Emergency crews and environmental regulators responded to a residential property on 99th Street in Niagara Falls on Thursday, September 10th, after a private test well ruptured into a toxic emergency, sending a father to the hospital with acute illness and uncovering a foul, dark sludge bubbling up from the earth.
The property – located a mere 100 yards from the infamous Love Canal landfill – has become ground zero in an escalating battle between local residents Daniel and Jocelyn McKiernan and state agencies that have spent months downplaying the toxic reality beneath their feet.
Frustrated by bureaucratic foot-dragging and what they describe as a decades-long pattern of state deception, the McKiernans hired an independent contractor to conduct soil borings and install monitoring wells in their backyard…