Clean Up Ithaca

Ithaca -- It won't be long before the Markles Flats building on Court Street is torn down and replaced with basketball courts, ball fields, and a parking lot.

The Ithaca City School District recently received permission from the State Education Department to take the building down, board president Rob Ainslie said. After it is taken down, probably in the spring, the site will be cleaned up of toxic waste in the summer.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is currently investigating oil found in Fall Creek, which likely originated at Cornell’s Arts and Sciences Alumni Building on 726 University Avenue.

DEC officials have told multiple media outlets that although the cause and source of contamination remains uncertain, the creek is safe.

Drinking water stored in a tank in Ithaca was reported to contain volatile organic chemicals resulting from repainting as recently as Feb. 18, but the tank is still in service, and the agency that runs the water system is telling customers there is no reason for alarm.

Wastewater from the animal carcass digester at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine overflowed for at least 14 hours last Friday night into Saturday afternoon before the spill was discovered.

A Dec. 12 letter obtained by The Journal from a Cornell engineer to the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Facility detailed a series of errors that resulted in the spill into sanitary and storm sewers. On Feb. 19, another series of errors at the facility also dumped treated vet waste into Ithaca sewers.

ITHACA, N.Y. -- An equipment malfunction at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine causes thousands of gallons of animal carcass wastewater to be dumped into Ithaca's Wastewater Treatment Facility and storm drains that run into Fall Creek and Beebe Lake.

A statement by Kyu-Jung Whang, Cornell University's vice president for facility services, described the spill that happened late Friday night.

It turns out that the one Plain Street neighbor with 10 inches of carcinogenic coal tar under her yard works at the Cancer Resource Center and has two sisters who've survived breast cancer.

NYSEG has recently completed an extensive environmental cleanup of coal tar on the half-block bounded by Court, Plain and Esty streets where its predecessor ran a gas plant for 75 years. But even after 10 years of testing and cleanup, more coal tar remains.

The decision about whether the Ithaca wastewater treatment plant should accept digested animal carcass waste from Cornell University has been put off for another month.

At a Wednesday afternoon meeting, the multi-municipality committee that oversees the publicly owned plant agreed to delay a vote until its next session, July 14, because two of its members -- Ithaca mayor Carolyn Peterson and Ithaca Town Board member Pat Leary -- were unable to attend.

The message was loud and clear, state officials said: neighbors of Clinton West Plaza want the site cleaned to the highest residential standard -- not the restricted commercial standard currently proposed.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation hosted a meeting Wednesday night to explain and answer questions about its draft cleanup plan for Clinton West. Historic leaks of dry-cleaning fluid left a pool of contaminated groundwater at the southwest corner of the property, between Clinton West Laundry and homes along North Titus Avenue.

ITHACA -- An accidental release at Cornell University on Friday morning sent 4,300 gallons of digested animal carcass waste into the city's sewer system.

Cornell asserts that the treated waste was neither infectious nor hazardous, and the city's Superintendent of Public Works said he didn't expect the waste to cause problems at the municipally owned Ithaca Wastewater Treatment plant -- though Cornell does not have a permit to discharge to Ithaca's plant.