BY STAFF REPORTER
On a stretch of Fox Avenue in the Town of Niagara, where lawns sit beside modest postwar houses and the distant roar of the falls is sometimes audible on still days, homeowners have spent months waiting for answers about elevated radiation detected in their yards and, in some cases, inside their homes. In August, Bruce Blakeman stood among them and promised that, if elected governor, he would treat the region’s long industrial contamination as a priority rather than a residual problem managed from Albany.
Mr. Blakeman, the Nassau County executive and Republican nominee, has cast the situation as both an immediate public-health failure and a symptom of a deeper pattern. Western New York’s toxic legacy — from the chemical wastes that made Love Canal a national symbol to the slag fields of former steel mills, the coke ovens along the Niagara, and scattered radiological materials now under investigation — has never been fully resolved. Decades of partial cleanups, institutional controls, and monitoring have left communities living with residual risk while the economic engines that created the contamination have largely disappeared.
At a press conference organized by the grassroots group Save Our Backyards Niagara, Mr. Blakeman criticized Gov. Kathy Hochul for what he called a “hands-off” response to the radiation findings. He said that as governor he would have declared a public-health emergency early, directed temporary relocation assistance for affected families, and placed state resources alongside the Environmental Protection Agency’s ongoing work. He also endorsed legislation sponsored by State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt that would expand New York’s Superfund program to cover radioactive contamination, arguing it would give the state additional tools and funding pathways currently limited by statute.
The radiation investigation itself stems from aerial and ground surveys conducted by federal and state agencies across Erie and Niagara counties, part of a broader effort to identify materials that may date to the region’s chemical and metal-processing history or, in some accounts, earlier wartime activity. Hundreds of properties have been screened; dozens remain under closer review.
Residents say the process has been slow, opaque, and insufficiently attentive to the disruption of daily life. Some have asked the state to designate neighborhoods as Superfund sites and to provide clearer pathways for temporary housing and permanent remediation. State officials have maintained that the EPA is better equipped for radiological work and that existing authorities are being used, while noting that radiological material is not currently listed under the state’s Superfund statute.
Mr. Blakeman’s proposed multi-strategy approach, as described in the Niagara visit and subsequent campaign remarks, combines short-term crisis measures with structural changes. On the immediate front, he has spoken of deploying interagency “go-teams,” arranging temporary housing and school transportation for children, and using state funds to accelerate assessments and interim protective actions rather than waiting solely on federal schedules. On the legislative side, he has pledged to sign the Ortt bill expanding Superfund coverage. Longer term, he has linked cleanup to the region’s economic needs, arguing that unresolved contamination continues to suppress property values, limit redevelopment, and compound the broader affordability pressures facing upstate communities.
The approach faces practical and political constraints.
Expanding Superfund eligibility would require new technical capacity at the Department of Environmental Conservation and could strain existing funding streams already allocated to other sites. Full remediation of complex radiological or chemical contamination is rarely quick or inexpensive, and cost recovery from historical responsible parties is often incomplete. Mr. Blakeman’s overall environmental record has drawn criticism from groups such as the New York League of Conservation Voters, which has placed him on a list of candidates it says would reverse clean-energy policies and prioritize fossil-fuel development. His campaign has focused more heavily on tax cuts, energy costs, and public safety than on a comprehensive statewide cleanup agenda.
Western New York’s contaminated landscape is extensive. Love Canal, capped and monitored since the early 1980s, still generates periodic concern among nearby residents. Former industrial properties along the Buffalo River, the Bethlehem Steel complex in Lackawanna, and various chemical landfills continue under long-term management. The region has more Superfund and brownfield sites per capita than most parts of the state. Successive governors have described the area’s industrial past in personal terms; Ms. Hochul has spoken of orange skies and a polluted Lake Erie from her own childhood. Yet residents and local officials say the pace of resolution remains uneven and that visible political engagement has been intermittent.
Whether Mr. Blakeman’s framing translates into a durable program remains uncertain. Emergency declarations and temporary housing can provide short-term relief but do not substitute for detailed risk assessments, engineered remedies, or sustained monitoring. Legislative changes to Superfund rules would alter the tools available to future administrations but would not, by themselves, identify responsible parties or guarantee funding. For communities that have lived for generations with the residue of factories that once defined the regional economy, the central question is less about any single campaign pledge than about whether the next governor will treat the remaining contamination as an active obligation rather than a managed historical fact.
In the yards along Fox Avenue, the more immediate measure is simpler. Families want clearer timelines, temporary options while testing continues, and a sense that the state regards their situation as urgent. Mr. Blakeman has said he would show up and act. The test, should he win in November, would be whether those assurances produce measurable progress on a problem that has outlasted multiple administrations.
Blakeman may require data centers to be built atop former toxic sites, to fund brownfield remediation
Among the elements of a multi-strategy approach that Mr. Blakeman has sketched for Western New York’s industrial contamination is an idea that has not been formalized in legislation or a detailed campaign platform but has surfaced in discussions of economic development and site reuse: steering large data centers onto former toxic or brownfield properties in exchange for private funding of remediation.
Blakeman has opposed Hochul’s one-year moratorium on large data centers, calling it “crazy” and arguing that New York risks losing investment and jobs in artificial intelligence infrastructure to other states. He has said developers should be required to provide their own power generation so they do not strain the grid, install water recirculation systems, and secure local government support. Extending that logic to contaminated industrial land, aides and supporters have suggested, could address two problems at once.
Sites such as portions of the former Bethlehem Steel complex, closed chemical plants, or other properties still under institutional controls already possess industrial zoning, utility corridors, and road access. Data-center operators, who are currently competing for suitable parcels, could be required as a condition of state permits or tax incentives to finance or complete the remaining cleanup work to standards set by the Department of Environmental Conservation or the EPA.
The concept draws on existing federal practice. The Environmental Protection Agency has issued guidance on redeveloping Superfund and brownfield sites for data centers, noting that many such properties have residual infrastructure that can be adapted and that redevelopment can proceed alongside ongoing monitoring or engineered controls. National discussions have explored pairing private capital for high-demand computing facilities with the cost of addressing decades-old contamination. In Western New York, where dozens of sites remain on state and federal registries and full public funding for remediation has long been constrained, private investment tied to productive reuse could accelerate work that has otherwise moved slowly.
Practical and political obstacles are substantial.
Data centers require large amounts of electricity and cooling water; even with on-site generation and recirculation, their presence near residual contamination would demand rigorous demonstration that construction and operation would not mobilize pollutants or interfere with existing remedies. Liability under federal Superfund law remains a concern for developers, and communities that have lived with industrial waste for generations have often resisted new heavy infrastructure, citing traffic, noise, visual impact, and questions about long-term environmental monitoring. Mr. Blakeman’s emphasis on local control would likely require municipal buy-in that is far from assured. Environmental groups that have pressed for stronger cleanup of radiological and chemical sites have also expressed skepticism that private redevelopment would deliver permanent protections rather than institutional controls that leave residual risk in place.
Whether the idea advances beyond informal discussion will depend on the outcome of the election and on whether any subsequent administration chooses to make contaminated industrial land a preferred location for data-center siting as a condition of incentives or permits. For now, it remains an untested component of a broader argument that Western New York’s toxic legacy can be addressed in part by attracting private capital that pays for cleanup in exchange for access to land and infrastructure that has otherwise sat idle.
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