Posted on March 3, 2020
Syracuse, N.Y. — Opponents of a proposed beach on Onondaga Lake say the lake may still be too contaminated to allow people to swim there.
Lindsay Speer, a member of A Better Future for Onondaga Lake, said the proposed beach area at Willow Bay, at the lake’s northern tip, hasn’t done properly tested for toxic chemicals. Sediment at the southern end was so contaminated with industrial waste that Honeywell had to dredge and cover over millions of cubic yards of lake bottom.
“There’s been this assumption that that (the north) end of the lake is clean,” Speer said. “Where they’re proposed to build the beach there has been zero sediment testing.”
Until more definitive testing is done, she said, potential beach-goers could be exposed to contamination at the lake bottom.
The countysaid there’s no need In a response to public comments about the beach, the county said that a health risk study, approved by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, “indicated that no areas in the northern basin of Onondaga Lake exhibited unacceptable risk to adults or children potentially exposed to sediment by walking or wading into the lake.”
County officials have said that bacterial tests show a beach there would be safe for swimming, which has been banned since 1940. The state Department of Environmental Conservation considers the northern end of the lake to be a “Class B water body,” which means it’s clean enough for a beach but not yo be a source of drinking water.
On Saturday, county officials will hold a public meeting to reveal the conclusions of a $440,000 feasibility study for the beach, along with cost estimates and drawings. The meeting will be 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Salina Town Hall, 201 School Road, Liverpool.
The Better Future group will hold its own news conference at the town hall at 10:30 a.m., just before the meeting.
Speer said it’s too early to contemplate building a beach. The capping and dredging at the south end was completed just three years ago — not even enough time for the federal Environmental Protection Agency to conduct its first required five-year review. Speer said no one is sure how well the sand-mixture cap will continue to hold the mercury-laden sediments left in the lake bottom.
“Onondaga Lake is a Superfund site and it always will be a Superfund site because they did not completely clean out the lake,” Speer said.
In a two-week, online survey conducted by the county in January 2019, just 22% of respondents agreed that the lake was safe to swim in. Based on other questions of people who use Onondaga Lake Park, however, the county estimated that a beach could draw about 32,000 people each summer.
Source: syracuse.com
