The Love Canal Tragedy
by Eckardt C. Beck
[EPA Journal - January 1979]
Quite simply, Love Canal is one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in American history.
But that's not the most disturbing fact.
What is worse is that it cannot be regarded as an isolated event. It could happen again--anywhere in this country--unless we move expeditiously to prevent it.
It is a cruel irony that Love Canal was originally meant to be a dream community. That vision belonged to the man for whom the three-block tract of land on the eastern edge of Niagara Falls, New York, was named--William T. Love.
Love felt that by digging a short canal between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers, power could be generated cheaply to fuel the industry and homes of his would-be model city.
But despite considerable backing, Love's project was unable to endure the one-two punch of fluctuations in the economy and Nikola Tesla's discovery of how to economically transmit electricity over great distances by means of an alternating current.
By 1910, the dream was shattered. All that was left to commemorate Love's hope was a partial ditch where construction of the canal had begun.
In the 1920s the seeds of a genuine nightmare were planted. The canal was turned into a municipal and industrial chemical dumpsite.
Landfills can of course be an environmentally acceptable method of hazardous waste disposal, assuming they are properly sited, managed, and regulated. Love Canal will always remain a perfect historical example of how not to run such an operation.
In 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, then the owners and operators of the property, covered the canal with earth and sold it to the city for one dollar.
It was a bad buy.
In the late '50s, about 100 homes and a school were built at the site. Perhaps it wasn't William T. Love's model city, but it was a solid, working-class community. For a while.
Story Here: http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/love-canal-tragedy
Another article here: http://www.damninteresting.com/the-tragedy-of-the-love-canal/
[EPA Journal - January 1979]
If you get there before I do
Tell 'em I'm a comin' too
To see the things so wondrous true
At Love's new Model City
(From a turn-of-the-century advertising jingle promoting the development of Love Canal)
Give me Liberty. I've Already Got Death.
(From a sign displayed by a Love Canal resident, 1978)
Tell 'em I'm a comin' too
To see the things so wondrous true
At Love's new Model City
(From a turn-of-the-century advertising jingle promoting the development of Love Canal)
Give me Liberty. I've Already Got Death.
(From a sign displayed by a Love Canal resident, 1978)
But that's not the most disturbing fact.
What is worse is that it cannot be regarded as an isolated event. It could happen again--anywhere in this country--unless we move expeditiously to prevent it.
It is a cruel irony that Love Canal was originally meant to be a dream community. That vision belonged to the man for whom the three-block tract of land on the eastern edge of Niagara Falls, New York, was named--William T. Love.
Love felt that by digging a short canal between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers, power could be generated cheaply to fuel the industry and homes of his would-be model city.
But despite considerable backing, Love's project was unable to endure the one-two punch of fluctuations in the economy and Nikola Tesla's discovery of how to economically transmit electricity over great distances by means of an alternating current.
By 1910, the dream was shattered. All that was left to commemorate Love's hope was a partial ditch where construction of the canal had begun.
In the 1920s the seeds of a genuine nightmare were planted. The canal was turned into a municipal and industrial chemical dumpsite.
Landfills can of course be an environmentally acceptable method of hazardous waste disposal, assuming they are properly sited, managed, and regulated. Love Canal will always remain a perfect historical example of how not to run such an operation.
In 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, then the owners and operators of the property, covered the canal with earth and sold it to the city for one dollar.
It was a bad buy.
In the late '50s, about 100 homes and a school were built at the site. Perhaps it wasn't William T. Love's model city, but it was a solid, working-class community. For a while.
Story Here: http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/love-canal-tragedy
Another article here: http://www.damninteresting.com/the-tragedy-of-the-love-canal/
LThe 1970s began with a remarkable pulse of federal legislation aimed at protecting endangered species and restoring the nation’s air and waters. But it took until 1978 for another type of environmental threat, toxic hot spots left behind by industrial activity, to gain the spotlight.
The galvanizing story was that of the frightened, outraged homeowners around Love Canal, an unfinished waterway in upstate New York that, in the industrial boom around World War II, became a chemical dump. Covered with dirt, the 16-acre site in 1953 was sold under pressure by the Hooker Chemical Company to the local school district for a dollar, with the paperwork including a warning about what lay there. ove Canal and Its Mixed Legacy
Lawsuits: Love Canal still oozes 35 years later
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (AP) — Thirty-five years after Love Canal's oozing toxic waste scared away a neighborhood and became a symbol of environmental catastrophe, history could be repeating itself.
New residents, attracted by promises of cleaned-up land and affordable homes, say in lawsuits that they are being sickened by the same buried chemicals from the disaster in the Niagara Falls neighborhood in the 1970s.
"We're stuck here. We want to get out," said 34-year-old Dan Reynolds, adding that he's been plagued by mysterious rashes and other ailments since he moved into the four-bedroom home purchased a decade ago for $39,900.
More Here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/11/02/suits-claim-love-canal-still-oozing-35-years-later/3384259/
The galvanizing story was that of the frightened, outraged homeowners around Love Canal, an unfinished waterway in upstate New York that, in the industrial boom around World War II, became a chemical dump. Covered with dirt, the 16-acre site in 1953 was sold under pressure by the Hooker Chemical Company to the local school district for a dollar, with the paperwork including a warning about what lay there. ove Canal and Its Mixed Legacy
Lawsuits: Love Canal still oozes 35 years later
New residents, attracted by promises of cleaned-up land and affordable homes, say in lawsuits that they are being sickened by the same buried chemicals from the disaster in the Niagara Falls neighborhood in the 1970s.
"We're stuck here. We want to get out," said 34-year-old Dan Reynolds, adding that he's been plagued by mysterious rashes and other ailments since he moved into the four-bedroom home purchased a decade ago for $39,900.
More Here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/11/02/suits-claim-love-canal-still-oozing-35-years-later/3384259/
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