Four families in Western New York have secured housing after being temporarily relocated because of high levels of radiological contamination on their property. This comes after months of testing by the Environmental Protection Agency and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.<\/p>\n
Lexi Hawk is among the affected residents. After so much confusion, she said she doesn\u2019t want to ever return home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there’s a lot of mistrust,\u201d said Hawk. \u201cThere’s just a lot of trauma. So even if there is nothing, I\u2019m still going to question it. Every time I go outside, I\u2019m still going to be weird and, you know, not let my daughter go to certain spots \u2026 we don’t want to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hawk grew up in the same neighborhood in Niagara that she\u2019s now moving away from. Many of the surrounding homes have been in the same family for generations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just leaves us a sense of guilt,\u201d said Hawk. \u201cOther people, like my neighbor, my papa, who lives behind me, like they’re still in their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of Hawk\u2019s neighbors are still waiting on test results. Jon Dullen lives next door and had testing done as recently as this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just took the EPA two months to even give me my first batch of results,\u201d said Dullen. \u201cAt this moment in time, I just want answers for everyone as well as [for] my family\u2019s generational curses, and I wish for them to end.\u201d<\/p>\n
But according to Hawk, there\u2019s still a long road ahead. She still wants the raw data from earlier assessments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is far from over. I mean, everybody deserves answers. This whole neighborhood deserves answers. I’m going to start working on the fact that. Why are we the only ones that are being relocated?\u201d asked Hawk. \u201cWe need a better plan for all of Niagara to get cleaned up, because it can’t end here.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement to Spectrum News 1, the NYSDEC said, \u201cAssessment teams continue to make substantial progress conducting fieldwork across areas of interest in Niagara and Erie counties through a multi-agency enhanced investigation response \u2026 Remediation plans \u2026 will be relayed directly to the homeowners.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four families in Western New York have secured housing after being temporarily relocated because of high levels of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[113,127323,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,200],"class_list":["post-353310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-buffalo","tag-megan-acker","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}