According to the Record of Decision (ROD) and the Explanation of Significant Differences (ESD), Honeywell’s cleanup will:
- Dredge up to 2.65 million cubic yards of contaminated sediments to a depth that will allow for a ‘cap’ to be built without the loss of lake surface area.
- Dredge in the in lake waste deposit to remove areas within ‘hot spots’.
- Install a cap over 579 acres of lake-bottom
- Treatment and/or off-site disposal of contaminated sediments.
- Treat water created by the dredging and sediment handling process to meet NYSDEC discharge limits.
- Extend the lakeshore and install a ‘barrier wall’ – a steel wall keyed into the clay layer beneath the lake – along the southwest corner of the lake; build a pumping system on the shore-side of the wall to retrieve chlorinated benzenes.
- Operation, maintenance and monitoring program once the plan has been implemented.
- Total estimated cost for an unacceptable, inadequate ‘cleanup’ plan: $451,000,000 dollars.
What Honeywell and NYSDEC’s ‘cleanup’ will NOT do:
- This plan will NOT dredge the additional 18 million cubic yards that the NYSDEC found to be contaminated with dangerous, persistent, and mobile chemicals.
- This plan will NOT dredge the entire in lake waste deposit – a toxic waste dump within the lake as a result of decades of Honeywell’s dumping.
- This plan does NOT effectively contain toxic chemicals and heavy metals that will be left in the lake-bottom sediments. Caps are not a reliable form of containment – they will fail, and whether it is in 10 years or 110 years, it is only a matter of time. And when that happens, the chemicals will be re-released into the ecosystem.
- This plan will NOT dredge the entire in lake waste deposit – a toxic waste dump within the lake as a result of decades of Honeywell’s dumping.
- This plan will NOT remove or even cap the entirety of the lake-bottom. Mercury is found throughout lake-bottom sediments and will continue to methylate, becoming even more dangerous to the lake’s inhabitants.
- This plan does NOT set any goals for making the lake ‘swimmable’ or ‘fishable’ – part of the clean water act.
- This plan will NOT remove all of the chlorinated benzenes. Retrieval wells cannot and will not extract all of the carcinogens.
- This plan does NOT provide a permanent or effective remedy for Onondaga Lake. The plan relies on hopes and dreams that the cap will not fail and that pumping.
- Total estimated cost for a real, thorough cleanup: $2.16 billion.