I am editor and owner of the Sun Bay Paper, a Fort Myers based paper, with a following of +/- 2.2 million people. Because the Buffalo News refuses to print facts instead of opinion, potentially damaging the value of millions of homeowners concerning a serious situation.
With my background as an FBI Agent, Supervisor, with a bachelor’s degree in Material Science and Organic Chemistry, I was tasked with creating the EPA Environmental Crimes Task Force for Western New York in the 1980s, which included all 17 counties! This was a very successful, joint Task Force that included the FBI, DEC, EPA, DOD, AEC…et al.! I will not allow a self-declared reporter who is looking for fame by creating imaginary facts she saw years ago by another knows nothing, who also has no science background whatsoever and is creating unnecessary, incorrect and self-serving reporting giving homeowners, specifically in Western New York, serious concern about everything. Now it’s a RADON …run … “Chicken Little the sky is falling” … chicken little …radon poisoning. She tried to create another Love Canal by dragging nonsense about contamination of industrial waste on an island that was declared clean 40 years ago by the DEC. We got that turned around …and now she has picked another target, radon!
The Buffalo News, for some reason, prints the nonsense this journalist puts out there without vetting, or … they need a new Editor-in-Chief or better yet just close the doors! My articles are factual …I thoroughly research each topic and support my points with data from reliable, knowledgeable sources.
For example, just recently the news reported … claimed … the DEC environmental remediation database noted that prior to 1930, “the western end of Cayuga Island was extended by about 250 yards into the Niagara River by the placement of fill and industrial materials.” WRONG! There were two large extensions. One was 160 ACRES and the other 100 ACRES, and both came from the Erie Canal. Total extension was 260 ACRES.
“The DEC’s environmental remediation database notes that prior to 1930” … There was no DEC in 1930s, and therefore there was no database that the DEC could refer to. In the 1980s the Task Force was up and running and it was IMPOSSIBLE for “industrial materials” to be dumped on any part of the Island as a waste depot on the “western end of the Island”, it just didn’t happen! The Island was nearly fully occupied at the time, making it impossible for contaminated materials—especially industrial waste—to be dumped there unnoticed.
This same Nobel Prize wannabe states…. “The DEC notes that the area is contaminated with mercury, lead, BHCs and other organic chemicals…” All those chemicals are in the earth naturally and “man” may have put some down to fertilize his peaches. But…those “elements” were naturally formed by mother nature!
As far as the samples go… I watched the batch DEC did in the Fall. Those samples came from “the right of way”. What was NOT said, is that the “right of way” is blacktopped from 12 inches to 20 inches, mostly closer to 20 inches the last +/- 1000 feet (The Task Force was on site, watched and measured the blacktop and 4 foot deep). The samples I saw drilled were odorless 2” by 3-4ft deep. There was only one, off the blacktop!
Below is an EPA map of Radon that is natural to Mother Earth. The chart shows the Radon contamination!? Is it contamination if it appears in nature? Do you think it is incorrect …natural …dumped or a little of all? Please note that the entire country…has Radon! The entire New York State is over 4.0 picocuries!!!
What will you do now? Make the entire state a Super Fund State? The EPA states that “There is NO completely safe level of Radon!” If you are looking for Radon …look for the Manhattan Project, it’s that property that’s fenced where nobody lives!
Do you think Governor Hochul will be pleased that you believe you have discovered radon when no one else has? The truth is that these so-called discoveries are not new. What you describe as unusually high levels of a naturally occurring element may have been left behind by someone—possibly the Department of Defense—or it may simply be natural.