Love Canal
LOVE CANAL
LOVE CANAL has become synonymous with environmental mismanagement and was why the federal government created the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund in 1980 to pay for the cleanup of environmental disasters. In the 1890s William Love wanted to build a town near Niagara Falls in upstate New York. He designed a canal to connect two branches of the Niagara River and provide the town with electricity from the power of the rapids just before the falls. But economic difficulties forced Love to abandon the project. All that was left was the canal, which was acquired by Niagara Falls in 1927.
Around 1940 the city allowed the Hooker Chemical Company to use the canal as a dumping ground for chemical waste. For the next thirteen years Hooker buried more than twenty thousand tons of chemicals, including
dioxin. In 1953 Niagara Falls announced it intended to build an elementary school on the canal site. After the school was built, parents reported burns on children who played in the area. By the mid-1970s Love Canal's residents were reporting cases of miscarriages, birth defects, liver abnormalities, and cancer. In 1978 the Love Canal Homeowners Association demanded action and relief. The federal government and the state of New York purchased over eight hundred houses and relocated one thousand families. Legal action also began, as the federal government, Hooker Chemical, and the city of Niagara Falls fought over liability issues. In 1995 Hooker agreed to pay the Superfund and the Federal Emergency Management Agency a total of $129 million for the environmental cleanup of the site.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ferrell, O. C., and John Fraedrich. Business Ethics. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
John A.Morello