What this map shows. Every documented hazardous-waste and radioactive site in Niagara County, New York — together with the monitoring wells and soil samples that record what was measured, where, and when. Every figure traces back to a named source document, and any sample can be looked up by its own identifier.

How to use it. Click any folder tab on the left to open its panel, then open the drop-down menus inside it to switch layers on over the map — hazard sites, monitoring wells, radiation, chemicals, and cancer incidence. Use the search box above to jump straight to a site, well, or sample by its ID.

Continually updated. This is a living compilation. Roughly 75 GB of source documents are still being processed and vetted; layers and detections are added as each one is verified, so the map grows over time. A figure marked pending is not yet fully sourced — not disputed.

This project was developed with substantial AI assistance under human direction; how AI was used, and who is responsible for what, is set out in the AI disclosure. Corrections are welcome — use Report an error below.
Your address is sent to the US Census Bureau geocoder to convert it to coordinates. It is not stored by this map and is not sent anywhere else.
What this does
Enter an address and this reports the straight-line distance to the nearest documented hazard site and to the nearest sampling point where a contaminant was detected. It is a locator, for general orientation.
What it does not do
It does not assess risk, exposure, or safety, and it cannot tell you anything about your water, soil, air or health. Distance alone does not determine exposure — see the notes with any result.
Click on the drop-down menus below to explore data
Hazard site points▾
Every documented contaminated site in Niagara County, each dot coloured by its regulatory programme. Turn the layer on or off, or show/hide individual programme types below — the list doubles as the colour legend.
Filter by site type
Area layers▾
Shaded areas rather than points. Contamination by tract shades each census tract by the share of its land that is contaminated; the impact zone outlines the Niagara Falls area where most sites cluster. Each legend appears automatically when you switch its layer on.
Water & Infrastructure▾
Base-map context: the Niagara River, creeks and water bodies near monitoring sites, plus the county's major roads.
NYSDOH Environmental Facilities & Cancer Mapping · cases diagnosed 2011–2015 · census block groups · expected counts age- and sex-adjusted to New York State rates (not a national benchmark) · provisional as of Dec 2017. Method
Click on the drop-down menus below to explore data
Highlighted Areas▾
NYSDOH’s own determination. Using the spatial scan statistic, NYSDOH identified areas with at least 50% more cases than expected, where the ratio was unlikely to be a chance occurrence. Each block group either belongs to a highlighted area or it does not.

Read this as a cluster-level finding — it says a block group sits inside an elevated area, not that this block group’s own rate was individually tested.
Select a cancer to map the block groups belonging to a highlighted area.
Standardized Incidence Ratio▾
Observed ÷ expected cases for each block group. Expected counts are age- and sex-adjusted to New York State rates, so 1.0 = exactly what the state’s demographics predict.

A ratio, not a significance test. A high SIR in a small population can rest on very few cases; treat single block groups with caution.
The population level incidence data show geographic patterns and do not establish individual exposure, disease causation, or a causal relationship with mapped sites. Small area estimates may be unstable and suppressed values are not zero.
Everything with radioactive material or radionuclides — sites, wells and soil. Pick a material or radionuclide in a section below to map it; well & soil points show a time-series plot when clicked, with a running total by year.
Click on the drop-down menus below to explore data
Hazard Sites▾
Documented radioactive/radiological sites, by the material they contain — isotopes (U/Th/Ra) and class (TENORM slag, FUSRAP Manhattan-Project legacy, MED-AEC weapons-era facilities, Other where radionuclides were verified in the site's own documents but no agency has classified it). A site joins this list either from a named agency determination or from a verified radionuclide detection in its own reports — each popup says which.
Select radioactive material▾
Select a material to show the sites that contain it.
Monitoring Wells & Soil▾
Wells and soil zones with measured radionuclides, grouped by element. Total Uranium & Radium-226 have multi-year trends; the isotopes are mostly single-year snapshots; Mill No. 2 soil is a one-time gamma survey (no time series). Click any point for its plot.
Select radionuclide▾
Select a radionuclide to map the wells & soil that carry it.
Radioactive Sites · Wells & Soil▾
Everything at a radioactive site in one place — its monitoring wells plus the soil/slag zones a gamma survey flagged for radioactive material (uranium, thorium, radium). Toggle a site to map all of its points. More sites will appear here as they're added.
Filter by contaminant across the hazard sites and the monitoring-well network. Wells carry sampling dates — their menu adds a year filter, per-well time-series plots, and a running total by year.
Click on the drop-down menus below to explore data
Hazard Sites▾
Sites where a contaminant was found in the site's own documents and verified against the table cell reporting it. These are chemical presence flags — sites don't carry sampling dates, so there's no year filter or trend on this side. A site whose chemicals could not yet be verified says so in its popup and lists nothing.
Shows sites where the selected contaminant was verified against a source document.
Monitoring Wells & Soil▾
Wells with measured chemistry. Pick a chemical to map where it was detected (the well layers switch on automatically); add a year to show detections by that year or earlier. Click a well for its concentration-vs-year plot; the running total appears bottom-left.
Shows wells where the selected contaminant was detected.
Selected high detections▾
The highest measured detections in the network, selected against a named comparison standard. Tap one to filter the map to that contaminant and fly to the sample. Each entry carries its source citation.
Click on the drop-down menus below to explore data
Well layers▾
Each water droplet is a well or sampling station — a blood-red core (contamination), sized by the number of chemicals detected, with a ring colour showing what it samples (see “Filter by sampling type”). The three toggles choose the data source; legacy wells' popups carry a ⚑ approximate-location note.
Filter by When Last Sampled▾
Droplets fade with age — the fainter a droplet, the longer ago that point was last sampled. Fading shows age, not severity: an older point is an older observation, not a cleaner one. Tick a period to show only those points.
Filter by Sampling Type▾
With nothing ticked, every well shows as a blood-red drop with a grey outline. Tick one or more types — bedrock vs. overburden groundwater, surface water, remediation/recovery — to show only those wells (the rest hide), their outlines taking the type colour. The swatches are the colour key.
Site Specific▾
Each finished site's georeferenced sampling locations and traced boundaries, on their own.
These sampling points are read off scanned report figures, not surveyed. Median leave-one-out error is about 9 m; a quarter of points are worse than 20 m. Each point carries its own error estimate in its popup. What these points are and are not.
Per-site views for sites that report data outside the standard chemical dropdown. Each site is its own drop-down; more will be added here.
S-Area · Intensity Over Time▾
S-Area's 184 wells report Total Organic Concentration, not named chemicals. Pick a year to colour the wells by the latest TOC reading known by that year.
Love Canal▾
Everything for Love Canal in one place — the monitoring wells (contaminant chemistry), the piezometers (water levels), and the leachate-containment infrastructure.
Wells carry contaminant chemistry (click one for its concentration-vs-year plot). Piezometers measure groundwater levels (2015–2022). Pumps & tanks are the containment collection infrastructure.