Talk about getting a pig in a poke.

The Flintkote plant has been shuttered for decades but the underlying pollution continues to be a threat to public health.A little over a decade ago, Niagara County seized an abandoned plant in Lockport in lieu of unpaid property taxes. The county then found out the site is heavily contaminated with PCBs, dioxin and heavy metals.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation later completed a plan for a $22 million cleanup project for the Eighteen Mile Creek corridor -- where the plant was located -- but last year DEC decided it couldn't afford to carry the plan out.

This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it would add the creek, which empties into Lake Ontario, to the federal Superfund list. However, that decision allocates no funds and sets no schedule clean-up, according to the Buffalo News.

EPA spokesman Elias Rodriguez said the federal agency intends to conduct its own investigation, starting this summer. For sites like Eighteen Mile Creek, where the main polluters are long since out of business, the EPA does its own probe and spends its own money.

"Therefore, it may be several years before significant EPA cleanup funding is required," Rodriguez added.