WAYNE COUNTY, Mich. – After more than a year of fighting, Western Wayne County residents received the news they desperately wanted: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers confirmed that radioactive material from the Manhattan Project, once planned to be shipped to Michigan, is now headed to Texas.
Shipments began on July 15. The toxic legacy has haunted Niagara County for decades.
The Niagara Falls storage site in Lewiston has held hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of radioactive waste generated during the 1940s, when the U.S. government built an atomic bomb to drop on Japan as part of the Manhattan Project.
Additional waste was added in later years as nuclear weapons components were processed at the site.
After decades of planning and public concern, the removal process finally began under the guidance of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
However, a lawsuit and court order blocked planned shipments of the material to Wayne County, sparking public uproar.
Andrews, Texas — about 350 miles west of Dallas — is the new destination.
The Waste Control Specialists site has accepted the contract to store the radioactive waste.
The shipments will travel via specialized railroad cars on the long route to the Lone Star State.
Brent Lasada, project manager for the NiagTexasara Falls storage site, explained the logistics.
“Now it’s a combination of trucking and rail. So the trucking outside, coming out of the site, looks very similar.
It looks identical to what it would have been going to Michigan. Just now, we’re going to a transload facility to load it up via rail and take it to Texas.
So it is dependent on the rate at which the material comes out of the site to go to the rail. Once to rail, I believe it’s a couple of days, a handful of days down to make that trip down to Texas.”
Brent Lasada, project manager for the Niagara Falls storage site
The complex removal involves up to 280,000 cubic yards of material, with shipments being done in phases. Phase one is scheduled to finish in 2027.
Lasada added on costs: “Our feasibility study had the cost at just under $600 million. As we go through our design, we’re getting updated costs.”
Wayne County Executive Warren Evans reacted to the decision, saying: “I have to say I am extremely relieved by the decision of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ship the leftover radioactive waste from the Manhattan Project to another state, which means it will not be coming here to Wayne County.”
“The NFSS Phase 1 remedial effort, which includes remediation of site soils outside of the IWCS, is ongoing.
Transportation of waste began the week of July 14, 2025. The waste is being loaded into lined and tarped intermodal containers, trucked to a rail transfer station in Buffalo, NY, and finally, transported via rail to the Waste Control Specialists disposal facility in Andrews, TX.
Please note that the truck transportation route from NFSS to the interstate has still avoids the Lewiston Porter School and the Tuscarora Nation.
USACE anticipates that Phase 1 fieldwork will be completed by the end of calendar year 2025.
Phase 1 Remediation Progress and Air Monitoring Infographics have been posted to the NFSS website and will be updated regularly.
The NFSS Integrated Technical Office (ITO), located at the project site will continue oversight of all remedial and design activities and will continue to coordinate with first responders and other key stakeholders as the progress continues.
U.S. Army Corps