What happened with Love Canal
Love Canal
Love Canal is a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York. The neighborhood is known infamously as the location of a 70-acre landfill which became the cause of a massive environmental pollution disaster harming the health of hundreds of residents, culminating in an extensive Superfund …
Which company was responsible for Love Canal?
The Hooker Chemical Company is a name that is unfortunately synonymous with one of America’s largest and most tragic chemical disasters, Love Canal. It is estimated that between 1942 and 1975 Hooker Chemical disposed of 199,900 tons of chemical waste at four dump sites in Niagara Falls, NY. One of the most notorious sites, Love Canal, was a dry canal bed owned by Hooker and located just east of its Niagara Falls plant.
What happened to the residents of Love Canal NY?
What happened to the residents of Love Canal NY? A company called Hooker Chemical had dumped 22,000 tons of toxic waste in an unfinished canal nearby. Love Canal chemicals started seeping into residents ' basements and backyards, bubbling up on the school's playground.
How long did the Love Canal last?
Love Canal’s notorious history began when Hooker Chemical Co. used the abandoned canal from 1942 to 1953 to dump 21,800 tons of industrial hazardous waste. Who cleaned up Love Canal?
Where is the Love Canal now?
Love Canal is a neighborhood located in the city of Niagara Falls in the northwestern region of New York state. The neighborhood covers 36 blocks in the far southeastern corner of the city, stretching from 93rd Street comprising the western border to 100th Street in the east border and 103rd Street in the northeast.
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What happened at Love Canal in 1978?
1978: Dr. Robert Whalen, state health commissioner, declares a state of emergency at the Love Canal. The 99th Street School is ordered closed, and the commissioner recommends relocation of pregnant women and children under 2 from the first two rings of houses nearest the canal.
What did the Love Canal cause?
The result was the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act—better known as Superfund. A less well-known but equally important outcome of Love Canal was the emergence of a militant, grassroots “environmental justice” movement.
Why was the Love Canal important?
Love Canal was a major turning point that shaped environmental policy in the US. It is widely cited as the beginning of the anti-toxics movement and was a landmark event in the grassroots struggle for compensation.
Is Love Canal still toxic?
They say they found toxins "previously found in Love Canal-related sites." Indoors, toxins can get trapped and build up. Tests there found toxin levels 10 to 100 times higher. So far, state officials have declined to test inside residents' homes.
Was the Love Canal ever cleaned up?
Two decades after Love Canal became the first polluted site on the newly created Superfund list, federal officials announced yesterday that the neighborhood that epitomized environmental horror in the late 1970's was clean enough to be taken off the list.
How did Love Canal affect humans?
Completed in 1979, the study found increases amoung residents in miscarriages, still births, crib deaths, nervous breakdowns, hyperactivity, epilepsy and urinary tract disorders. Miscarriages were found to have increased 300%, for example, and most occurred in women who lived in the historically wet areas.
Why is it called Love Canal?
pop. 242,200) on the western frontier of New York State. The landfill takes its name from William T. Love, whose plan it was in the 1890s to dig a power canal between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers to provide cheap hydroelectric power for a proposed model industrial city.
What happened because of the Love Canal tragedy?
By the month's end, 98 families had already been evacuated. Another 46 had found temporary housing. Soon after, all families would be gone from the most contaminated areas -- a total of 221 families have moved or agreed to be moved.
How did the Love Canal affect animals?
He found that animals caught near the fence had severely damaged livers, including excess fat, underdeveloped reproductive organs, lowered levels of important body chemicals and unusually low levels of the energy-producing substance called glycogen.
What chemicals did Love Canal release?
To determine the extent of chemical migration into private residences, 800 basement air samples from 400 homes within a four block radius of the landfill were analyzed for seven chemical compounds: chloroform, benzene, trichloroethene, toluene, tetrachloroethene, chlorobenzene and chlorotoluene.
What was buried in Love Canal that caused so many health issues?
Love Canal was sold to the local school district in 1953, after the threat of eminent domain. Over the next three decades, it attracted national attention for the public health problems originating from the former dumping of toxic waste on the grounds.
When did the Love Canal cleanup end?
In the early 1990s New York state ended its cleanup and declared parts of the Love Canal area safe to live in. The area north of the dump site was renamed Black Creek Village, and the state began to auction off houses there. In 1994 Occidental agreed to pay $98 million to New York to compensate the state for its contribution to the cleanup of Love Canal. The following year the company settled with the federal government as well, agreeing to pay $129 million over three years.
What is the Love Canal?
Love Canal, neighbourhood in Niagara Falls, N.Y., U.S., that was the site of the worst environmental disaster involving chemical wastes in U.S. history. The Love Canal area was originally the site of an abandoned canal that became a dumping ground for nearly 22,000 tons of chemical waste (including polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, ...
How much did Occidental pay for the Love Canal?
In 1994 Occidental agreed to pay $98 million to New York to compensate the state for its contribution to the cleanup of Love Canal. The following year the company settled with the federal government as well, agreeing to pay $129 million over three years. Written by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Is the Love Canal safe to live in?
In the early 1990s New York state ended its cleanup and declared parts of the Love Canal area safe to live in.
What diseases did the Love Canal have?
Public awareness of the disaster unfolded in the late 1970s when investigative newspaper coverage and grassroots door-to-door health surveys began to reveal a series of inexplicable illnesses—epilepsy, asthma, migraines, and nephrosis— and abnormally high rates of birth defects and miscarriages in the Love Canal neighborhood.
What is the Love Canal?
Love Canal is an aborted canal project branching off of the Niagara River about four miles south of Niagara Falls. It is also the name of a fifteen-acre, working-class neighborhood of around 800 single-family homes built directly adjacent to the canal. From 1942 to 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, with government sanction, began using the partially dug canal as a chemical waste dump. At the end of this period, the contents of the canal consisted of around 21,000 tons of toxic chemicals, including at least twelve that are known carcinogens (halogenated organics, chlorobenzenes, and dioxin among them). Hooker capped the 16-acre hazardous waste landfill in clay and sold the land to the Niagara Falls School Board, attempting to absolve itself of any future liability by including a warning in the property deed.
How many tons of chemicals were in the canal?
At the end of this period, the contents of the canal consisted of around 21,000 tons of toxic chemicals, including at least twelve that are known carcinogens (halogenated organics, chlorobenzenes, and dioxin among them).
What was the Love Canal incident?
In 1988, New York State Department of Health Commissioner David Axelrod called the Love Canal incident a "national symbol of a failure to exercise a sense of concern for future generations". The Love Canal incident was especially significant as a situation where the inhabitants "overflowed into the wastes instead of the other way around".
Why was the Love Canal sold?
Love Canal was sold to the local school district in 1953, after the threat of eminent domain. Over the next three decades, it attracted national attention for the public health problems originating from the former dumping of toxic waste on the grounds.
How deep was the Niagara Falls canal?
These chemicals were buried at a depth of twenty to twenty-five feet (6 to 7.5 m). Upon its closure, the canal was covered with a clay seal to prevent leakage. Over time, vegetation settled and began to grow atop the dump site. By the 1950s, the city of Niagara Falls was experiencing a population increase.
What was the name of the project that Love built?
He named the project Model City , New York. After 1892, Love's plan incorporated a shipping lane that would bypass Niagara Falls. He arranged backing from financial banks in New York City, Chicago, and England. During October 1893, the first factory opened for business. In May 1894, work on the canal began.
What happened in 1907?
The Panic of 1907 combined with the development of the transmission of electrical power over great distances, creating access to hydroelectric power far from water sources, proved disastrous. Love's remaining investors forced Love to abandon the project. The last piece of property owned by his corporation was lost to foreclosure and sold at public auction in 1910.
Why is the Love Canal important?
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".
Why did the media call the Love Canal a time bomb?
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".
Why did the Love Canal cause a national emergency?
Thus, the government authorities pronounced a highly sensitive situation at the Love Canal site and declared the first National Emergency due to this environmental tragedy.
When was the Love Canal contaminated?
Despite the fact that the disposal of chemical waste at the Love Canal dates back to the mid-1940s, the contamination of homes situated close to the Love Canal site was not apparent until the mid-1960s, when occupants started complaining about vapor and minor blasts.
Why did Hooker sell the Love Canal?
Due to the low permeability characteristic of soft clay, the company chose the Love Canal site for dumping their chemical waste. Thus, the potential for groundwater contamination was limited. In April 1953, Hooker sold the Love Canal property to the City of Niagara Falls Board of Education.
How deep is the Love Canal?
The development plan of the canal was deserted when a segment of the canal, around 1000 m long and 24 m wide, had been excavated up to a 6 m depth.
What is the worst environmental tragedy in the US?
Love Canal : Worst Environmental Tragedy of the US. The Love Canal in the US was named after William T. Love, who in the mid-1890s imagined a waterway linking Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. He trusted that it would serve the region's industries with the much-required hydroelectricity.
How many chemicals were found in the Love Canal?
Researchers conducted tests on the canal site, and it was found that more than 200 different types of chemical compounds were present at the site. Out of 200, at least 12 compounds were carcinogens. The government ordered to clean-up the site to reduce the spread of the chemical waste. Thus, more than 5800 m 3 of sullied soil was removed from the Love Canal site.
When was the Love Canal landfill zone shielded?
In 1978 , the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) introduced a framework to gather leachate from the Love Canal site. The landfill zone was shielded, and a treatment plant was built to remove all the leachate generated at the site.
What was the Love Canal used for?
Love Canal’s notorious history began when Hooker Chemical Co. used the abandoned canal from 1942 to 1953 to dump 21,800 tons of industrial hazardous waste. That canal was later capped, and homes and a school were built on top of it.
How much was the Love Canal cleanup?
Although complete streets were permanently bulldozed around Love Canal, those immediately north and west of the landfill were refurbished following a $230 million cleanup that involved capping the canal with clay, a plastic liner and topsoil.
When did the waste dump in Niagara Falls become a hotbed issue?
Contamination at a waste dump site in the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls became a hotbed issue in 1978.Contamination at a waste dump site in the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls became a hotbed issue in 1978.His wife, Teresa, said she’s had two miscarriages and numerous unexplained cysts.
How many acres of water was buried in the canal?
That canal was later capped, and homes and a school were built on top of it. But snow melt from an unusually harsh winter in 1977 seeped into the buried 16-acre canal and forced chemical waste into groundwater and to the surface, oozing into yards and basements.
Do Reynoldses believe in containment?
The Reynoldses are unconvinced that the containment system ever really worked and believe chemicals have been spreading for years, noting their home is just outside the original emergency zone.
What caused the water table to rise in the Love Canal?
Although Niagara County Health Department testing showed toxic chemicals in some Love Canal basements in 1976, the situation really came to a head after the Blizzard of '77. The melting snow caused the water table to rise in and under the shallow old canal, pushing toxic chemicals to the surface.
Where is the Love Canal waste hauled?
The wastes were hauled to the Niagara Sanitation landfill in Wheatfield, where today, nearby residents are pursuing lawsuits over health problems allegedly caused by these Love Canal exports, which weren't removed until 2015. "Niagara and Erie County has a lot more Love Canals," Gibbs asserted.
What would Baptiste say to Gibbs if they met today?
Asked what she would say to Gibbs if they met today, Baptiste said she would ask, "Are you happy? I mean, if you don't like where you live, go away."
How many people lived in Niagara Falls in 1960?
Niagara Falls' population grew 30 percent from 1940 to 1960, topping out at 102,000 in 1960, more than twice what it is today. The city needed more homes and schools, especially in LaSalle, the eastern part of town.
How many tons of toxins are in the Love Canal?
In the Love Canal Containment Area, 40 acres of well-manicured grassland now conceal 21,800 tons of some of the deadliest toxins ever created by the chemical industry: dioxin, lindane, benzene hexachloride, chlorobenzene and dozens more compounds.
How many acres was William Love's home?
Businessman William Love, unable to finance his project, left behind a 16-acre rectangular site hacked out of the thick clay soil in the neighborhood.
What is the fence bordering the Love Canal?
The fence borders one of the most notorious pieces of land in America: Love Canal. Tuesday marks the 40th anniversary of President Jimmy Carter declaring Love Canal a federal health emergency. For the first time, a president ordered federal emergency funds to be spent on a man-made – not natural – disaster. His order came five days ...
How many tons of chemicals are in the Love Canal?
The following is a description of the containment of the 20 tons of chemicals in Love Canal,…
Who is the spokesperson for the EPA for the Love Canal?
The lack of signage, she says, is how people will forget what happened at Love Canal. MIKE BASILE, EPA SPOKESMAN. Mike Basile is a spokesperson for the Environmental Protection Agency, but Love Canal is as personal for him as it was for the nearly 900 or so families that were eventually moved out of the canal area.
How long was the battle between Luella and the government?
It was a tumultuous four-year battle and most government officials at every level and even some of the other neighbors were not kind to the terrified homeowners whose children were getting sick — many of whom were sick themselves. Luella still struggles to forgive “Niagara Falls,” for what it put her through.
How many monitoring sites are there in the LaSalle Expressway?
Today, there are more than 100 monitoring sites as far out as the LaSalle Expressway, which are constantly monitored and Basile is preparing to undertake a five-year review of the wells and containment system, which has been designed to last “into perpetuity,” he said.
How many soil samples were tested for the Love Canal?
He recalls that between 1977 and 1980, the EPA tested about 4,000 soil samples of the 10 block Love Canal area and when a portion of the area to the west and north of the canal was declared habitable once more in 1990, it was only after those samples were peer reviewed by experts around the country.
What company monitors Love Canal?
A company called Glenn Springs from Texas monitors Love Canal.
Is Love Canal causing harm?
She is not the only former homeowner who believes chemicals in Love Canal are still causing harm. Currently, there are some 18 personal injury suits and class action lawsuits filed due to illnesses and birth defects the complainants believe are the result of Love Canal.
