Love Canal

Geography

Love Canal is a neighborhood located in the city of Niagara Falls in the northwestern region of New York state. The neighborhood covers 36 square blocks in the far southeastern corner of the city, stretching from the 93rd street making up the western border to the 100th street in the east border and the 103rd street in the northeast. Bergholtz Creek defines the north border with the Niagara River marking the southern border one-quarter mile (400 m) away. The Lasalle Expressway splits an uninhabited portion of the south from the north. The canal covers 16 acres of land in the central eastern portion.

Early History

In the 1890s, William T. Love, an ambitious entrepreneur from the Western Railroad Corporation, envisioned a perfect urban area called "Model City". He prepared plans to construct a community of parks and residences on the banks of Lake Ontario, believing it would serve the area's burgeoning industries with much needed hydroelectricity. He gave his name to the ensuing project, envisioning a perfect urban area.

After 1892, Love's plan incorporated a shipping lane that would bypass the Niagara Falls. Love quickly lined up backing from financial banks and giants in New York City, Chicago and England. In October 1893, the first factory opened for business. In May 1894, work on the canal had begun. Steel companies and other manufacturers lined up for the chance of opening plants along the Love Canal. He began digging the canal and built a few streets and houses. However, the Panic of 1893 caused investors to drop sponsorship of the project. In addition, Congress passed a law barring the removal of water from the Niagara River, to preserve Niagara Falls. Only one mile (1.6 km) of the canal was dug, about 50 feet (15 m) wide and 10 to 40 feet (3 m to 12 m) deep, stretching northward from the Niagara River.

Unfortunately, the Panic of 1907 proved disastrous as Love had to abandon the project. The deathblow came with the development of the transmission electrical power economically over great distances by means of an alternating current. No longer was it necessary for industry to locate near the source of electrical power.

His backers deserted him, and the last of the property owned by his corporation was subjected to mortgage foreclosure and sold at public auction in 1910.

With the project abandoned, the canal gradually filled with water. The local children swam there in the summer and skated during the winter. In the 1920s, the canal became a dump site for the City of Niagara Falls, with the city regularly unloading its municipal refuse into the landfill.

Industry and tourism grew steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century due to a high demand for industrial products and the increased mobility of people to travel. Paper, rubber, plastics, petrochemicals, carbon insulators, and abrasives composed the city's major industries. This prosperity would end by the late 1960s as aging industrial plants moved to less expensive locations.

Pre-disaster state of town

At the time of the dump's closure in 1952, Niagara Falls was entering an economic boom, and the population began expanding dramatically, growing by 33% in twenty years (1940-1960) from 78,020 to 102,394.

Hooker Chemical Company

By the turn of the 1940s, Hooker Chemical Company was searching for a place to dispose its large quantity of chemical waste. The Niagara Power and Development Company granted permission to Hooker in 1942 to dump wastes into the canal. The canal was drained and lined with thick clay. Into this site, Hooker began placing 55-US-gallon (210 l) metal or fiber barrels. In 1947, Hooker bought the canal and the 70-foot-wide (21 m) banks on either side of the canal. The City of Niagara Falls and the army continued the dumping of refuse. It subsequently converted it into a 16-acre landfill.

In 1948, the City of Niagara Falls had ended self-sufficient disposal of refuse and Hooker Chemical became the sole user and owner of the site.

In early 1952, when it became apparent that the site would likely be developed for construction, Hooker ceased using Love Canal as a dumpsite. During its 10-year lifespan, the 16-acre landfill served as the dumping site of 21,800 tons of chemicals, mostly composed of products such as "caustics, alkalines, fatty acids and chlorinated hydrocarbons resulting from the manufacturing of dyes, perfumes, solvents for rubber and synthetic resins". These chemicals were buried at a depth of twenty to twenty-five feet (6 to 6.5 m). Upon its closure, the canal was covered to prevent leakage. Over time, vegetation settled and began to grow atop the dump site.

By the 1950s, the city of Niagra Falls was experiencing a population boom. With a growing population, the Niagara Falls City School District needed land to build new schools and attempted to purchase the property from Hooker Chemical. The population reached over 98,000 by the 1950 census.

Sale of the site

In March 1952, the superintendent of Niagara Falls School Board approached Hooker with regard to purchasing the Love Canal property for the purpose of constructing a new school. Following this initial approach, in an internal company memo dated March 27, 1952, Bjarne Klaussen, Hooker's vice president, wrote to the works manager that "it may be advisable to discontinue using the Love Canal property for a dumping ground." In April 1952, after discussing the sale of the land with Ansley Wilcox II, Hooker's in-house legal counsel, Klaussen then wrote to the company president, R.L. Murray, suggesting that the sale could alleviate them from future liabilities for the buried chemicals:

As "a means of avoiding liability by relinquishing control of the site", Hooker deeded the site to the school board in 1953 for $1 with a liability limitation clause. In the "sales" agreement signed on April 28, 1953, Hooker Chemical included a seventeen-line caveat that they anticipated would release them from all legal obligations should lawsuits arise in the future.

Analyzing the transfer of ownership, Craig E. Colton and Peter N. Skinner observed in 1991: "It is ironic that Hooker assigned the board with a continuing duty to protect property buyers from chemicals when the company itself accepted no such 'moral obligation'." Moreover, the transfer effectively ended what provision of security and maintenance for the hazardous waste had existed before and placed all responsibility in clearly unqualified hands. It was this attempt to evade their responsibility, Colten and Skinner contend, that would "ultimately come back to haunt not only Hooker but all other chemical producers in the United States through the strict liability provisions of Superfund legislation."

Not long after having taken control of the land, the Niagara Falls School Board proceeded to develop the land, including construction activity that substantially breached containment structures in a number of ways, allowing previously trapped chemicals to seep out.

The resulting breaches combined with particularly heavy rainstorms released and spread the chemical waste, leading to a public health emergency and an urban planning scandal. In what became a test case for liability clauses, Hooker Chemical was found to be "negligent" in their disposal of waste, though not reckless in the sale of the land. The dumpsite was discovered and investigated by the local newspaper, the Niagara Falls Gazette, from 1976 through the evacuation in 1978.

Construction of the 93rd Street School and the 99th Street School

Despite the disclaimer, the School Board began construction of the "99th Street School" in its originally intended location. In January 1954, the school's architect wrote to the education committee informing them that during excavation, workers discovered two dump sites filled with 55-US-gallon (210 l; 46 imp gal) drums containing chemical wastes. The architect also noted it would be "poor policy" to build in that area since it was not known what wastes were present in the ground, and the concrete foundation might be damaged. The school board then moved the school site eighty to eighty-five feet further north. The kindergarten playground also had to be relocated because it was directly on top of a chemical dump.

Upon completion in 1955, 400 children attended the school, and it opened along with several other schools that had been built to accommodate students. That same year, a twenty-five foot area crumbled exposing toxic chemical drums, which then filled with water during rainstorms. This created large puddles that children enjoyed playing in. In 1955, a second school, the 93rd Street School, was opened six blocks away.

Usage by the schools

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. The school district had sold the remaining land, resulting in homes constructed by private developers, as well as the Niagara Falls Housing Authority. In total, 800 private houses and 240 low-income apartments were constructed. While building the gravel sewer beds, construction crews broke through the clay seal, breaching the canal walls. Specifically, the local government removed part of the protective clay cap to use as fill dirt for the nearby 93rd Street School, and punched holes in the solid clay walls to build water lines and the LaSalle Expressway. This allowed the toxic wastes to escape when rainwater, no longer kept out by the partially removed clay cap, washed them through the gaps in the walls. Hence, the buried chemicals could migrate and seep from the canal.

The land where the homes were being built was not part of the agreement between the school board and Hooker; thus, none of these residents knew the canal's history. There was no monitoring or evaluating of the chemical wastes stored under the ground. Additionally, the clay cover of the canal which was supposed to be impermeable began to crack. The subsequent construction of the LaSalle Expressway restricted groundwater from flowing to the Niagara River. After the exceptionally wet winter and spring of 1962, the elevated expressway turned the breached canal into an overflowing pool. People reported having puddles of oil or colored liquid in yards or basements. There were 410 kids in the school in 1978.

Leadup and Discovery

Residents were suspicious of black fluid that flowed out of the Love Canal. For years, residents had complained about odors and substances on their yards or the public playgrounds. Finally the city acted and hired a consultant, Calspan Corporation, to do a massive study. In 1977, a harsh winter storm dumped massive amounts of water and raised the water table and toxins began erupting in residents' backyards. In the spring of 1977, the State Departments of Health and Environmental Conservation launched an intensive air, soil, and groundwater sampling and analysis program following qualitative identification of a number of organic compounds in the basements of 11 homes adjacent to the Love Canal. It was also revealed that the standards at the time did not require the installation of a liner to prevent leaching; this became very common among companies.

Contaminants

Numerous contaminants dumped in the landfill included chlorinated hydrocarbon residues, processed sludge, fly ash, and other materials, including residential municipal garbage .

Data showed unacceptable levels of toxic vapors associated with more than 80 compounds were emanating from the basements of numerous homes in the first ring directly adjacent to the Love Canal. Ten of the most prevalent and most toxic compounds - including benzene, a known human carcinogen - were selected for evaluation purposes and as indicators of the presence of other chemical constituents.

Laboratory analyses of soil and sediment samples from the Love Canal indicate the presence of more than 200 distinct organic chemical compounds; approximately 100 of these have been identified to date.

Numerous other chemicals seeped through the ground. Some of the chemicals and toxic materials found included Benzene, chloroform, toluene, Dioxin, and various kinds of PCB.

Activism

In 1976, two reporters for the Niagara Falls Gazette, David Pollak and David Russell, tested several sump pumps near Love Canal and found toxic chemicals in them. It, once in October 1976 and once in November 1976, published reports of chemical analyses of residues near the old Love Canal dumpsite indicated presence of 15 organic chemicals, including three toxic chlorinated hydrocarbons. 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 early 1978, finding birth defects and many anomalies such as enlarged feet, heads, hands, and legs. He advised the local residents to create a protest group, which was led by resident Karen Schroeder, whose daughter had many (about a dozen) birth defects. The New York State Health Department followed suit and found an abnormal incidence of miscarriages.

By 1978, Love Canal had become a national media event with articles referring to the neighborhood as "a public health time bomb", and "one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in American history". Brown, working for the local newspaper, the Niagara Gazette, is credited with not only breaking open the case, but establishing toxic chemical wastes as a nationwide issue as well. Brown's book, Laying Waste, examined the Love Canal disaster and many other toxic waste catastrophes nationwide.

The dumpsite was declared an unprecedented state emergency on August 2, 1978. Brown, who wrote more than a hundred articles on the dump, tested the groundwater and later found the dump was three times larger than originally thought, with possible ramifications beyond the original evacuation zone. He was also to discover that highly toxic dioxins were there. On August 2, 1978, Lois Gibbs, a local mother who called an election to head the Love Canal Homeowners' Association, began to 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 Brown that her neighborhood sat atop the buried chemical waste.

In the following years, Gibbs led an effort to investigate community concerns about the health of its residents. She and other residents made repeated complaints of strange odors and "substances" that surfaced in their yards. In Gibbs' neighborhood, there was a high rate of unexplained illnesses, miscarriages, and intellectual disability. Basements were often covered with a thick, black substance, and vegetation was dying. In many yards, the only vegetation that grew were shrubby grasses. Although city officials were asked to investigate the area, they did not act to solve the problem. Niagara Falls mayor Michael O'Laughlin infamously stated that there was "nothing wrong" in Love Canal.

With further investigation, Gibbs discovered the chemical danger of the adjacent canal. This began her organization's two-year effort to demonstrate that the waste buried by Hooker Chemical was responsible for the health problems of local residents. Throughout the ordeal, homeowners' concerns were ignored not only by Hooker Chemical (now a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum), but also by members of government. These parties argued that the area's endemic health problems were unrelated to the toxic chemicals buried in the Canal. Since the residents could not prove the chemicals on their property had come from Hooker's disposal site, they could not prove liability. Throughout the legal battle, residents were unable to sell their properties and move away.

Federal Response

On August 7, 1978, United States President Jimmy Carter announced a federal health emergency, called for the allocation of federal funds, and ordered the Federal Disaster Assistance Agency to assist the City of Niagara Falls to remedy the Love Canal site. This was the first time in American history that emergency funds were used for a situation other than a natural disaster. Carter had trenches built that would transport the wastes to sewers and had home sump pumps sealed off.

Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), better known as the Superfund Act. Love Canal became the first entry on the list. CERCLA created a tax on the chemical and petroleum industries and provided broad Federal authority to respond directly to releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances that may endanger public health or the environment. CERCLA also created a National Priorities List, a shortened list of the sites that has priority in cleanup. Love Canal was the first Superfund site on that list. Eventually, the site was cleaned up and deleted off the list in 2004. Because the Superfund Act contained a "retroactive liability" provision, Occidental was held liable for cleanup of the waste even though it had followed all applicable U.S. laws when disposing of it.

Health effects

At first, scientific studies did not conclusively prove the chemicals were responsible for the residents' illnesses yet scientists were divided on the issue, even though eleven known or suspected carcinogens had been identified, one of the most prevalent being benzene. Also present was dioxin (polychlorinated dibenzodioxins) in the water, a very hazardous substance. Dioxin pollution is usually measured in parts per trillion; at Love Canal, water samples showed dioxin levels of 53 parts per billion. Geologists were recruited to determine whether underground swales were responsible for carrying the chemicals to the surrounding residential areas. Once there, chemicals could leach into basements and evaporate into household air.

In 1979, the EPA announced the result of blood tests which showed high white blood cell counts, a precursor to leukemia, and chromosome damage in Love Canal residents. 33% of the residents had undergone chromosomal damage. In a typical population, chromosomal damage affects 1% of people. Other studies were unable to find harm. The United States National Research Council (NRC) surveyed Love Canal health studies in 1991. The NRC noted the major exposure of concern was the groundwater rather than drinking water; the groundwater "seeped into basements" and then led to exposure through air and soil noted several studies reported higher levels of low-birth weight babies and birth defects among the exposed residents with some evidence the effect subsided after the exposure was eliminated. The National Research Council also noted a study which found exposed children were found to have an "excess of seizures, learning problems, hyperactivity, eye irritation, skin rashes, abdominal pain, and incontinence" and stunted growth. Voles in the area were found to have significantly increased mortality compared to controls (mean life expectancy in exposed animals "23.6 and 29.2 days, respectively, compared to 48.8 days" for control animals). New York State also has an ongoing health study of Love Canal residents. In that year, the Albert Elia Building Co., Inc., now Sevenson Environmental Services, Inc., was selected as the principal contractor to safely re-bury the toxic waste at the Love Canal Site.

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.

Aftermath

When Eckhardt C. Beck (EPA Administrator for Region 2, 1977 – 1979) visited Love Canal in the late 1970s, he discerned the presence of toxic substances in the community:

I visited the canal area at that time. Corroding waste-disposal drums could be seen breaking up through the grounds of backyards. Trees and gardens were turning black and dying. One entire swimming pool had been popped up from its foundation, afloat now on a small sea of chemicals. Puddles of noxious substances were pointed out to me by the residents. Some of these puddles were in their yards, some were in their basements, others yet were on the school grounds. Everywhere the air had a faint, choking smell. Children returned from play with burns on their hands and faces.

Robert Whalen, then-New York's Health Commissioner, also visited Love Canal and believed that the Canal constituted an emergency, stating: "Love Canal Chemical Waste Landfill constitutes a public nuisance and an extremely serious threat and danger to the health, safety and welfare of those using it, living near it or exposed to the conditions emanating from it, consisting among other things, of chemical wastes lying exposed on the surface in numerous places pervasive, pernicious and obnoxious chemical vapors and fumes affecting both the ambient air and the homes of certain residents living near such sites." Whalen also instructed people to avoid going into their basements as well as to avoid fruits and vegetables grown in their gardens. People became very worried because many had consumed produce from their gardens for several years. Whalen urged that all pregnant women and children under the age of two be removed from Love Canal as soon as possible.

The 99th Street School, on the other hand, was located within the former boundary of the Hooker Chemical landfill site. The school was closed and demolished, but both the school board and the chemical company refused to accept liability. The 93rd Street School was closed some two years later because of concerns about seeping toxic waste.

Evacuation

The lack of public interest in Love Canal made matters worse for the homeowners' association, which was opposed by two organizations that sought to disprove negligence. Initially, members of the association had been frustrated by the lack of a public entity that could advise and defend them. Gibbs met with public resistance from a number of residents within the community. Eventually, the federal government relocated more than 800 families and reimbursed them for the loss of their homes. The state government and federal government used $15 million to purchase 400 homes for 400 homes closest to Love Canal and demolished several rings of houses.

Litigation and Compensation

In 1995, Occidental Petroleum, now the owner of Hooker Chemical, settled to pay restitution amounting to $129 million. Out of that federal lawsuit came money for a small health fund and $3.5 million for the state health study. The Department of Justice published a report that noted the sites have been successfully remediated is ready again for use. The Love canal Area Revitalization Authority sold a few abandoned homes to private citizens. Viritually all remedial activities of the site, other than the operation of the leachate collection system, were completed by 1989.

In 1994, Federal District Judge John Curtin ruled that Hooker/Occidental had been negligent, but not reckless, in its handling of the waste and sale of the land to the Niagara Falls School Board. Curtin's decision also contains a detailed history of events leading up to the Love Canal disaster. Occidental Petroleum was sued by the EPA and in 1995 agreed to pay $129 million in restitution. Residents' lawsuits were also settled in the years following the Love Canal disaster.

Remediation

Houses in the residential areas on the east and west sides of the canal were 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 fewer 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 state government founded the Love Canal Area Revitalization Agency (LCARA) 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 bought by New York when the residents were relocated. The homes are farther away from where the chemicals were dumped. The most toxic area (16 acres (65,000 m²)) was reburied with a thick plastic liner, clay and dirt. A 2.4 metres (7 ft 10 in) high barbed wire fence was installed around the area. It has been calculated that 248 separate chemicals, including 60 kilograms (130 lb) of dioxin, have been unearthed from the canal.

Analysis

In 1998, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, founder of American Council on Science and Health, wrote an editorial about the Canal in which she stated that the media started calling the Canal a "public health time bomb", an editorial that created minor hysteria. She declared that people were not falling ill because of exposure to chemical waste, but from stress caused by the media. Besides double the rate of birth defects to children born while living on Love Canal, a follow-up study two decades after the incident "showed increased risks of low birth weight, congenital malformations and other adverse reproductive events". However, the same report found a slight decrease in the incidence of cancer rates, and cautions, "It is important not to over emphasize any single finding but instead to search for interpretable, coherent patterns of findings, since these are more likely to indicate valid and meaningful associations."

Love Canal, along with Times Beach, Missouri and the Valley of the Drums, Kentucky, are important in United States environmental history as three sites that significantly contributed to the passing of the CERCLA. Love Canal "become the symbol for what happens when hazardous industrial products are not confined to the workplace but 'hit people where they live' in inestimable amounts".

Love Canal was not an isolated case. Eckardt C. Beck suggested that there are probably hundreds of similar dumpsites. President Carter declared that discovering these dumpsites was "one of the grimmest discoveries of the modern era". Had the residents of Love Canal been aware that they were residing on toxic chemicals, most would not have moved there in the first place. Beck noted that one main problem remains that ownership of such chemical companies can change over the years, making liability difficult to assign (a problem that would be addressed by CERCLA, or the Superfund Act). Beck contended that increased commitment was necessary to develop controls that would "defuse future Love Canals".

The free market environmentalist movement has often cited the Love Canal incident as a consequence of government decision-makers not taking responsibility for their decisions. Stroup writes, "The school district owning the land had a laudable but narrow goal: it wanted to provide education cheaply for district children. Government decision makers are seldom held accountable for broader social goals in the way that private owners are by liability rules and potential profits."

Conclusion

In 2004, federal officials announced that the superfund cleanup has ended, although the actual cleanup ended years earlier. The entire process took 21 years and $400 million. About 260 homes north of the canal have been renovated and sold to new owners, and about 150 acres east of the canal have been sold to commercial developers for light industrial uses. In total, 950 families had been evacuated. The site was removed from the Superfund list.

Popular culture

The legacy of the disaster spawned a fictionalized made-for-TV film entitled Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal (1982). An award-winning documentary by Lynn Corcoran entitled In Our Own Backyard was released in the U.S. in 1983. Modern Marvels retold the disaster in 2004. Joyce Carol Oates brought the story of Love Canal into her 2004 novel The Falls, but changed the time period of the Love Canal disaster to the 1960s. The latest history of Love Canal was published by Oxford University Press in 2016, titled Love Canal: A Toxic History From Colonial Times To The Present, by Richard S. Newman.

The film Tootsie has a character attempting to produce a play called "Return To Love Canal". In response to the pitch, Sydney Pollack tells Dustin Hoffman that "Nobody wants to produce a play about a couple that moved back to Love Canal. Nobody wants to pay twenty dollars to see people living next to chemical waste. They can see that in New Jersey."

"Love Canal" was also a segment in the premiere episode of Michael Moore's TV Nation, which featured realtors attempting to lure prospective residents to the area.