Love Canal Summary

In the late 1800s, William Love built a canal that would connect the upper and lower parts of the Niagara River. A few months after the inauguration of the project, Love ran out of money and had to abandon the project before it was finished. Not knowing what to do with the unfinished canal, the townspeople of Niagara decided to fill it with water to be used for public recreation. The recreation area was named Love canal. In the early 1900s, Hooker Chemical opened a factory next to Love Canal and began dumping waste into it. Within months, the odors at Love Canal become so intoxicating that people stopped swimming there. In 1953, the town of Niagara decided to fill Love Canal with dirt and build a school on top of the waste that was buried there. In the 1970s, however, a series of large rainstorms hit the area. The rain caused much of the waste that had been buried at Love Canal to rise up through the ground and into nearby creeks and streams. These events frightened the residents who lived near Love Canal, forcing them to ask local officials to come to Niagara to assess the situation. At that time, Jimmy Carter was President of the United States and he declared Love Canal a national disaster area. Carter asked the Federal government to help people leave the polluted areas and find new homes. Their next step was to place a giant cement cap over the property to prevent any more pollution from coming up to the surface. Love Canal was one of the first Superfund sites. For more information on Love Canal, or other Superfund sites, visit www.epa.gov.superfund/sites.