For property owners, the next step is background sampling in yards deemed clean. Officials need soil samples from areas without detected human-made material to help establish local natural-background radiation levels. The background sampling will help inform cleanup efforts.
The sampling marks the next phase of a sprawling investigation. The Buffalo News has covered the investigation. A total of 726 properties have been screened, more than 475 cleared, and 30 referred for additional investigation. Amanda Lefton said previously screened properties were understood to have no contamination.
What the Baseline Testing Will Establish
Background sampling in areas without detected human-made material will help inform the cleanup phase.
Soil sampling is part of the investigation. The EPA expects to return soil-sampling results within one to three months. The investigation is focused on sites where radioactive material has been found.
Relocations and Field Work
The Buffalo News reported that the EPA has granted four homeowners temporary relocation while contamination at their properties is addressed. One of those homeowners described the process to WIVB, which separately reported that the EPA and state DEC had screened approximately 700 properties in Niagara and Erie counties. EPA field team members began digging test pits in Lexi Hawk's yard in the Town of Niagara on July 21, 2026, as part of the effort to examine suspected hotspots.
The screening effort traces back to a 2024 aerial radiological survey by the EPA and DEC, followed by vehicle-based surveys in 2025. That work eventually led investigators to at least 121 homes in western Niagara County, where property owners received letters in March warning they could have buried radioactive materials on their land. EPA and DEC officials, including Lefton and EPA Regional Administrator Mike Martucci, laid out details of the response at a community meeting at the Niagara Falls Convention Center on July 20, 2026.
Timeline, Cost Recovery and Possible Sources
Martucci said properties would be evaluated case by case. He said officials are committed to identifying responsible parties and pursuing cost recovery as the EPA investigates where the waste came from and who put it there.
Officials have pointed to radioactive slag left behind by chemical and metals manufacturing in the early 1900s, as well as dumping tied to the Manhattan Project, which developed atomic bombs during World War II, as possible sources of the contamination. WIVB has reported that officials believe the contamination may stem from radioactive slag linked to decades of industrial operations in Niagara County. The EPA has separately said it is continuing cleanup and investigation work at Niagara County properties where radioactive slag material fill was found in soil, though the agency has not established a definitive source or chain of responsibility for the waste.
Earlier Federal Cleanup Efforts
Federal agencies have completed separate radioactive-material cleanups in the area, but those projects are not the properties under investigation now. The U.S. Department of Energy says it began remediating most Niagara Falls Storage Site vicinity properties near Lewiston in 1983, to a condition allowing unrestricted use, and released the site for unrestricted use in 1991 after it met applicable cleanup criteria and standards. The DOE says the New York Department of Health maintains use restrictions on some vicinity properties; no other supplemental limits or institutional controls are in effect. Separately, the EPA says cleanup of radioactive slag material at the Niagara Falls Boulevard site in Niagara Falls ran from 2016 to 2020.
Calls for Clearer Rules and Faster Answers
The uncertainty has pushed state lawmakers to act. Sen. Robert Ortt has proposed a measure concerning radioactive contamination and the state Superfund program.
Buffalo News environment and climate reporter Mackenzie Shuman has been tracking the investigation as part of an ongoing series the paper has titled Complete Coverage: Niagara County Property Owners Warned of Radioactive Materials. As officials have put it, the screening effort underway in Niagara is not the end of the process but the beginning, with hundreds of properties still to be checked and the forensic search for responsible parties still unfolding.
