By Ashley M. Casey
Staff Writer
More than a decade after a cleanup plan was released, Honeywell has declared the remediation of the bottom of Onondaga Lake to be complete. According to the company, the quality of the lake water is “the best it’s been in more than 100 years.”
The state Department of Environmental Conservation and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency outlined in 2005 the Onondaga Lake Cleanup Plan, which included:
• Dredging 2.2 million cubic yards of lake material
• Capping 475 acres of lake bottom using 3 million cubic yards of sand, activated carbon and gravel
• Restoring 90 acres of wetlands
• Planting 1.1 million native plants
“The cap provides a new, clean lake bottom and a new habitat layer to promote underwater vegetation growth and fish spawning,” Honeywell said in a statement on its website dedicated to the lake’s remediation, lakecleanup.com.
However, Honeywell’s work isn’t quite done. Other polluted areas near the lake still require cleanup, and Honeywell is responsible for monitoring the lake’s health through 2026.
The company’s draft Onondaga Lake Monitoring and Maintenance Plan outlines measures to test the effectiveness of the cleanup. Honeywell will conduct tests on water samples, the sediment cap, fish tissue and other elements. The draft plan is available on the DEC’s website at dec.ny.gov/docs/remediation_hudson_pdf/olmmpdraft1017.pdf.
While Honeywell is waiting for state and federal approval of its engineering reports for the cleanup, lawyers for the Onondaga Nation say the cleanup efforts do not go far enough.
“To the Onondagas, the lake is a living relative. The Nation has repeatedly expressed the need for a better and more complete remediation to restore the lake to a clean and healthy state,” Nation attorney Alma Lowry wrote in a 12-page complaint to the DEC. “In the absence of such fundamental changes to the remediation plan, however, a strong and effective monitoring and maintenance plan is critical to ensure that whatever progress toward recovery has been made is not lost over time.”
There are still polluted areas near the lake that need remediation, and the state cautions against eating fish caught from Onondaga Lake because they are contaminated with toxic chemicals such as mercury.
The Onondaga Nation is calling for “a more robust and complete set of response actions” in Honeywell’s monitoring plan, including:
• Testing for more chemicals in fish and sediments
• Expanded monitoring of zooplankton, fish and benthic macroinvertebrates
• Monitoring after boating events, high winds, sewage breaks or other events that may disturb the cap
“Discussion of concrete response actions designed to improve remedy performance or meet remedial goals is extremely limited,” the complaint reads.
The Onondagas are also requesting that Honeywell makes raw data about the lake cleanup available to the public and the DEC.
