Image via WikipediaBy Wendy MoyerAn area in Niagara Falls, New York was turned into a chemical and municipal disposal site by Hooker Chemical in 1920. Thirty-three years later the disposal site was full. The company used relatively modern means to cover it. They sealed the dump with a thick coating of water-resistant red clay, hoping that it would prevent any chemicals from leaking from their landfill.
Shortly thereafter a nearby city wanted to buy the dumpsite in order to expand. Hooker cautioned against it but eventually sold the site for one dollar. The company said it couldn't sell it for more because they didn't want to make a profit form a project that they thought was so unwise.
When the city began digging to develop a sewage system they damaged the red clay that sealed the dumpsite. Nonetheless, a school and several blocks of housing were built. They called the neighborhood Love Canal.
Except for the smell, everything about Love Canal seemed pretty normal. But the smell was terrible. Strange odors usually permeated the air. These odors probably emanated from the unusual seepage that a lot of the homeowners found in their yards and basements.
Then children in the area started to get ill and the families that lived there experienced birth defects and miscarriages.
An activist, Lois Gibbs, began to document the high occurrence of birth defects and illnesses in the area. In 1978, the existence of the chemical waste dump was revealed by the newspapers. Gibbs soon began to petition that the school should be closed.
After a neighborhood child became a victim of chemical poisoning the school was ordered closed by the NYS Health Department in August of that year. Subsequent research established that in excess of 130 pounds of TCDD - a highly toxic carcinogen, which is a type of dioxin - was found.
The 20,000 tons of waste in the landfill consisted mostly of refuse from chemical weapons research and residues from pesticides. The waste contained almost 250 different kinds of chemicals.
These chemicals had already found their way into the yards, homes, creeks and sewers of Love Canal. Gibbs decided that the time had come to move the more than 900 families who lived in the area away from Love Canal.
Ultimately President Carder provided the money to move the families. The parent company of Hooker Chemical was sued. They settled for $20 million. Then, about twenty years later, some of the Love Canal houses started to show up in the housing market. Most of the homes are now for sale. But even though the neighborhood was renamed, the homes have such a bad reputation that the banks are refusing to offer mortgages on them.
What may be even sadder is the fact that not one of the chemicals has been removed from the dump. Instead, the site has been resealed. An additional $230 million was paid by Hooker's mother company to finance the "cleanup" and they are now responsible for managing the dumpsite.
The area around the site has since been declared safe.
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