Love Canal

File:Lovecanalaerial.jpg

Love Canal (1981)

Love Canal is a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, located at (43.08056, -78.95194). It officially covers 36 square blocks in the far southeastern corner of the city, along what is now known as 99th Street. Two bodies of water define the northern and southern boundaries of the neighborhood: Bergholtz Creek to the north and the Niagara River one-quarter mile (400 m) to the south.

Early history

The name Love Canal came from the last name of William T. Love, who in the early 1890s envisioned a canal connecting the two levels of Niagara River separated by the Niagara Falls. He believed it would serve the area's burgeoning industries with much needed hydroelectricity. After 1892, Love's plan changed to incorporate a shipping lane that would bypass the Niagara Falls. Due to economic depression, Love's plan failed. Only one mile (1.6 km) of the canal, about fifteen feet wide and ten feet deep, stretching northward from the Niagara River, was ever dug.

Use as toxic waste disposal site

In 1920, Love's land was sold in public auction to the City of Niagara Falls, which began using the undeveloped area as a landfill for chemical waste disposal. The city disposed of the waste from its thriving petrochemical industry. Later, the United States Army allegedly began using the site as well, burying waste from its experiments in chemical warfare. ^{citation needed}

In 1942, Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation (a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum) expanded use of the site, and, by 1947, acquired the land for its own private use. In the subsequent five year period, the company buried 21,800 tons of toxic waste in the area. Once the site had been filled to capacity in 1952, Hooker closed the site to further disposal and back-filled the canal.

At the time of the closure, Niagara Falls' population was expanding rapidly. The local school board was desperate for land, and attempted to purchase expensive property from Hooker Chemical. The board wanted to build a new elementary school in an area of the property that had not yet been used to bury toxic waste. The corporation refused to sell, but the school board pressed on, threatening expropriation. Eventually, Hooker Chemical capitulated, and sold on the condition that the board buy the entire property for a dollar. In the agreement, Hooker included a seventeen line caveat that explained the dangers of building on the site [1]:

Shortly thereafter, the board began construction on the 99th Street School in its originally intended location. The building site was forced to relocate when contractors discovered two pits filled with chemicals. The new location was directly on top of the former chemical landfill. During construction, a clay seal which Hooker had put in to stop the chemicals seeping out was broken through. Ironically this effort caused the breaking of several drill bits in the process.

In 1957, the City of Niagara Falls constructed sewers for a mixture of low-income and single family residences to be built on lands adjacent to the landfill site.

Health problems, activism, and site cleanup

A protest by Love Canal residents, ca. 1978.

In the following years, residents began making repeated complaints of strange odors and "substances" that surfaced in their yards. City officials were brought to investigate the area, but did not act to solve the problem. Beginning in 1978, Lois Gibbs, the president of the Love Canal Homeowners' Association, led an effort to investigate community concerns about the health of its residents. The neighborhood had an extremely high rate of cancer, and an alarming number of birth defects. Children at the 99th Street School were constantly ill. With further investigation, Gibbs discovered the chemical danger of the adjacent canal. This began her organization's three year fight to prove that the toxins buried by Hooker Chemical were responsible for the health problems of local residents.

Throughout the ordeal, the homeowners were opposed not only by Hooker Chemical (now Occidental Petroleum), but also government of many levels. These opponents argued the area's endemic health problems were unrelated to the toxic chemicals buried in the canal. They believed the chemicals had been successfully contained within the former landfill. Since the residents could not prove the chemicals on their property had come from Hooker's disposal site, they could not prove liability. Homeowners continued to be ill throughout the legal battle, unable to sell their property and move away.

The 99th Street School, on the other hand, was located within the former boundary of the Hooker Chemical landfill site. While it was successfully closed and demolished, neither the school board nor the chemical company were willing to accept liability. This complicated matters for the homeowners' association, which was now battling with two organizations spending vast amounts of money to disprove negligence.

Initially, the organization had been frustrated by the lack of a public entity that could advise and defend them. Gibbs has said that at the beginning, she also met considerable public resistance to her community organizing and doors slammed in her face. The mostly middle-class families did not have the resources necessary to protect themselves, but many did not see any alternative to leaving their homes and were resistant to the idea.

By 1978, Love Canal became a national media event with articles referring to the neighborhood as "a public health time bomb." On August 7, 1978, United States President Jimmy Carter declared a federal emergency at Love Canal, and those living closest to the site were relocated.

It was not until scientific investigations were undertaken that it could be proven the chemicals were responsible for the ill health of residents. Geologists were recruited to prove that underground swales were responsible for carrying the chemicals to the surrounding residential areas. Once there, they explained, chemicals leached into basements and evaporated into household air. On May 17, 1980, the EPA announced the result of blood tests that showed chromosome damage in Love Canal residents. Residents were told that this meant they were at increased risk of cancer, reproductive problems and genetic damage.

With the growing evidence and two years of effort by Lois Gibbs and other residents, President Carter declared a state of emergency at Love Canal on May 21, 1980 and the EPA agreed to evacuate all Love Canal families temporarily until permanent relocation funds could be secured. [2] Eventually, the government relocated more than 800 families and reimbursed them for their homes, and Congress passed the Superfund law holding polluters accountable. Occidental Petroleum was sued by the EPA and in 1995 agreed to pay $129 Million. The cleanup of the site was investigated, designed, and overseen by the environmental consulting firm Conestoga-Rovers & Associates, based in Waterloo, Canada.

Aftermath

Today, houses in the residential areas on the east and west sides of the canal have been demolished. All that is left on the west side are abandoned residential streets. Some older east side residents, whose houses stand alone in the demolished neighborhood, chose to stay.

Though the containment area is still enforced, new development began in the early 1990s. Recreational buildings have been built against a thin, chain-link fence that keeps the toxic area separated from the safe one. The neighborhood has been renamed Black Creek Village, and many families now live there.

In literature

The Love Canal scandal forms a major plot strand in Joyce Carol Oates' 2004 novel The Falls. The scandal also apppears in Lois Gibbs' biographies, Love Canal: My story, and Love Canal: The Story Continues.

External links

• The Love Canal Collection
• Site location on Google Local or Windows Live Local.
• A contemporary libertarian commentary by Eric Zuesse published in Reason Magazine [3]
• MP3 of Lois Gibbs on environmental justice and Love Canal [4]
• EPA History - "The Love Canal Tragedy" by Eckardt C. Beck [5]
• Love Canal, Ghost Town [6]

43°4′50″N 78°57′7″W

• Berton, Pierre Niagara: A History of the Falls, Koidenesha America, 1997

See also

• William Ginsberg, member of New York State task force investigating Love Canal in 1979, and author of state report.
• Spring Valley, Washington, D.C.