Love Canal
Love Canal was a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, United States, infamous as the location of a landfill that became the site of an environmental disaster discovered in 1977. Decades of exposure to dumped toxic chemicals harmed the health of hundreds, often profoundly. The area was cleaned up over a period of twenty-one years in a Superfund operation.
In 1890, Love Canal was created as a model planned community, but was only partially developed. In 1894, work was begun on a canal to the east of the Niagara River, meant to compete with the existing Welland Canal to the west of the Niagara, to link lakes Erie and Ontario, but the Love Canal was abandoned after only was dug. In the 1920s, the canal became a dump site for municipal refuse for the city of Niagara Falls. During the 1940s, the canal was purchased by Hooker Chemical Company, which used the site to dump 19,800 metric tonnes of chemical byproducts from the manufacturing of dyes, perfumes, and solvents for rubber and synthetic resins.
Love Canal was sold to the local school district in 1953 for $1, after the threat of eminent domain. Over the next three decades, it attracted national attention for the public health problems originating from the former dumping of toxic waste on the grounds. This event displaced numerous families, leaving them with longstanding health issues and symptoms of high white blood cell counts and leukemia. Subsequently, the federal government passed the Superfund law in 1980. The resulting Superfund cleanup operation demolished the neighborhood, ending in 2004.
In 1988, New York State Department of Health Commissioner David Axelrod called the Love Canal incident a "national symbol of a failure to exercise a sense of concern for future generations". The Love Canal incident was especially significant as a situation where the inhabitants "overflowed into the wastes instead of the other way around".
Geography
Love Canal is a neighborhood located in the city of Niagara Falls in the northwestern region of New York state. The neighborhood covers 36 blocks in the far southeastern corner of the city, stretching from 93rd Street comprising the western border to 100th Street in the east border and 103rd Street in the northeast. Bergholtz Creek defines the northern border with the Niagara River marking the southern border away. The LaSalle Expressway splits an uninhabited portion of the south from the north. The canal covers of land in the central eastern portion.Early history, canal dig, 1894–1940
In 1890, William T. Love, a former railroad lawyer, prepared plans to construct a preplanned urban community of parks and residences on the shore of Lake Ontario. Love, who would become notorious for similar real-estate schemes later in life, claimed it would serve the area's burgeoning industries with much-needed hydroelectricity. He named the project Model City, New York.After 1892, Love's plan incorporated a shipping lane that would bypass the Niagara River and its Niagara Falls, in direct competition with the existing Welland Canal to the west of the Niagara River; the canal would add a new water transportation route between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. He arranged backing from banks in New York City, Chicago, and England. During October 1893, the first factory opened for business. In May 1894, work on the canal began. Steel companies and other manufacturers expressed interest in opening plants along Love Canal. Love began having a canal dug and built a few streets and houses.
The Panic of 1893 caused investors to end sponsorship of the project. Then in 1906, environmental groups successfully lobbied Congress to pass a law, designed to preserve Niagara Falls, prohibiting the removal of water from the Niagara River. Only of the canal was dug, about wide and deep, stretching northward from the Niagara River.
The Panic of 1907 combined with the development of the transmission of electrical power over great distances, creating access to hydroelectric power far from water sources, proved disastrous for what remained of the Model City plan. The last piece of property owned by Love's corporation was lost to foreclosure and sold at public auction in 1910. By that point, Love himself was long gone; in 1897 he left the United States for England, before returning to attempt similar schemes in Washington, Illinois, and Delaware.
With the project abandoned, the canal gradually filled with water. Local children swam there during summers and skated during the winters. In the 1920s, the city of Niagara Falls used the canal as a municipal landfill.
Industry and tourism increased steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century due to a great demand for industrial products and the increased mobility of people to travel. Paper, rubber, plastics, petrochemicals, carbon insulators, and abrasives comprised the city's major industries.
At the time of the dump's closure in 1952, Niagara Falls was experiencing prosperity, and the population had been expanding dramatically, growing by 31% in twenty years from 78,020 to 102,394.
Hooker Chemical Company, 1940s–1952
By the end of the 1940s, Hooker Chemical Company was searching for a place to dispose its large quantity of chemical waste. The Niagara Power and Development Company granted permission to Hooker during 1942 to dump wastes into the canal. The canal was drained and lined with thick clay. Into this site, Hooker began placing drums. In 1947, Hooker bought the canal and the banks on either side of the canal. It subsequently converted it into a landfill.In 1948, the City of Niagara Falls ended self-sufficient disposal of refuse and Hooker Chemical became the sole user and owner of the site.
In early 1952, when it became apparent that the site would likely be developed for construction, Hooker ceased use of Love Canal as a dumpsite. During its 10-year lifespan, the landfill served as the dumping site of of chemicals, mostly composed of products such as "caustics, alkalines, fatty acid and chlorinated hydrocarbons resulting from the manufacturing of dyes, perfumes, and solvents for rubber and synthetic resins". These chemicals were buried at a depth of. Upon its closure, the canal was covered with a clay seal to prevent leakage. Over time, vegetation settled and began to grow atop the dump site.
By the 1950s, the city of Niagara Falls was experiencing a population increase. With a growing population, the Niagara Falls City School District needed land to build new schools and attempted to purchase the property from Hooker Chemical. The population reached more than 98,000 by the 1950 census.
Sale of the site, 1952
During March 1951, the school board prepared a plan showing a school being built over the canal and listing condemnation values for each property that would need to be acquired. During March 1952, the superintendent of Niagara Falls School Board inquired of Hooker with regard to purchasing the Love Canal property for the purpose of constructing a new school. After this, in an internal company memorandum dated March 27, 1952, Bjarne Klaussen, Hooker's vice president, wrote to the works manager that "it may be advisable to discontinue using the Love Canal property for a dumping ground." During April 1952, after discussing the sale of the land with Ansley Wilcox II, Hooker's in-house legal counsel, Klaussen then wrote to the company president, R.L. Murray, suggesting that the sale could alleviate them from future liabilities for the buried chemicals:While the school board condemned some nearby properties, Hooker agreed to sell its property to the school board for $1. Hooker's letter to the board agreeing to enter into negotiations noted that "in view of the nature of the property and the purposes for which it has been used, it will be necessary for us to have special provisions incorporated into the deed with respect to the use of the property and other pertinent matters." The board rejected the company's proposal that the deed require the land to be used for park purposes only, with the school itself to be built nearby.
As "a means of avoiding liability by relinquishing control of the site", Hooker deeded the site to the school board in 1953 for $1 with a liability limitation clause. The sale document signed on April 28, 1953, included a seventeen-line caveat purporting to release the company from all legal obligations should lawsuits occur in the future.
Critics of Hooker's actions believe that, in the words of Craig E. Colton and Peter N. Skinner, "Hooker assigned the board with a continuing duty to protect property buyers from chemicals when the company itself accepted no such 'moral obligation'." The transfer effectively ended what provision of security and maintenance for the hazardous waste had existed before and placed all responsibility in clearly unqualified hands. It was this attempt to evade their responsibility, Colten and Skinner contend, that would "ultimately come back to haunt not only Hooker but all other chemical producers in the United States through the strict liability provisions of Superfund legislation." However, Eric Zuesse writes that Hooker's decision to sell the property rather than allowing the school board to condemn it stemmed from a desire to document its warnings. "Had the land been condemned and seized," says Hooker, "the company would have been unable to air its concerns to all future owners of the property. It is difficult to see any other reason for what it did."
Not long after having taken control of the land, the Niagara Falls School Board proceeded to develop the land, including construction activity that substantially breached containment structures in a number of ways, allowing previously trapped chemicals to seep out.
The resulting breaches combined with particularly heavy rainstorms released and spread the chemical waste, resulting in a public health emergency and an urban planning scandal. In what became a test case for liability clauses, Hooker Chemical was found to be "negligent" in their disposal of waste, though not reckless in the sale of the land. The dumpsite was discovered and investigated by the local newspaper, the Niagara Falls Gazette, from 1976 through the evacuation in 1978.