Love Canal

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In 1894 entrepreneur William T. Love began building a canal to connect the Niagara River to Lake Ontario. The canal was to provide water and hydroelectric power for the city of Niagara Falls, New York. Some eighty-four years later, however, the canal became a symbol of the threat of toxic chemical wastes to human communities and the environment, and Love Canal became a moniker for a social movement whose advocates believe that all people are entitled to protection from such hazards.

Love sold his partially completed sixteen-acre canal at public auction in 1947. There was a nationwide depression that had left him short of funds, and the invention of alternating electrical current had rendered his hydroelectric project obsolete. Hooker Chemicals and Plastic Corporation (later known as Hooker Chemical Corporation, and more recently as Occidental Chemical Corporation or OxyChem) bought the site after determining it was isolated and sparsely populated at the time and had an impermeable clay substrate, which made it a good location for a chemical waste landfill. According to New York state officials, the city of Niagara Falls and some federal agencies (including the military) regularly dumped chemical and other wastes at the site, in addition to the approximately 21,800 tons of chemical wastes dumped by Hooker until 1952. The company sold the site for one dollar in 1953 to the Niagara Falls Board of Education, which intended to eventually construct a grade school and playground on it.

Subsequent events ignited controversy over who—Hooker or the Niagara Falls Board of Education—was legally responsible for the exposure of the public to the chemical wastes and the resulting illnesses experienced by families who resided in the area. Despite the restrictions and risk stipulations in the deed conveyed to the Board of Education by Hooker, the Board decided to develop the land above the fill site and its surrounding area. The Board authorized construction of an elementary school on the site in 1955, the city constructed a sewer line through the canal in 1960, and developers constructed homes and streets next to the site. The toxic chemicals stored there eventually seeped from their ruptured and deteriorated containers into the soil, basements, and storm sewers. In April 1978, Michael Brown, a reporter for the Niagara Gazette, wrote a series of articles on hazardous wastes in the Niagara Falls area. By August 1978, the New York health commissioner declared a state of emergency in the area, and 239 families were evacuated. Five days later President Jimmy Carter approved emergency financial aid to permanently relocate these families. In March 1980 the president declared a state of emergency at Love Canal and funded the permanent evacuation and relocation of an additional 780 families. Brown drew national attention to the disaster in his 1980 book Laying Waste: The Poisoning of America by Toxic Chemicals.

State and federal investigations into the conditions at the landfill identified 248 different chemicals and 82 chemical compounds, 11 of which were known carcinogens. These toxins included benzene, toluene, chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, lindane, and trichlorophenol that was contaminated with the carcinogen dioxin. Residents exposed to these and other chemicals reported miscarriages, birth defects, cancer, and asthmatic, urinary, and convulsive disorders. Beginning in 1979, residents initiated a series of lawsuits against Hooker, the city, the Board of Education, and several public agencies. In April 1980 the State of New York filed a $635 million lawsuit against Occidental Petroleum (OxyChem’s parent company) and its two subsidiaries, charging that the companies were responsible for the Love Canal disaster. The New York Supreme Court announced three years later a $20 million settlement of the 1,337 claims filed. Occidental Petroleum agreed in 1989 and later paid the Environmental Protection Agency $129 million for cleanup costs.

Epidemiological evidence of chemical exposure causing abnormal rates of acute and chronic illness has been controversial. Studies conducted by scientists and by the New York State Department of Health as recently as 1997 found that the residents who lived closest to the canal experienced rates of certain diseases (for example, liver disorders and lymphomas, leukemia, and several other cancers) that were no different from those of control groups who lived elsewhere in the county and in upstate New York. Other findings showed, however, that Love Canal residents had higher rates of spontaneous abortions, childhood disorders, lung and respiratory disorders, and female genitourinary cancers.

In 1988, based on its own five-year study and further investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency, the New York State Department of Health concluded that a segment of the canal area was again habitable and proposed to resettle the area. Lois Gibbs, who had organized the Love Canal Homeowners Association in 1978 and whose son had attended the contaminated elementary school, energized the public to fight against the state’s effort to move families back to the canal area. In 1981 Gibbs founded the Citizens’ Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes (later renamed as the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice).

The Citizens’ Clearinghouse became a national resource that provided guidance and education to many of the grassroots groups and people of color who opposed chemical wastes and emissions in their communities and neighborhoods. These groups and their supporters helped define the early agenda of the American environmental justice movement, and they drew media and political attention to socioeconomic inequities (e.g., environmental racism) associated with waste facility siting, industrial emissions, and regulatory enforcement. Their collective efforts galvanized public awareness of these issues during the 1980s and 1990s and bridged other major social movements involving civil rights, feminism, and worker safety.

SEE ALSO Disaster Management; Environmental Impact Assessment; Justice; Pollution; Racism; Toxic Waste

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Axelrod, David. 1981. Love Canal: A Special Report to the Governor and Legislature: April 1981. Albany, NY: New York State Department of Public Health. http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/lcanal/lcreport.htm.

Brown, Michael Harold. 1980. Laying Waste: The Poisoning of America by Toxic Chemicals. New York: Pantheon.

Bullard, Robert D. 1993. Anatomy of Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement. In Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots, ed. Robert D. Bullard, 15–39. Boston: South End Press.

Center for Health, Environment, and Justice. http://www.chej.org/.

Domokos-Bays, Becky L. 1997. The Role of the Citizen’s Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes as an Agent of Adult Education in the Environmental Justice Movement from 1981–1995. PhD diss., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg.

Fletcher, Thomas H. 2003. From Love Canal to Environmental Justice: The Politics of Hazardous Waste on the Canada–U.S. Border. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview.

Gibbs, Lois Marie. 1998. Love Canal: The Story Continues. Rev. ed. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society.

Grossman, Karl. 1994. The People of Color Environmental Summit. In Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color, ed. Robert D. Bullard, 272–297. San Francisco: Sierra Club.

Mazur, Allan. 1998. A Hazardous Inquiry: The Rashomon Effect at Love Canal. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

New York State Department of Health. September 2002. Love Canal Follow-up Health Study—September 2002. Albany, NY:Author.

http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/lcanal/902news.htm.

Niagara Gazette. 1980. Love Canal Chronology. May 23.

http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/lovecanal/chronology_menu.html

Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science. 2004. Love Canal—An Introduction Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve University.

http://onlineethics.org/environment/lcanal/index.html.

Taylor, Dorceta. 2000. The Rise of the Environmental Justice Paradigm. American Behavioral Scientist 43 (4): 508–580.

University Archives. 1998. Love Canal Collection. Buffalo:University of New York at Buffalo, University Libraries.

Whalen, Robert P. 1978. Love Canal: Public Health Time Bomb, A Special Report to the Governor and Legislature: September 1978. Albany, NY: New York State Department of Health.

http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/lcanal/lctimbmb.htm.

John K. Thomas