The Love Canal chemical waste dump

Lois Gibbs, an activist, noticed the high occurrence of illness and birth defects in the area and started documenting it. In 1978 newspapers revealed the existence of the chemical waste dump in the Love Canal area and Lois Gibbs started petitioning for closing the school. In August 1978, the claim succeeded and the NYS Health Department ordered closing of the school when a child suffered from chemical poisoning.
When Love Canal was researched over 130 pounds of the highly toxic carcinogenic TCDD, a form of dioxin, was discovered. The total of 20.000 tons of waste present in the landfill appeared to contain more than 248 different species of chemicals. The waste mainly consisted of pesticide residues and chemical weapons research refuse.

In 1920 Hooker Chemical had turned an area in Niagara Falls into a municipal and chemical disposal site. In 1953 the site was filled and relatively modern methods were applied to cover it. A thick layer of impermeable red clay sealed the dump, preventing chemicals from leaking out of the landfill.

A city near the dumpsite wanted to buy it for urban expansion. Despite the warnings of Hooker the city eventually bought the site for the meagre amount of 1 dollar. Hooker could not sell for more, because they did not want to earn money off a project so clearly unwise. The city began to dig to develop a sewer, damaging the red clay cap that covered the dumpsite below. Blocks of homes and a school were built and the neighbourhood was named Love Canal.

Love Canal seemed like a regular neighbourhood. The only thing that distinguished this neighbourhood from other was the strange odours that often hung in the air and an unusual seepage noticed by inhabitants in their basements and yards. Children in the neighbourhood often fell ill. Love Canal families regularly experienced miscarriages and birth defects.

The chemicals had entered homes, sewers, yards and creeks and Gibbs decided it was time for the more than 900 families to be moved away from the location. Eventually President Carter provided funds to move all the families to a safer area. Hooker’s parent company was sued and settled for 20 million dollars.

Despite protests by Gibbs’s organization some of the houses in Love Canal went up for sale some 20 years later. The majority of the houses are on the market now and the neighbourhood may become inhabited again after 20 years of abandonment. The houses in Love Canal are hard to sell, despite a renaming of the neighbourhood. It suffered such a bad reputation after the incident that banks refused mortgages on the houses.

None of the chemicals have been removed from the dumpsite. It has been resealed and the surrounding area was cleaned and declared safe. Hooker’s mother company paid an additional 230 million dollars to finance this cleanup. They are now responsible for the management of the dumpsite. Today, the Love Canal dumpsite is known as one of the major environmental disasters of the century.