Honeywell company ordered to clean up lake

[Bufflehead]

Superfund lake to be cleaned up
Honeywell to spend $451 million to remove pollutants in New York

A channel makes its way into Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, N.Y., where Honeywell has agreed to dredge the lakebed to remove mercury and other pollutants.

Updated: 12:14 a.m. CT Oct 12, 2006
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Honeywell Inc. will spend $451 million to help clean up Onondaga Lake, once a sacred American Indian waterway turned into a toxic stew by a century of municipal and industrial pollution.

The agreement announced Thursday is one of the largest legal settlements against a polluter in state history, said Gov. George Pataki and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Honeywell will commit to a nine-year cleanup plan that calls for dredging 2.65 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment from the five-mile long lake on Syracuse's northeastern limits, according to a consent order to be filed in U.S. District Court in Syracuse.



Additionally, Honeywell agreed to seal 579 acres of lake bottom with a cap of sand, gravel and other material.

Meanwhile, Onondaga County is spending $500 million on a 15-year project to stop polluting the lake with sewage by 2012. The county is under a federal court order to make the lake safe for swimming and fishing and comply with the federal Clean Water Act.

Much of the lake's contamination is the legacy of a former Allied Chemical Co. complex that closed in 1986, leaving behind mercury and other contaminants. Honeywell took over Allied in 1999 and became responsible for the pollution. Municipal sewage overflows have also fouled the lake.

Onondaga Lake was once the spiritual center of the Onondaga Nation, one of the six upstate New York tribes that formed the Iroquois Confederacy. The great Onondaga Chief Hiawatha once canoed on its waters. In the late 19th century, the lake was ringed by grand resorts and amusement parks and was a popular sports fishery.

Today, it is one of only three lakes in the country listed as a federal Superfund site.