgrowth of a specific concern about plutonium.

The tests, to be done by a certified hydrogeologist, will look for 11 different categories of radioactive and chemical contaminants in both active and inactive wells in the county. Standards for the upcoming tests were developed since January of this year. Actual samples of well water is scheduled to begin next month.

Results of the tests will help assuage residents' concerns about contamination.
"What we need to do is have some time," Kline said.

County health officials have already had plenty of time to deal with the situation, according to Ricciuti, the local environmentalist who has consistently pushed for awareness of health issues related to the LOOW site.

He was the person responsible for Sherman and Bertell's involvement in the plutonium issue locally and has been personally researching the topic for five years, tracking down various obscure documents that tell the LOOW story.

"There's a great chance these materials have spread and created more widespread contamination," Ricciuti said. "Further contamination could have been prevented had a 1972 order from the state Health Department been enforced locally," Ricciuti said.
Such action may have stopped "a cleanup of perhaps unprecedented scale."

"Our own health department did not follow a state health department edict," Ricciuti said. "It's been a downward slide from there."

Contact Aaron Besecker (716) 282-2311 Ext. 2263

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Thanks to Aaron for getting this in print. It's strange, but I've come to see that a story gains "legitimacy" when it gets printed ... and this should give legs to some of our concerns. I know a lot of us - self included - have been upset to see this story wallowing for the last two weeks, but believe me when I tell you that the red tape at a newspaper is VERY SIMILAR to government. So again, thanks Aaron for pushing to get this story in print. And thanks to everyone else at GNN that pushed to get this story out there.