Usually when people picture Niagara Falls, they envision a majestic curtain of water, a testament of nature’s strength and beauty. The town of Niagara Falls has undoubtedly profited from the millions of tourists flocking to see this natural wonder; it used to also be sustained by the chemical manufacturing industry. For as much grandeur and fame as the falls have brought the town, the presence of toxic chemicals and a series of poor decisions have earned Niagara Falls an opposite– yet equal– reputation for environmental disaster.
In the 1890s, a Mr. William T. Love envisioned building a hydroelectric generator in a canal running from the Niagara River to what he referred to as “Model City.” This “Model City” grew into Niagara Falls. After digging a short portion of the canal, Love’s lack of funds and technology caught up with him, and he was forced to scrap the project. In the first half of the 20th century, Hooker Chemicals & Plastics Corporation used what would’ve been the canal as a dumping ground for their chemical waste. Hooker cited the clay-like consistency of the soil as favorable for containing their chemical waste. The City of Niagara Falls also commonly used the site to dispose of its municipal waste.
In 1953, Hooker was approached by the Niagara Falls School Board, who, because of the population boom, was in desperate need of land to build schools. When Hooker refused sale, on account of the toxicity of the soil, the Board threatened to seize the land. Ultimately, Hooker agreed to sell the land for $1, after making it very clear that building anything on the land would be a very bad idea. Records show that officials from Hooker actually took school board member to the Love Canal site and had soil samples taken in their presence to prove just how bad of an idea it was to build there.
The language used in the agreement prevented Hooker from being culpable, in the likely event that health issues would emerge and people started suing. This would sound exactly like a typical shady corporation move if it weren’t for the fact that Hooker didn’t want anything to be built on the land in the first place. Hooker opted to sell the land instead of having it seized so that every time the land changed hands in the future, the warnings laid down in their original contract with the school board would persist in the document’s language.
By 1960, two public schools and a mixture of low-income and single family houses had been built over the Love Canal dump site or on adjacent parcels of land. Because the housing development did not technically rest on a part of the original parcel sold by Hooker, it was not required that they be told what lay beneath their houses. The residents had no idea that their yards were toxic cesspools. The carelessness displayed during the construction of the area’s sewer system included puncturing the clay cask surrounding the chemical reservoir, meaning that every time it rained, toxic chemicals would further leach out into the surrounding soil.
Fast forward to the late 1970s. Journalist Michael H. Brown of the Niagara Falls Gazette picked up investigating the toxicity of the area where two other reporters, David Pollak and David Russell, left off in 1976. Brown conducted an informal survey and found that many area residents had an unusually high rate of physical and mental health problems. These included nervous system disorders, cancers, mental retardation, extra rows of teeth, cleft palate, and vision deficiencies, among other things. It was also discovered that backyard gardens, the likes of which many residences depended upon for sustenance, were yielding toxic produce, and that infants were being poisoned by their mothers’ breast milk. A survey concluded that about 56% of children born between 1974-1978 were born with at least one birth defect. A local woman, Lois Gibbs, whose son suffered from a plethora of toxicity-related birth defects, led an investigation into the extent to which the Love Canal area was toxic and why no one in the community had any idea.
At this point, the city government and Hooker engaged in a heated back and forth argument, each trying to disprove culpability. Hooker argued that since there was no way to prove that the chemicals came from their dump site, they were in no way culpable. The local government all but ignored any health concerns raised by its constituency. Two of the schools built over the Love Canal site were promptly closed, as the original contract between Hooker and the city made explicit who was culpable in those instances.
On August 7,1978, President Jimmy Carter declared a federal health emergency and allocated federal funds for the cleanup and removal of the toxins in the area. This marked the first time that emergency funds were allocated for anything other than a natural disaster in U.S. histor. Once blood tests were conducted on area residents, scientists saw that precursor symptoms to leukemia and chromosome damage were disproportionately high within the sample population; about 33% of residents had damaged chromosomes, compared to the national average of 1%. The government eventually evacuated over 800 blue-collared families, but help came much too late for many: in the years leading up to the aid, many families were forced to simply abandon their homes at a loss.
Today, the majority of the houses that once stood around the Love Canal area have been demolished. Vague plans exist to sell the 300 or so remaining houses farthest away from the dump site, and layers of clay, dirt, and plastic liner now protect the most toxic part of the area, along with a barbed wire fence.
So what does it all mean? While Love Canal is a uniquely horrifying example of what can happen when appropriate safety measures are not taken in disposing of toxic chemicals, the fact remains: this environmental hazard rested underneath an entire community, including several public schools, without anyone raising any questions for over twenty years. In that time, countless lives were affected, and untold damage was done to the people of Niagara Falls. The decisions of Hooker Chemicals and the City of Niagara Falls, in their dumping practices and shifty zoning practices respectively, exemplify how cutting corners and not being transparent with public health matters can destroy the lives.
On that note, be aware of your surroundings! Hold your elected officials and local businesses accountable for their actions! Be apart of positive change! Don’t freak out, but remember that environmental hazards have many faces, and can go unnoticed for long periods of time, and are often only acknowledged after it’s too late. With one in four New Yorkers living within a mile of a Superfund site, it is time, now more than ever, for us to take action and do something.