The Contamination and Pollution of the Love Canal in the Niagara Falls

Ironically called The Love Canal, it symbolized the antithesis of love. What was originally meant to be a place of solace and kinship, evolved into what today can be described as a symbol of negligence and crushed American dreams. Named after William T. Love, an ambitious entrepreneur from the western rail road corporation who in 1834, envisioned a perfect urban area called “Model City”. Love planned to create a short canal, built between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers, that would benefit his model city by generating power to bring life to the industries and homes in the surrounding areas. As a result of Louis Tesla’s innovation of transmitting electricity over a large area, Love’s hopes were dissolved as Tesla’s ideas were more efficient and economically enticing. All that remained of the canal was its beginning, which in turn birthed the location of one of the world’s most consequential man-made disasters. William T. Love’s canal which was once a symbol of prosperity and optimism, was distorted into a stagnant burial site for municipal and industrial waste. (Beck, E.C., 1979. The love canal tragedy. EPA J., 5, p.17.)

Hooker electrochemical company began using the site for the of disposal of chlorinated hydrocarbons and caustics in 1942, and continued to do so up until 1953, when it sold the site to the Niagara Falls Board of Education. By the time the Niagara Falls Board of Education had approached Hooker, there was 21,000 tons of 200 or more chemicals deposited in the Canal. (Paigen, B., 1982. Controversy at Love Canal. Hastings Center Report, 12(3), pp.29-37.) Although this site became an epicenter of toxicity, Hooker chemical conformed to the regulations that existed within the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) that was in place at that time. Hooker had adequately warned the Niagara Falls Board of Education of the chemical waste buried beneath the surface through the deed to the school board, the minutes of the school board meeting and articles from the local Niagara Falls newspaper.

Hooker Electrochemical company sought to ensure that the property it had sold to the Niagara Falls board of education was to be used for the development of a school and park and that the soil it had covered the chemical waste with, would not be constructed upon. But, in 1957, the School Board sold the southern portion of the Canal to a private individual who intended to develop new homes in the area, despite perspicuous warnings. (Mazur, A., 1998. A hazardous inquiry: the Rashomon effect at Love Canal. Harvard University Press.) During the supervening quarter of a century, chemicals from the dump site transferred through the earth, identifiable as a thick oily amalgam of chemicals and topsoil. Despite explicit warnings about the dangers that could potentially arise as a result of constructing on this property, the board of education built an elementary school in the center of the site and the north and south areas of the land were sold to property developers. The Love Canal became a neighborhood of approximately eight hundred homes that were dangerously situated adjacently to a hive of toxic substances. By as early as 1958, Hooker Chemical and city officials were informed that three children had suffered chemical burns from exposed wastes on the surface of the canal – no action – Niagara Falls health department and local officials. (Paigen, B., 1982. Controversy at Love Canal. Hastings Center Report, 12(3), pp.29-37.) By the mid 1970’s, after many years of adverse weather effects and prolonged rainfall, barrels that contained the noxious chemicals began to resurface and rust, causing the substances to seep out into basements and property throughout the area. ( Thomson, J., 2016. Toxic residents: health and citizenship at love canal. Journal of Social History, 50(1), pp.204-223.) In 1976, investigations were undertaken by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC) as a result of suspected leaching into nearby sewers and basement sumps.