Isophoric News · Tuesday, October 27, 2026
A capped PCB site the city bought in 2012 has drawn two state violation notices, and state inspectors found ponding on its cap at every visit in 2024
The City of Oswego owns a former foundry site on Mitchell Street that the state lists as a hazardous waste site, and the Department of Public Works uses it to store equipment and materials. The state Department of Environmental Conservation sent the city Notices of Violation on Oct. 2, 2019, and Oct. 23, 2023, and its contractor reported in a draft annual report dated March 2025 that it saw "a ponding and/or a depression in the soft cap during all site inspection" in 2024. Both notices were issued to the city during the administration of Mayor William J. Barlow Jr.; Robert A. Corradino, his successor, took office on Jan. 1, 2024, according to WRVO Public Media. The city did not contaminate the site and did not design the cleanup, and in February 2026 its interim engineer told a council committee the city was planning to regrade the cap to fix depressions and standing water on it.
The site is the Oswego Castings Site, number 738033 on the state registry. A foundry operated there from 1956 to 1986, and polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, were found after it closed, above the 50 parts per million level the state uses to classify hazardous waste. The state designated it a Class 2 site, one with a significant threat to public health and the environment, in June 1989. It was cleaned up in two stages by others before the city owned it: a 1997 decision called for excavating about 4,100 cubic yards of soil, sediment and foundry sand and covering the landfill area with soil and crushed stone, and a 2000 decision called for a concrete pad over the yard area and the sawmill floor. Work finished in 2001. In 2012 the state reclassified the site from Class 2 to Class 4, which it describes as properly remediated and requiring site management, and said a significant threat no longer exists. The contamination is still there under the cover, which is the remedy, and the state requires the cover, a groundwater monitoring program and a restriction to industrial or commercial use to stay in place. The state's report says, citing the county's real property database, that the city acquired the property from Great Lakes Veneer Corp. in November 2012. In a January 2020 response to the state, the city wrote that Great Lakes Veneer had not paid its property taxes and the county foreclosed, and that the city took the site from that foreclosure in 2012. The city wrote that it then leased the site to a private company with an option to buy that was never exercised, that the company returned the site in 2018, and that "at no time from 2012 to the present was a change of use or ownership transmitted to the NYSDEC" according to the city's records. We have not verified the city's account.
The state's report says an Order on Consent was entered in July 1993 by B and K Metals Inc., the former owner, formerly Oberdorfer Foundries Inc., for an investigation of the site. That is the order that governs the site. The report does not say the city is a party to it, and the newsroom has not seen the order. What the report shows the city received are two Notices of Violation. A routine state inspection on July 18, 2019, identified drums and barrels stored improperly, a new storage tank on the concrete cover, road millings placed around the groundwater monitoring wells and over the landfill area, removal of required fencing and signage, and no notice to the state of a change in use of the property. The tank was one used for asphalt emulsion, which the city's response says was installed around Oct. 30, 2018, weighs 18,000 pounds and was used for that product only. The Oct. 2, 2019, notice, which the city's response shows was a schedule of compliance sent by a state attorney, said the city was not in compliance with the site management plan and state regulations and listed corrective measures, among them an engineer's evaluation of the tank's load on the concrete cover, removal of the millings, and grading the landfill area "to improve drainage and prevent ponding of water." The city's response also described what the Department of Public Works does there: staging of equipment and materials for its daily and seasonal operations, which the city treated as a change of use to be reported to the state, and placing snow removed from city roads. In the city's words, "the snow is placed outside the capped area and is disposed in a manner that allows it to naturally melt and follow the natural course of the land and elevations nearby. The snow is placed between MW-5 and MW-7 but does not interfere with those monitoring wells." In the same response the city said it had submitted an engineering evaluation of the tank's load on the cap, asked to use up the tank's contents instead of disposing of them within 90 days because that was "not practical and financially feasible," and wrote that regrading the area where the millings were placed to eliminate ponding "is anticipated to be completed by June 30, 2020." A July 29, 2020, inspection found continued deficiencies. In a Sept. 28, 2020, letter the state gave the city until Oct. 20, 2020, to finish the remaining work "or the NYSDEC would move forward with an Order on Consent for the continued violations." The remaining work included grading the landfill "due to continued ponding of water" and placing signage "to delineate the limits of the landfill that indicate no staging of materials can occur in the area." The report does not say whether an order was ever entered against the city. The February minutes refer to a DEC consent order on the site without saying whose, and nothing else the newsroom holds states one was entered against the city.
An inspection on March 30, 2023, found "a large vegetation and debris mound on the soft cap," and the state issued the second notice on Oct. 23, 2023. A daily inspection report from March 30, 2023, in the state contractor's 2023 report lists under pending issues a "Large pile of vegetation debris (20ft high) covering soft cap remedy area. DEC to contact attorneys and Property Owner." The contractor wrote in its 2023 report that it saw two large vegetation and mulch piles within the boundaries of the soft cap from July to October 2023, "which was a violation of the Site Management Plan." The report says the corrective action was removing all stored tree debris, mulch and other waste from the capped area, and that the mound was gone before the next inspection on Nov. 10, 2023. After both notices, then, the report records corrective action; the 2019 notice's items are described as continuing in 2020, and the report does not say in what order or when each was finished.
The inspections described next, in 2024, and the February 2026 committee meeting fall in the current mayor's term. The state's contractor, EA Engineering, inspected monthly from January through August 2024 and every two months after that. It reported ponding on the soil cover in February, March, April, August, October and December; in May, "settlement and ponded water on the landfill soil cap and various sized holes and cracks in the concrete cover"; and in June and July "three small piles (two soil and one vegetation debris) located partially inside the northern boundary of the soil cover." Its conclusion is the one quoted above. The report also describes the site's current use in its own words: it is used by the city's Department of Public Works "as a staging area for equipment and materials," and "stockpiles of various materials (i.e., rocks, mulch, vegetation debris) have been observed within the site boundary." It says the boundary fence is damaged near one monitoring well and that the buildings are generally not secured.
On groundwater the report is reassuring on the point that matters most. At the one well checked for dense non-aqueous phase liquid, a heavy contaminant that can sink in groundwater, the contractor found "no measurable DNAPL" in 2024. In 2023 there was measurable product: the 2023 report says the amount "ranged from trace to 0.17 ft (18 July 2023)." The contractor saw a "trace" on the water level indicator in the monthly inspections from January through August 2024 and replaced an absorbent sock each time. The contractor recommends reducing inspections to quarterly or twice a year, and says inspections and sock replacements continue until no product is observed or measured on three consecutive visits. The next round of well sampling was scheduled for the third quarter of 2025. The report is marked as a draft, and the newsroom has not seen a final version or any 2025 report. Its reference list cites a separate document, "2024 Annual Groundwater Monitoring Report," by the same contractor and dated February 2025, which carries the 2024 well sampling results. That report is not among the documents in the state's public file for the site, as the newsroom read the file's index on Oct. 25, where the newest groundwater monitoring report posted is for 2021. The newsroom does not know why the 2024 report is not there.
The city's own 2026 minutes describe the same kind of use. On Jan. 20, 2026, according to the Administrative Services Committee minutes as the newsroom read the page in the clerk's PDF, the public works commissioner, asking to replace a truck-mounted snow blower, said the city's existing unit "has been used to clear heavy snow, manage snow piles at the Mitchell Street upland snow storage site, and, in emergency situations with DEC approval, blow snow into the river." Asked by a councillor whether snow is routinely blown into the river, he said river use "is rare and requires special emergency approval, with normal operations focused on upland snow storage." The minutes do not name the Oswego Castings site; the state's records give the site's address as 375 Mitchell Street, and the city's 2020 letter to the state says snow from city roads is placed there, so the newsroom has read the January reference as the same place but has not asked the city.
On Feb. 17, 2026, the Administrative Services Committee considered a request from the city's Engineering Office that the Common Council declare the Operable Unit 1 Soil Cover Rehabilitation and Restoration Project a Type II Action under the state's environmental review law, which means no full environmental assessment is required. According to the committee's minutes, as the newsroom read the page in the clerk's PDF, Interim City Engineer John Trimble explained that the project "involves regrading the top of a capped contaminated area on city-owned property that formerly housed Oswego Castings." The minutes continue that the state "monitors the site, and concerns arose about depressions and standing water on the cap, which is also used by DPW for material storage," and that the work "will be performed this spring by DPW staff, and under a DEC consent order, a SEQR exemption applies." The minutes say the committee approved item 4 unanimously, and the request went to the full Council as Resolution 53 on the Feb. 23 agenda. In order, then, the documents say this: in January 2020 the city wrote that regrading to eliminate ponding was anticipated by June 30, 2020; the state's contractor found ponding or a depression in the soft cap at every inspection in 2024; and in February 2026 the city's engineer described depressions and standing water on the cap and work to be done that spring. The state ordered the landfill area graded to stop ponding in 2019 and repeated that in 2020, and ponding on that cap was recorded throughout 2024. The documents we hold do not say whether any regrading was done in between. The newsroom has not seen what the Council did with Resolution 53. The most recent state account of the cap is the report on 2024: the state's file for the site, which the newsroom checked on Oct. 23, 2026, holds nothing newer than that report, which was posted in March 2025, and the groundwater sampling scheduled for the third quarter of 2025 has no published results. Nothing the newsroom holds says whether the regrading planned for spring 2026 was done, and the search behind that statement covered 165 city text files from 2026, some of which are scanned minutes with no searchable text.
The consent order in that sentence is the 1993 order the report describes, which is the former owner's, and the report is the reason the newsroom reads it that way; the minutes do not say whose order is meant, and the city has not been asked. Isophoric News asked the city on Oct. 23 whether the Council adopted Resolution 53 and whether the regrading was carried out and has been inspected and accepted by the state; the mayor replied on Oct. 26, directing the newsroom to file a request under the Freedom of Information Law to obtain the information requested, and the questions were not answered. The newsroom has not asked the state, or the city about the other points in this report.
Source A · Source B · Source C · Source D · Source E · Source F · Source G · Source H · Source I · Source J
Documents
- Oswego Castings Site (738033) 2024 Annual Report, draft (EA Engineering and Geology, P.C., for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation) Download · Original
- Oswego Castings Site (738033) 2023 Annual Report, final (EA Engineering, P.C., for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation) Download · Original
- City of Oswego Corrective Action response to the state's Schedule of Compliance (filed with the state) Download · Original
- Oswego Castings Site (738033) reclassification from Class 2 to Class 4 (New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of Health) Download · Original
- Administrative Services Committee agenda, February 17, 2026 Download · Original
- Administrative Services Committee minutes, February 17, 2026 Download · Original
- Administrative Services Committee minutes, January 20, 2026 Download · Original
- Common Council agenda, February 23, 2026 Download · Original