But for decades, there was no fence. Children played freely on the site, with their parents unaware a top-secret program begun during World War II had left behind potentially lifethreatening contaminants.
Linde Air Products Co. had enriched uranium for use in the atomic bomb under a contract with the Army’s Manhattan Project.
“Everyone played on the landfill,” said Carleton R. Zeisz, Tonawanda City Council president. “Kids rode their dirt bikes, there was even a pit where people swam. We knew there was garbage up there, but it was just garbage — we didn’t think anything of it.”
The idea of radioactive garbage — or soil, or swimming holes — never crossed anyone’s mind then. Today, more than 60 years since those experiments began, it does.
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