Seven months after the Safety Kleen hazardous-waste plant in Clarence was severely damaged in a chemical fire, the facility's new owners have agreed to shut it down.

Clean Harbors bought the chemical services division of Safety Kleen, which owns the plant at Wehrle Drive and Main Street, as well as several other waste-management facilities across the United States and Canada.

Since that purchase in September, Clean Harbors had been in discussions with state environmental officials about transferring Safety Kleen's operating permit for the Clarence plant over to Clean Harbors.

But town officials received word this week that Clean Harbors no longer plans to petition the state for the permit transfer.

Instead, the company notified the state that it will work with environmental officials to close the plant.

That means that after nearly two decades in operation, there will no longer be any disposal, storage or treatment of hazardous waste at the site, town officials said Wednesday.

A permanent closure of the plant is what several town residents have been after since the Aug. 14 fire that caused about $2 million in damage at the plant and forced some neighbors to remain inside their homes with the windows closed.

"This is good news," Supervisor Kathleen Hallock said.

"I always felt that I would never want to put our town residents through anything like that again. It was just so frightening," Hallock added.

Meanwhile, Clean Harbors, in a letter to state environmental officials this week, said that even though the company never took title to the Clarence property, it still agreed to assume responsibility for cleaning up the site.

The plant has not been in operation since the Aug. 14 fire. Clean Harbors said it has removed all remaining waste from the site.

Hallock said town officials will seek a meeting with representatives from Clean Harbors to find out exactly what steps the company will take to close the plant and what it plans to do with the site afterward.

In addition to its agreement with the town, Safety Kleen also had an agreement with the watchdog group Concerned Citizens of Clarence. That outlawed any increases in the quantities of hazardous waste that could be stored or treated at the facility and limited waste shipments to 20 trucks a week.

Patricia M. Melancon, president of Concerned Citizens of Clarence and a longtime opponent of the hazardous-waste plant, said she was stunned by the company's plans to close it.

"This is a tremendously good thing for the Town of Clarence. It rights a wrong that has been plaguing our town for decades," Melancon said.

e-mail: hmcneil@buffnews.com

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