What Caused The Love Canal

The Gowanus Canal, located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, is one of the most heavily contaminated bodies of water in the United States. The dimensions of the Gowanus canal are 100-feet wide and 1.8 miles long. The canal is built in the mid-1800’s as a major industrial transportation route. Historically it was surrounded by heavy industries such as gas plants, concrete plants, industrial plants, chemical plants, tanneries, and paper mills. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, over six million tons of cargo was being transported on the canal annually over the years.

Love Canal, a Niagra Falls, New York neighborhood, drew headline attention after newspaper sources revealed that the land had been used to bury excessive amounts of toxic waste, in the form of lye and chlorinated limestone by the landowners, Hooker Chemical Company, in the 1920s.

Why would a place that sounds so nice be so dangerous? The Love Canal scared away hundreds of innocent civilians away, but why? Where did this environmental tragedy start? How did it affect New York, and how was it stopped?

This document, Recipe for Disaster: Motherhood and Citizenship at Love Canal, holds focus to the decades between 1960-1980’s in which the residents of Niagara Falls, New York faced a large problem of toxic waste surrounding their homes. Its author, Amy M. Hay, reveals specific characteristics about the area such as homes being built on the toxic land in addition to the toxins taking a toll on the environment. In “the Love Canal” as it is nicknamed, children are constantly falling to illnesses’, mothers seem to keep falling victim to miscarriages, and residents are faced with the dilemma of deciding between leaving or remaining in their homes at the Loving Canal. Correspondingly, all of the aforementioned seems to be happening on a constant

We all know there is something in the water. In June 1969, there was an oil slick on the Cuyahoga River which was a turning point in American attitudes about water pollution. It wasn't the first time a U.S. river had caught fire; the Cuyahoga had already burned nine times since the Civil War but it came at a time when environmental issues were already in the

To begin, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill was a man-made environmental disaster that occurred in 1989. On March 24, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck Bligh Reef and spilled 260,000 barrels of crude oil into the waters of Prince William Sound in Alaska (Piatt, Lensick, Butler, Kendziorek & Nysewander, 1990). Eventually, this oil spread across 30,000 km² of water, damaging ecosystems and marine life along the way (Piatt, 1990). Evidently, this oil spill is considered to be one of the most destructive man-made environmental disasters in history (Dimdam, 2013).

Is it the fault of self-centered overzealous enthusiast William T. Love? The partially dug hole, left as such by William T Love, if was covered instead of leaving it open would have not caused this problem. In 1920 the land was sold to the industrial town of Niagara Falls. The pit hole was used as a dumping place for municipal waste. Since it was an industrial town, the chemical industries around the area began dumping chemical wastes into the Love Canal area. Mostly at this period of time dumping wastes into a landfill area or into the waters was a common practice. Love Canal was a major tragic incident that helped to develop regulating chemical hazardous wastes in the country. There are lessons learned based on the errors made.

“The Big Uneasy” by Harry Shearer is a documentary about the disastrous flooding of New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina in a different viewpoint. While mass media describe the flood as well as the hurricane as a natural disaster, Shearer claims that the flooding was actually a man-made disaster, not a natural one; and the film contains comprehensive investigations with scientific data to support the claim. “The Big Uneasy” highlights on the ineffective design and maintenance of the flood-protection system, as well as the engineering structure of the Mississippi River’s waterway in the city. Severe environmental damages due to poor infrastructural planning also ruin the natural flood barrier of the region. Furthermore, these problems

In 1953, the canal (which had previously been widened to hold more waste) was nearly full, so it was covered over with clay to seal it. As the vicinity around Niagara Falls grew rapidly, Hooker sold the 16-acres of land to the Niagara Falls city school board for $1. However, the deed for the land included a disclaimer that warned that hazardous chemicals were buried on the property and cleared the company of any future responsibility (Levine 11). On the site, the 99th Street Elementary School was constructed along with houses, sewers, and roads. Early signs of the potential hazards were identifiable in the early 1950s, such as uneven fields with sink holes from decomposing barrels, strong odors, skin irritations on children and dogs and a black, oily substance in basements were ignored by the residents of the area. Not until

It’s 1940 and the company I worked for, Hooker Electrochemical Company, bought the land around the Love Canal. I lived not far from it 2 or 3 miles so, it was very convenient for me. My life was simple and pleasant. There were 25,000 chemicals being dumped in canal the majority of chemicals the government did not know were being poured into the canal. A year later my company sold the land so a school could be built. I got a new job as an accountant at City Hall. The new school and houses were built, bringing the population up, complaints were flooding in, piling desks in the offices around me.

But not all of them were completely healthy. There were many birth defects caused by the chemicals, some including: cleft lips, extra limbs, fingers, and toes, growths, and other problems that were inside the bodies. Some of the defects caused the children’s life to be altered greatly. When these children grew up, their problems were not even close to over. The children, now adults, have risks of not being able to have children due to the inhalation of the chemicals as a child. If they can have children, their child will have a large chance of being born with a birth defect of worse. This generation of people born in the Love Canal area at that time now have to deal with problems for the rest of their lives, all because they lived in a town that everyone thought was

The article chosen is about Love Canal; a canal placed four miles south of Niagara Falls that was cancelled mid-way through construction. Between the years 1942 to 1953 the Hooker Chemical Company used the ditch as a hazardous waste dump and filled it with twenty-one thousand tons of hazardous waste, some of which are known to cause cancer. Shortly following, a small town, by the name of Love Canal, was built over Love Canal. In Love Canal, many illnesses occurred, including nephrosis and other diseases, for unknown causes. Later it was revealed the chemicals lying under the ground was the reason for the illnesses. The chemicals had seeped into the sewage system after precipitation levels rose. Subsequently, two hundred thirty-nine families

Love Canal was once a chemical waste dumping ground located in Niagara Falls, NY., only miles from where I grew up. Originally, the idea of The Love Canal was to serve as a canal that would connect the two levels of the Niagara River ultimately resulting in an easier and less expensive way to generate power. Unfortunately, only about a mile of the canal was dug before money ran out to proceed with the project. Therefore, this mile long hole in the ground was used by local residents as a swimming pool in the summer and an ice skating rink in the winter until a local chemical company purchased the canal to use as a waste site to dump their excess chemicals into. Overtime, more than 21,000 tons of chemicals were tossed into the canal and simply

There are scientific debates on the health impacts of living or working in toxic industrial areas. Large chemical industries will deny the fact that there are any negative correlations with health. For example, a spokesman for Hooker Chemical Company stated that, “The monitoring and containment system is as effective today”. They would usually state that scientific data is exaggerated, and that simply capping the area with soil/clay makes it safe. However, scientist have proved that strong chemicals persist in land for a very long time. For instance, Love Canal’s problem still existed even 35 years later. The chemicals can travel through groundwater and can be leached easily. Previous test had shown no toxic waste in the Love

I consider that you have brought a good argument regarding canalization. However, this can be a vague concept; developmental and biologist theorists view this subject differently. Developmental theorists that take into consideration canalization suggest that genetics restrict phenotype (set of observable an individual’s traits resulting from the interaction of its genetic makeup with the environment). The canalization theory also states that genes predetermine developmental pathways suggesting that the environment has little effect on people’s characteristics, (Shaffer & Kipp, 2010). There are no doubts that genetic predispositions do take place. However, there are limitations to know which traits are not influenced by the environment.