By Staff Reporter
BUFFALO — On Oct. 4, a South Buffalo resident called the state to report a sheen on the Buffalo River. More than two weeks later, the state’s own record of that call still lists the source as “Unknown.”
The record is spill No. 2606404 in the Department of Environmental Conservation’s public spill database. It gives the location as “Buffalo River/ Creek” at 119 Juniata Place. It lists three materials: diesel, mineral oil and “latex resins/products.” The quantity spilled and the quantity recovered are both entered as zero. The record gives no estimate of how much has reached the water. The case has no closing date. The database was last updated Monday morning.
In the meantime, the sheen has grown.
‘It’s getting worse’
“It’s got rainbow colors out there, and it’s escalating. It’s getting worse,” Jim Duerr, a longtime neighbor, told 7 News WKBW on Oct. 15, standing near the South Ogden Street Bridge. “We want to know where this is coming from, and we want transparency.”
WKBW reported a strong chemical odor that day and a sheen much larger than the one its reporter saw on Oct. 12. Common Council Member Bryan Bollman came out to the bridge.
“I’m not sure what it is,” Bollman said. “I will be reaching out to the DEC to see if they’ve tested this, but certainly a smell in the air and very visible in the water, oily type substance.” He added: “We need to know what this is.”
Bollman later said DEC told him it believes the substance is petroleum. He said the odor was probably unrelated and likely came from a nearby green waste site, according to the station.
DEC has hired a contractor, T and R Environmental, to contain the spill and find where it starts. Crews have laid booms at several spots and searched the shoreline by kayak, WKBW reported. A boom much larger than the earlier ones now stretches across the river under the bridge. The Coast Guard and the Buffalo Sewer Authority have also responded. The sewer authority has asked people to stay away from the booms.
What residents want to know
The questions from the riverbank are basic. Is it safe? Is it toxic? Where is it coming from?
“We would like to know if it’s safe,” one South Buffalo resident told WKBW on Oct. 12. “We want to know if it is toxic. We want to know if it’s dangerous to be here.”
Duerr has asked a pointed one. More than a decade ago, he raised questions about building South Buffalo Charter School on a former brownfield next to the river. He wants investigators to rule out whether contamination under that property is feeding the sheen. “I want the truth out,” he said. “I want the truth to be known.”
There is no public finding either way. WKBW also reported that a government map shows a hazardous liquid pipeline in the area, with marker signs beside the bridge. DEC has not said publicly that the pipeline is involved, and nothing in the spill record names one.
A stretch of river with a history
The Chronicle searched DEC’s spill data for the Ogden Street stretch of the river. This would not be the first unexplained petroleum sheen there.
- On Aug. 29, 2023, DEC logged “unknown petroleum” on the Buffalo River at Ogden Street, source “Unknown.” That case stayed open until March 12, 2024, more than six months later.
- A day later, on Aug. 30, 2023, a second unknown-petroleum report came in from the 300 block of South Ogden Street. It was closed the same day.
- On Sept. 25, 2020, an oil report on the river at South Ogden was opened and closed in a single day, also with the source listed as unknown.
The river has been through a far bigger version of this before. In September 2020, DEC and the Coast Guard oversaw cleanup of a petroleum discharge near a combined sewer overflow at the foot of Babcock Street, by the former ExxonMobil refinery on Elk Street. In a release at the time, DEC said the oil was “believed to be associated with subsurface contamination” left by former refinery operations. In other words, the oil was coming up from old pollution in the ground. That case had a known site and a responsible party. This one, so far, has neither.
Why it matters
The Buffalo River is one of the region’s great comeback stories, and one of its most expensive. Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper says the restoration partnership it leads has spent more than $100 million over 20 years. That money removed 1 million cubic yards of toxic sediment and restored more than 2 miles of shoreline. It notes that the contaminants already removed include “petroleum-related compounds, PAHs, and metals including arsenic, cadmium, and lead.”
People now row, paddle and fish on that water. “You know it’s a waterway,” Duerr said. “Not good for the fish. People fish down here.”
The open questions are the ones a public agency is best placed to answer. How much product has been recovered from the booms? Did laboratory tests confirm the diesel, mineral oil and latex the record lists? Have crews narrowed the source to a pipe, an outfall or a property? And if a responsible party is found, will it pay for the cleanup DEC has contracted for?
DEC has said the investigation is ongoing. It asks anyone who sees a suspected spill to call the state spill hotline at 1-800-457-7362.
“Hopefully they can get to the bottom of it and get it remediated properly,” Duerr said.
Featured photo: The Buffalo River, looking downriver from the South Park Avenue bridge in South Buffalo, in November 2021. Photo by Andre Carrotflower via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.
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