Love Canal

During the summer of 1976, a group of angry homeowners descended on the weekly city council meeting in Niagara Falls, New York. Their gripes were not about rising taxes, trash collection, or street maintenance. Instead, they were armed with a litany of unusual complaints, including tales of sick children, dying pets, and shriveled lawns and gardens. And nasty industrial odors had permeated the basements of their homes. Ultimately, the homeowners' complaints provided the first glimpse of an environmental nightmare that awakened the nation to the risks of improper industrial waste disposal. Subsequent media coverage of these events helped raise the environmental consciousness of the nation and shape the emerging field of environmental journalism.

In the aftermath, the neighborhood known as Love Canal emerged as one of the nation's worst environmental disasters, one that set off a litany of finger-pointing, corporate denials, and bureaucratic missteps. Ultimately, even Washington reacted when, in 1980, Congress created the Superfund waste cleanup program. Appropriately, President Jimmy Carter signed the landmark legislation at a ceremony that took place in downtown Niagara Falls, New York. Summarizing the whole nightmarish ordeal, the New York State Health Department, in a 1978 report to Governor Hugh Carey, minced no words. “Love Canal,” it said, was “a public health time bomb.”

The history of Love Canal can be traced to the 19th century, when entrepreneur William T. Love attracted enough investors to begin construction of a canal that would connect the upper and lower Niagara River. Using the elevation drop over the [Page 449]same escarpment that created the famous Niagara Falls, Love envisioned a waterway that would be ideal for the generation of hydroelectric power. He imagined that industries would flock to the region to take advantage of an abundance of electricity. But when Louis Tesla discovered a way to transmit power over long distances by the use of alternating current, industries no longer needed to be in close proximity to a source of electricity. Love's dream ended. And the short section of canal near the upper Niagara River became a swimming hole for local children.

Meanwhile, the lifeblood of the city—its chemical industry—continued to grow, providing jobs and vital tax revenue to the region. By the early 1920s, one of the largest companies—Hooker Chemical—was producing at such a pace at its riverside plant that it was running out of places to dispose of the waste by-products from its production of pesticides, herbicides, and other toxic organic compounds. The abandoned Love Canal was an attractive alternative. It was close to the factory and the area was, at that time, sparsely populated.

Hooker filled the 2,000-foot-long, 60-foot-wide canal cavity with some of the most toxic by-products ever produced. Neighbors recall seeing truck after truck loaded with barrels of toxic chemicals. Workers emptied thousands of tons of the toxic brew directly into the water, taking the drums back the factory to be used again. And local children continued to swim in the mess, unaware of the dangers until chased away by chemical burns and unexplained skin irritations.

In 1953, after filling the cavity to the brim, Hooker sold the Love Canal property to the Niagara Falls Board of Education for $1. The board wanted the land for a playground behind an elementary school that was built to serve block after block of new homes that housed the workers from the city's burgeoning chemical industry. The transaction, according to a 1980 series in the Niagara Falls Gazette, contained no warning at all about the contents of the landed gift. Company vice president Bjarne Klaussen wrote in 1952 that he felt the board had done a fine job meeting expanded demand, and he expressed his firm's interest in cooperating with the board's efforts. The 99th Street Elementary School was constructed and the abandoned canal became a playground for students and an open area for the working-class families that flocked to the new neighborhood.

...