The Love Canal Disaster

Backround: 
     The Love Canal neighborhood is in the southeast section of the La Salle area of Niagara Falls, New York. William T. Love, an 1890s visionary and entrepreneur, sought to develop a planned industrial community, Model City, in the area. Waters from the Niagara River were to be routed around the Niagara escarpment (the other famous attraction of the region) to produce cheap hydroelectric power.
     Model City never was realized, but work on the canal to transport waters from the Niagara River was. In 1942, Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corporation (now Occidental Chemical) purchased the site of the Love Canal. Between 1942 and 1953 Hooker Chemical disposed of about 22,000 tons of mixed chemical wastes into the Love Canal. Shortly after Hooker ceased use of the site, the land was sold to the Niagara Falls School Board for a price of $1.00. In 1955, the 99th Street Elementary School was constructed on the Love Canal property and opened its doors to students. Subsequent development of the area would see hundreds of families take up residence in the suburban, blue-collar neighborhood of the Love Canal.
     Unusually heavy rain and snowfalls in 1975 and 1976 provided high ground-water levels in the Love Canal area. Portions of the Hooker landfill subsided, 55-gallon drums surfaced, ponds and other surface water area became contaminated, basements began to ooze an oily residue, and noxious chemical odors permeated the area. Physical evidence of chemical corrosion of sump pumps and infiltration of basement cinder-block walls was apparent. Subsequent studies by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry would reveal a laundry list of 418 chemical records for air, water, and soil samples in and around the Love Canal area.

Health Problems:

      In 1976, two reporters for the Niagara Gazette, David Pollak and David Russell, tested several sump-pumps near Love Canal and found toxic chemicals in them. The matter went quiet for more than a year and was resurrected by reporter Michael Brown, who then investigated potential health effects by carrying forth an informal door-to-door survey in the early summer of 1978, finding birth defects and many anomalies. He advised the local residents to create a protest group, which was led by resident Karen Schroeder, whose daughter had a dozen birth defects. The New York State Health Department followed suit and found an abnormal incidence of miscarriages. The dumpsite was declared an unprecedented state emergency on August 2, 1978. Mr. Brown, who wrote more than a hundred articles on the dump, also further tested groundwater and later found that the dump was three times the size officials knew, with possible ramifications beyond the original evacuation zone. He was also to discover that highly toxic dioxin was there. On August 2, 1978, Lois Gibbs, a local mother who called an election to head the Love Canal Homeowners' Association, began to further rally homeowners. Her son, Michael Gibbs, began attending school in September 1977. He developed epilepsy in December, suffered from asthma and a urinary tract infection, and had a low white blood cell count, all associated with his exposure to the leaking chemical waste. Gibbs had learned from Mr. Brown that her neighborhood sat on top of 21,000 tons of buried chemical waste.

     According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1979, residents exhibited a "disturbingly high rate of miscarriages...Love Canal can now be added to a growing list of environmental disasters involving toxics, ranging from industrial workers stricken by nervous disorders and cancers to the discovery of toxic materials in the milk of nursing mothers." In one case, two out of four children in a single Love Canal family had birth defects; one girl was born deaf with a cleft palate, an extra row of teeth, and slight retardation, and a boy was born with an eye defect. A survey conducted by the Love Canal Homeowners Association found that 56% of the children born from 1974-1978 had at least one birth defect.

Results:

     Today, houses in the residential areas on the east and west sides of the canal have been demolished. All that remains on the west side are abandoned residential streets. Some older east side residents, whose houses stand alone in the demolished neighborhood, chose to stay. It was estimated that less than 90 of the original 900 families opted to remain.They were willing to remain as long as they were guaranteed that their homes were in a relatively safe area.On June 4, 1980, the Love Canal Area Revitalization Agency (LCARA) was founded to restore the area. The area north of Love Canal became known as Black Creek Village. LCARA wanted to resell 300 homes that had been originally bought by New York when the residents were relocated. These homes were farther away from where the chemicals had been dumped. The most toxic area (16 acres) has been reburied with a thick plastic liner, clay and dirt. A 2.4 metre high barbed wire fence was constructed around this area. It has been calculated that 248 separate chemicals, including 60 kilograms of dioxin, have been unearthed from the canal.

Sources and Video:

                                                               

http://www.health.state.ny.us/environmental/investigations/love_canal/

http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/lovecanal/01.htm