LOVE CANAL DISASTER Hooker Chemical and Plastic Company disposed tons of toxic waste. As a consequence the residents, after several years of coloured water, strange rains, burns on the skin apparently without causes, a high rate of birth defects, blood diseases and cancer, discovered that their water was polluted several hundred times above safe levels

This area was evacuated, schools closed and houses destroyed for an amount of $200 million dollars of cleanup and liability costs

Environmental disaster as Russian tanker sinks · 1,300 tonnes oil flows into Crimea strait after storm · Habitat may take 10 years to recover say experts Luke Harding in MoscowLuke Harding The Guardian, Monday 12 November 2007The Guardian Russia and Ukraine were last night facing a catastrophe after a tanker carrying 4,000 tonnes of oil broke up yesterday in heavy seas off the Crimean peninsula, splitting in half and creating what one senior official termed an "environmental disaster". The Russian ship broke up in a storm and high waves yesterday near the port of Kavkaz in the narrow Kerch strait south of the Sea of Azov, in one of the worst ecological disasters in the region for years.

Maxim Stepanenko, a regional lawyer, said the oil tanker, designed in Soviet times to transport oil on rivers, was not built to withstand a fierce storm. Yesterday there had been six-metre high waves and winds gusting at 80 miles an hour. "All the captains in the strait were warned of the storm at 5.15pm (2.15pm GMT) on November 10. All of them had enough time to leave the dangerous area." The damage to the Volganeft-139 happened in Ukraine waters in the strait between that country and Russia. The tanker was carrying fuel oil from the Russian city of Samara, on the east bank of the Volga river, to a port in Ukraine.