What Is Love Canal

In 1907, Nat Love published his autobiography, “The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as Deadwood Dick,” the book boast adventurous tales and chance encounters such as the ones mentioned earlier, but there really isn’t any historical proof of it. It’s almost like the great-uncle that tells war stories that have a different ending every time, so we’ll never know which part is fact or fiction, but I like to believe it’s all true. Love’s last known job was working as a courier for the General Securities Company in Los Angeles,

The economic rationale of getting rid of the Poison Pill was to allow CSX to gain ownership of the Company while working within the lines of the regulatory laws in Pennsylvania.

The first part of Toms River by Dan Fagin goes into detail about the history of the chemical industry in New Jersey with the Ciba plant producing dyes and epoxy and their methods of disposing of waste and what effect that had on surrounding individual’s health. There were many groups of people who were exposed to the toxic chemicals produced in the waste products of dyes and epoxy from the Ciba plant. People who were working the factory typically had peak exposure because they were required to scrape and dispose of the waste chemicals daily. Residents of a neighborhood downstream the factory who typically had personal wells and were not customers of Toms River Water avoided the chemically traced water directly from the river for some time,

The W.R. Grace Company, Riley Eannery, and Unifirst Corporation were prominent factories in Wobourn. Jan speculated they were to have illegally dumped a dangerous carcinogen known as TCE into the ground, sewer, and water systems of the Woborn community. These poisons were thought by Jan, and the community, to have polluted two water wells that acted as a water supply for the community. Many of the people who worked at the factories experienced many medical problems such as cancer and died at young ages. Community members experienced numerous medial problems such as flu-like symptoms, memory loss, cancers, leukemia, burning eyes, and skin, and death. The water over the years was said to have gone from natural, to smelling, to dark and dangerous.

The canal that links the waters of Lake Erie to the west of the Hudson River in the east, is the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal is an example of Henry Clay’s vision to harmonize and balance the country’s agriculture, economy and industries. The building of this canal was first proposed in 1808 and was eventually completed in 1824. At the time, New York State Governor De Witt Clinton envisioned a canal that would link Albany to Buffalo. The idea was criticized by some and given the name “Clinton’s ditch”. The idea turned out to be a critical turning point for the country since it opened up many new possibilities.

The Ironbound has been a home to many industrial and residential communities where factories operate right next to homes, schools, and playgrounds. The East Ward is surrounded by the airport, the highways, the railroads, and the Passaic River. Having all these deserted lots, forgotten factories, neglected junk, all this takes a toll on the air, water, and land of Newark. In the early, 1980’s workers digging and made a nearby pool at the corner of St. Charles St. and Rome St. to discovered toxic levels of PCBs and other chemicals left behind by the former plastics plant. The federal government eventually declared this pool closed down in 1987. Same thing happened in the mid 2000’s, when the Ironbound opened an outdoors pool on the corner of Ferry St. and Waydell St. and a couple of years later they had to closed it down due to the high levels of dioxin. They immediately shut it down because it was hazards and unsafe for the children in

Veronica Kronvall remembers how excited she felt about buying her house in 2007. It was her first house, in the small city of Ponder, Texas. Her kitchen was filled with her favorite color, purple, everything from mixing bowls to the microwave. She planted roses and planned on having a garden. She planned at living in this house for decades. What Veronica did not imagine was that 4 years later and energy company would drill 5 wells behind her home, with the closest being less than 300 feet from her backyard. Green pipes and tanks loom over her fence. The rumble of trucks and equipment rattled the glasses in her cupboard, and the smell of an acrid blend of chemicals was constant. She began having symptoms she had never had before, her eyes

Although drinking water is not yet known to have been affected, the groundwater was contaminated with volatile organic compounds and heavy metals (5). Both of these types of contaminants have been linked with one or several of the following: cancer, liver, kidney, and nervous system problems (4). In July 1979, the State Court required that all material be removed from the site by July 1980 (5). The state has spent over $300,000 cleaning this site (5). According to EPA standards, this site is in the "construction completed" stage of clean up. This does not mean, however that actual cleanup is complete because groundwater may need to be treated more than 30 years before contaminants are at accepted levels (5).

DuPont was aware of the harmful effects this chemical had on animals and people but ignored the issue in accordance of high profit. Not only were people affected in the local community, but people in surrounding areas were also affected. Thousands of people and large amounts of property were inflicted with poor air quality and poor drinking water. DuPont had later discovered that there were dust fumes emerging from the factories that were unhealthy for people to inhale, and later found it in the drinking water. DuPont also found an astonishing key of evidence, they had found PFOA in the water, and it was twice the amount of what was allowed, and could cause some serious issues. They had known about the levels and did not notify any workers or anyone in the community due to the fear of loss of profit. Men and women were coming home with a fever, nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting. These workers endured injurious experiences, and were never notified about the condition in which they were working. DuPont was named as not trustworthy, and at times known to practice illegal activity. After going through the experiences of which they just endured, they might go through the process of mental thinking or what they just went through was not right and should not have happened to me. That process is known as

In 1986, a case went to court that pertained to the polluted state of the drinking water in Woburn, Massachusetts. Two companies, W.R. Grace & Co. and Beatrice Foods, were accused of improperly disposing of chemical waste, which was said to have been the cause of the water contamination in wells G and H. However, Woburn had a history of manufacturing chemicals and carrying out other toxic processes, such as leather tanning, that began as early as the 1600s. In fact, Woburn had been the leading producer of leather in 1855 and into the 20th century. The process for making leather, in which hides are soaked in toxic agents and brushed with chemical compounds as a finish, can easily pollute surrounding natural resources if not carried out with caution.

When I went on the tour I was told a lot of facts that I found very interesting. For example, on the American side it is 1060 feet long and 176 feet tall. It would be about 70 feet, but on account of the rocks at the base it is 176 feet. Also, the American side has a volume of about 150,000 US Gallons. Being as young as I was, I was super impressed with these numbers. They told me that they are two hydroelectric plants in the area that change the volume of water that flows over. The volume depends on the time of year and the time of day. The heaviest flow is travel season, June, July, August, during the daytime. I found it incredible that these plants could change the flow of water of something as grand as Niagara Falls.

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

By the late 1920’s the canal was being used as a dumpsite by municipal and commercial entities. 82 different chemicals 11 of them known carcinogens had been dumped by the Hooker Chemical Company for over twenty five years. In 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, then the owners and operators of the property, covered the canal with earth and sold it to the city for one dollar. This was definitely a bad buy for the city of Niagara, unfortunately it would take over 20 years to realize it. During that time more than 100 homes and one elementary school had been built over the landfill, this was definitely not the city that Love had envisioned.

A beautiful city, Niagara Falls in the state of New York, ruined by careless decisions of the city of Niagara Falls and The Hooker Chemical Company. Families suffered and died from several of diseases cause by toxic waste that was place underground near homes and schools. A mother, Louis Gibbs who lived near the Love Canal said, “ When I brought this American dream home my son was one and very healthy. Then he started to get very ill and experiences some liver problems, asthma, and then epilepsy. I could not understand, they came one after another, until I read a series written by Mr. Michael Brown, who explained that the Love Canal has toxic waste underneath the neighborhood school and it leaches in resident homes.” She continued on by

One reason behind such methods was that before 1976 there were no laws that required corporations to treat or dispose properly the hazardous wastes that they produced. In the capitalist nation we live in these corporations did not see any incentives to properly disposing of hazardous wastes. This would take coming up with new processes, building new equipment, and doing a lot of research that would in the end just cost these companies millions of dollars. Such companies found it much easier to dump these poisonous chemicals in the ground or into waterways, thereby washing their hands of the problem. Another method was to hire out “midnight-haulers”. These people would load up their trucks with hazardous wastes and while driving let it leak out onto the ground.