4.3 Love Canal
In 1920, Hooker Chemical (Hooker) had turned an area in Niagara Falls into a municipal and chemical disposal site (11, 12). In 1953, the disposal site was filled and relatively modern methods were applied to cover the disposal site. A thick layer of impermeable red clay sealed the dump. The idea was that the clay would seal the site and prevent chemicals from leaking from the landfill.
A city near the chemical disposal site wanted to buy it for urban expansion. Despite the warnings made by Hooker, Niagara Falls School Board eventually bought the site for the amount of $1. The published literature on the event said that Hooker could not sell the site for more money because they did not want to earn money off the project. As part of the housing development process, the city began to dig to develop a sewer. When construction crews dug up the ground for the sewer, it damaged the red clay cap over the disposal site. Blocks of homes and a school were built and the neighborhood was named Love Canal.
Love Canal seemed like a normal, regular neighborhood. The only thing that distinguished this neighborhood from others was the strange chemical odors that often hung in the air and an unusual seepage noticed by inhabitants in their basements and yards. Children in the neighborhood often became sick. The families living in the Love Canal housing area had a higher than normal rate of miscarriages and birth defects (11).
Lois Gibbs, an environmental activist, noticed the high occurrence of illness and birth defects in the Love Canal area and started documenting it. In 1978, newspapers revealed the existence of the chemical waste disposal site in the Love Canal area. Lois Gibbs started petitioning for closing the school located near the disposal site. In August 1978, the effort was successful and the NYS Health Department ordered closing of the school.
When the waste site at Love Canal was assessed, the researchers found over 130 lb of the highly toxic carcinogenic 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), a form of dioxin. A total of 20,000 tons of waste present in the landfill contained more than 248 different types of chemicals. The waste consisted of pesticide residues and chemical weapons research refuse, along with other organic and inorganic compounds.
Owing to the breach of the clay cap, chemicals had entered homes, sewers, yards, and waterways and it was decided that it was time for the more than 900 families to be relocated away from the location. President Carter provided Federal funds to move all the families to a safer area. Hooker's parent company was sued and settled for $20 million.
Even though most of the chemicals were not removed from the chemical disposal site and despite protests by Gibbs's organization, some of the houses in Love Canal went up for sale some 20 years later. The site was resealed and the surrounding area was cleaned and declared safe. Today, a barbed wire fence isolates the worst area of the site from the areas that are not as contaminated. Hooker's parent company paid approximately $230 million to finance this cleanup. They are now responsible for the management of the dumpsite. Today, the Love Canal dumpsite is known as one of the major environmental disasters of the century. Bacteria and other microbes might eventually break down the organic materials into safer compounds, but this could take hundreds, if not thousands of years. In the meantime, the area is saddled with a mess. A natural or man-made disaster could again release very nasty chemicals into the environment.