An environmental whistleblower is charging, in a court document, that the Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in the Falls is “willfully harming the local community.”

The claim is made in a previously filed, but since withdrawn, federal lawsuit involving New York State Department of Environmental Conservation engineer Dylan Keenan. He was honored Monday by the Sierra Club Niagara Group and the NAACP Niagara Falls Branch with their Environmental Justice Hero Award for being the first to alert Falls residents of potentially harmful emissions coming from the facility just off 56th Street.

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