The Love Canal Heather Ahlgrim The Love Canal was originally built to be a dream society… Public Health Time Bomb… $1.6 billion cleanup

The Love canal was named after William T. Love. He wanted to build a canal from the Niagra River to Lake Russia. He built about a mile of the canal when he ran out of money. The pit filled with water and it became a regular dumping site for the City of Niagra Falls. In the 1940’s the U.S. Army began using the site to dump wastes from the WWII effort including some waste from the Manhattan Project. In 1940, Hooker Chemical Company began looking for a place to dump the large amount of chemical waste it was producing. The Niagara Power company granted permission for them to dump waste into the Love Canal in

This dumpsite was in operation until During this time, tons of chemicals were dumped. In 1947 Hooker bought the canal and after 1953 the canal was covered with soil and vegetation grew on top of it. In 1953 the Niagara Falls City School District needed land to build new schools. Hooker refused to sell because of the safety concerns. Faced with the property being condemned, they agreed to sell it for one dollar. After schools were completed in 1955, 400 children attended. A 25 foot area crumbled exposing toxic chemical drums, which filled with water during rainstorms, children enjoyed playing in these…

The school sold unused land to homeowners. The land where the homes built was not part of the agreement thus, none of these residents knew about the waste. The residents began noticing chemical pools in their yards and basements. A reporter from Niagara Falls Gazzette tested the water and found the chemicals but no one could prove that the chemicals came from the Hooker pit. In 1978 he went door to door surveying for birth defects. He found an abnormal amount of these. Resident Karen Schroeder (12 defects) organized a protest group. On August 7, 1978 President Carter declared the Love Canal to be a federal health emergency.