Poisoned Love

It is ironic that a series of horrible events at a place called Love Canal sparked the birth of both Superfund legislation and grassroots environmental activism. Up until the 1950s, it was normal in the US to dump massive amounts of industrial waste with little thought to their aftereffects. In the 1960s, however, the public had grown increasingly concerned about the familiar sight of derelict or poorly maintained factories and plants. Named for entrepreneur William T Love, Love Canal began in the 1880s as a failed attempt to connect Lake Ontario and Lake Erie near Niagara Falls. The “canal”, at 60 by 3000 feet, was only used for swimming and boating, and was later covered by a municipal landfill. In 1942, the Hooker Chemical Company acquired the canal as a place to put the leftovers from its manufacturing processes. The site became a witches’ brew of some 400 chemicals, including sewage, landfill material, and nuclear hardware. Court records show that Hooker disposed of almost 22 000 tons of chemical waste in Love Canal between 1942 and 1975. The company probably understood what it was doing; internal memos as early as 1945 described the site as a “quagmire” and “a potential source of lawsuits”. In 1952, the Niagara Falls School Board, in a desperate quest for inexpensive property, convinced hesitant Hooker executives to sell them the property for $1. The company drew up warning conditions and disclaimers on the transfer, holding themselves indemnified from any claims. They built a clay barrier around the site and took a $2300 tax deduction. The board built a 400-student school and sold the surrounding land for housing. As Hooker had warned, the process of development breached the barrier, and soon nasty things began to surface. The school had to be moved when contractors discovered two pits filled with chemicals in the original location. Undaunted, the city began building sanitary and storm sewers on the site in 1957. A year later, children playing in the area came into contact with the exposed chemicals and developed skin irritations. Hooker again warned the board to stop digging, but to no avail. A series of incidents occurred through the mid-1970s, including injured residents and the exposure of drums of hazardous substances. The board was protected by sovereign immunity. As one critic noted, “If they excavated Love Canal and nothing went wrong, they’d be heroes; if the chemicals caused problems, they wouldn’t take the heat”. By 1978, the neighborhood included approximately 800 private, single-family homes, 240 low-income apartments, and the 99th Street Elementary School, located near the center of the landfill. Two other schools were nearby. That same year, rainy weather caused the contamination of sump pumps and storm drains, and chemical drums emerged from the surface barrier cap. In April, the Niagara Gazette carried a series of articles on hazardous waste problems in the region, including Love Canal. In response, Canal residents demanded that city and county officials investigate their complaints, including many inexplicable health problems. That same month, the state issued a determination of a public health hazard and ordered the county health department to remove exposed chemicals and install a fence around the area. In August, the 99th Street School was closed and screening of pregnant mothers began. The US Environmental Protection Agency had started an intensive investigation and President Carter declared a federal emergency at Love Canal. By 1980, the government had identified 248 chemicals at the site; to date, more than 400 have been found, including benzene, PCBs, and dioxin. Many migrated through groundwater and surface exposure. The neighborhood was rife with mysterious illnesses, high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, chromosome damage, and liver and kidney disease. After several years of organized, persistent local complaints and investigations, the state purchased more than 230 of the homes and financed numerous relocations. Over 700 other families were eventually relocated in the face of spreading contaminants. It took about $250 million and 20 years of activism and litigation to clean up the site, but most of the waste is still buried there, including the bulldozed homes and school. In the end, all but 67 of the original families left. The town has been renamed Black Creek Village, with renovated, supposedly safe homes. In no small part because of sites like Love Canal, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA or “Superfund”) was passed in 1980 to address abandoned waste sites. Senator Al Gore was one of the primary drafters and Jimmy Carter signed it as one of his last acts as President. A chain link fence now surrounds 70 acres of the canal, which is currently the responsibility of Occidental Chemical, Hooker’s parent company. (Per Superfund regulations, Hooker received some $250 million in reimbursement from the federal and state government.) In 1998, The Washington Post observed that “something in the bedrock of American civic life shifted” at Love Canal. The effects of this shift, like the buried chemicals themselves, will linger for years to come. Douglass Rohrman

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