The Canal Incident

One of the most highly publicized toxic-waste disaster took place at Love Canal, a once pleasant neighborhood near the Industrial town of Niagara Falls, New York. The area took its name from William T. Love, an entrepreneur who, as part of a scheme to industrialize Niagara Falls, started building a canal on the site in the late nineteenth century. Love ultimately declared bankruptcy, and soon after World War II the area was acquired by the Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation, which dumped approximately 21,800 tons of pesticides, cleaning solutions, and other toxic wastes into the canal between 1947 and 1952. In 1953 Hooker covered the site with dirt and sold it to the Niagara Falls Board of Education for $1.00. The board which had signed papers stipulating that it would not hold Hooker responsible for any injuries or deaths that might occur at the site then built a school on the landfill and sold adjoining lots for real estate development.

In 1978 heavy rains and snowfalls caused the canal's contents to overflow. Chemicals such as benzene, PCBs, and C-56 (a by-product of the manufacture of pesticides that can cause damage to virtually every organ in the body) were carried by creeks into the neighborhood. Reports told of noxious odors permeating homes, of slime oozing into basements, of children coming home with painful rashes and watering eyes after swimming in a pond on the canal site and, most alarming of all, of unusually high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, liver ailments, nervous disorders, epilepsy-like seizures, genetic damage, and cancer.

Finally the landfill's topsoil began to wash away, revealing Hooker's by then corroded and leaking metal casks and alerting EPA officials to the disaster. Analysis revealed that the dump contained more than eighty chemicals, ten of which were potential carcinogens. There were also solvents that attack the heart and liver, and pesticides so dangerous that their commercial sale has for years been restricted by the government. In addition to the physical ailments have suffered, there has been considerable psychological damage. One study has shown that children who lived near the canal suffer from obsession with fears of premature death. Some adolescent girls have expressed fear of having deformed babies.

President Jimmy Carter declared a state of emergency in the area, and 237 families were evacuated with the help of federal funds in August 1978. Many of those who were left behind, convinced that they, too, were in danger, joined together to take action, forming the Love Canal Homeowners' Association. Angry, frustrated - but persistent-they took their case to whoever would listen; the press, local government, the state, Washington. Finally, in May 1980, President Carter responded to their pleas. He empowered the state and the EPA to relocate 710 families temporarily, while the chemical quagmire was drained and the area made safe for habitation.