When he brushed his teeth, for instance, he sometimes noticed a peculiar smell coming through the drain. It seemed like his 8-year-old son’s asthma was getting worse, and his pregnant girlfriend was having occasional nosebleeds and headaches. And a couple of months ago, when he replaced a sump pump in the basement, it was covered in a thick tar-like substance. “It was just black,” he recalled. But none of these things struck him as too suspicious until he realized what was underneath the large, empty swath of grass, sealed off by a tall chain-link fence, just two blocks from his front door.

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Persons: Mitchell Montgomery, ” Locations: Niagara Falls