In the 1890’s, William T. Love produced a vision of a dream community. He envisioned a canal that would connect the Niagara River to Lake Ontario, providing a town in between the two with hydroelectric power (which had just come to prominence because of Nikola Tesla.) But when Congress passed a law banning the removal of water from Niagara Falls, he changed his plans. Production of a shipping lane to his proposed city was started, but due to lack of funding the project was never completed. A few houses and roads were built, but Love’s dreams of a perfect model city were never realized. His "grand canal" ended up being only a small stretch of water in which the neighborhood's residents would swim.
It did not take very long for the water to become a dumpsite for residents of the City of Niagara Falls (which had purchased the site for this purpose.) In the 1940’s, Hooker Chemical Company was granted permission to use the canal as a dumpsite for the toxic waste from their factory.
This was long before we had an understanding of any methods to contain chemicals. The waste from the Hooker factory was dumped in a site that was uncapped. Their chemicals were able to directly enter water sources. Local water was not tested for any hazardous material. By 1953; 22,000 tons of toxic chemicals had been deposited into Love Canal. When the company decided the site was no longer needed, they covered the pit with 25 feet of soil.
It seems as though Hooker Chemical Company knew the dangers of this careless management, because they initially refused to let Niagara Falls School District buy the site, due to safety concerns. But the district desperately needed new space and was adamant. So, the same year that they covered the canal, Hooker sold their land to the school district under a disclaimer for any safety issues that would arise because of the chemicals.
Since the conception of a neighborhood around Love Canal, residents had reported chemical appearances in their homes. Some reported goo that was strangely colored in the basements of their homes. Pieces of phosphorus would rise from underground to the surface. Children would come home from school burned by the chemicals present in their schoolyard.
In 1976, severe weather conditions forced chemical pockets to rise above the ground. Over the course of the next few years, residents of the community began to report striking numbers of birth defects among children in their community. These included children who were born with mental handicaps as well as children with two rows of teeth, extra fingers, and extra ears. Concerned mothers, led by protest leader Lois Gibbs, took matters into their own hands by conducting a study of children born in the area. They found that 56% of babies born in the Love Canal area had some sort of birth defect. A horrific number of miscarriages occurred in the area as well.
In 1978, President Carter declared that Love Canal was in a state of emergency. Because of this, around 600 families were relocated from their homes. Blood tests of former residents found that extensive chromosome damage had occurred that could cause these people to suffer from diseases in later life. Only two of fifteen babies born at the Love Canal site were healthy. Studies of the health of residents forced Carter to make a second declaration of emergency in the area. It was only then that efforts were started to create a mass relocation in the area. FEMA started to purchase homes and find permanent homes for residents elsewhere. Most of the area was evacuated. Even so, the damaging health effects of their time at Love Canal still continue to affect former residents.
The Love Canal area post-evacuation.
The Love Canal disaster led to the creation of the Superfund program, which taxes chemical companies in effort to reduce the amount of toxic waste that enters the environment. Throughout the 1980’s, cleanup of the area involved lining a huge pit to contain the toxic waste. The effort cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Hooker Chemical Company itself put $130,000,000 into cleanup. The pit was capped and covered with clay, and thousands of tons of toxic waste still sit in the middle of the community. Many applaud this as a miraculous triumph for environmentalists, but many are not so optimistic and doubt that this massive cesspool can truly be contained.
In the 1990’s, homes were built at the site and, amazingly, people moved in, lured by promises of safety and the cheap housing. But over the past couple of years, health problems have once again began to arise. In 2013, there were several lawsuits against the city, which now is called Black Creek Village. An EPA spokesperson recently stated that this is due to chemicals that were never contained in the capped pit that was constructed in the 1980’s. The EPA assures us that the pit has been completely effective.
A street that is currently blocked off from
the neighborhood.
It is amazing to me that people continue to live in this area. The Love Canal disaster has been called the quietest disaster in American history. We can see how much time and how many millions of dollars it took to “clean up” the area, but exactly the amount of damage the disaster did to resident’s health will take a long time to become known.
Sources:
http://www.bu.edu/lovecanal/canal/
www.damninteresting.com/the-tragedy-of-the-love-canal/
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/154300/
http://www.nyheritage.org/collections/love-canal-images
http://nypost.com/2013/11/02/love-canal-still-oozing-poison-35-years-later/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1VzX5MvjXY
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