Love Canal Totally Explained

Everything about Love Canal totally explained

Love Canal is a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, United States of America (USA), which became the subject of national attention and controversy following the discovery of toxic waste buried beneath the neighborhood. It officially covers 36 square blocks in the far southeastern corner of the city, along 99th Street and Read Avenue. Two bodies of water define the northern and southern boundaries of the neighborhood: Bergholtz Creek to the north and the Niagara River one-quarter mile (400 m) to the south. The south shore of the Niagara River in this area is Grand Island.

Early history

The name Love Canal came from the last name of William T. Love, who in the early 1890s envisioned a canal connecting the two levels of the Niagara River separated by Niagara Falls. He believed it would serve the area's burgeoning industries with much needed hydroelectricity; however, the power scheme was never completed due to limitations of DC power transmission, which was the only means of delivering electricity at the time.
After 1892, Love's plan changed to incorporate a shipping lane that would bypass the Niagara Falls. He began to envision a perfect urban area called "Model City" and prepared a plan that called for the construction of a vast community of beautiful parks and homes. Unfortunately for Love, his plan was never realized. He was barely able to start digging the canal and build a few streets and homes before his money ran out. Only one mile (1.6 km) of the canal, about wide and deep, stretching northward from the Niagara River, was ever dug. (For one solution to the falls trans-shipment problem, see Welland Canal.)
With the project abandoned, the canal gradually filled with water. The local children swam there in the summer and skated in the winter. At some time in the 1920s, the canal became a dumping site for the municipality.

The Love Canal disaster

Sale of the site

At the time of the closure, Niagara Falls' population had begun to expand. The local school board was desperate for land, and attempted to purchase an area of expensive property from Hooker Chemical that hadn't yet been used to bury toxic waste. The corporation refused to sell on the grounds of safety, and took members of the school board to the canal and drilled several bore holes through the clay, showing that there were toxic chemicals below the surface. However, the board refused to capitulate. Eventually, faced with the property being condemned and/or expropriated, Hooker Chemical agreed to sell on the condition that the board buy the entire property for one dollar. In the agreement, Hooker included a seventeen line caveat that explained the dangers of building on the site:
Today, houses in the residential areas on the east and west sides of the canal have been demolished. All that's left on the west side are abandoned residential streets. Some older east side residents, whose houses stand alone in the demolished neighborhood, chose to stay. The neighborhood just north of the canal remained and was refurbished and resettled.
Though the containment area is still enforced, new development began in the early 1990s. Recreational buildings have been built against a chain-link fence that keeps the toxic area separated from the safe area. The neighborhood has been renamed Black Creek Village, and many families now live there.
Love Canal, along with Times Beach, Missouri, share a special place in United States environmental history as the two sites that in large part led to the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA). CERCLA is much more commonly referred to as "Superfund" because of the fund established within the act to help the clean-up of locations like Love Canal.

In popular culture

The Love Canal disaster forms a major plot strand in Joyce Carol Oates' 2004 novel The Falls.
   In the 1982 film Tootsie, the character played by Bill Murray has written a play called Return to Love Canal, and Dustin Hoffman's character dresses as a woman in order to fund the play (and his subsequent role in the play), leading Sydney Pollack's character to comment "Nobody wants to pay twenty dollars to watch people living next to chemical waste! They can see that in New Jersey!"
   The punk band Flipper recorded a song entitled "Love Canal", a graphic account of the residents' ordeal.
   The opening credits scene of the movie Miracle references the Love Canal disaster in 1978.
   In the movie Erin Brockovich, the Ed Masry character refers to the Love Canal as a warning of a prior case in which the plaintiffs still hadn't seen the restitution money they'd sought.
   In his graphic novel "In The Shadow Of No Towers" Art Spiegelman states that after 9/11 "Lower Manhattan's air is a witch's brew that makes Love Canal seem like a health spa."
   In the Monolith video game, there's a level named "Love Canal".

Further Information

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