Love Canal: The Neighborhood Built on Toxic Waste, New York

In the 1890s, a developer named William T. Love dreamed of a model industrial city near Niagara Falls, powered by a canal he would dig to carry water for electricity. The money ran out. Only about a mile of the canal was ever dug, and his name stayed on a long, empty ditch. From 1942 to 1952, Hooker Chemical used the ditch as a dump, with the city’s permission. About 21,800 tons of chemical waste went into the ground, and the canal was covered over with clay. In 1953, Hooker sold the land to the Niagara Falls school board for $1. The deed included a clause releasing the company from future claims. Despite warnings about buried drums, the 99th Street School opened on the site in 1955, and in the late 1950s homes went up around it. Sewer lines and the LaSalle Expressway were built through the area, breaking the clay cap. Over the years, chemicals seeped into yards and basements. Residents, led in part by Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal Homeowners’ Association, pushed for answers. On August 7, 1978, President Jimmy Carter declared a federal health emergency, the first time emergency funds had been used for something other than a natural disaster. Hundreds of families were relocated. Love Canal became a national story, and the EPA says public concern there was a catalyst for the 1980 Superfund law. Love Canal was the first site on the program’s priority list. The school was torn down, the canal was capped and fenced, and the cleanup took 21 years and about $400 million. In 1995, Occidental Petroleum, which had bought Hooker in 1968, agreed to pay $129 million. The site was removed from the Superfund list in 2004.