What is Love Canal famous for?
Love Canal was sold to the local school district in 1953, after the threat of eminent domain. Over the next three decades, it attracted national attention for the public health problems originating from the former dumping of toxic waste on the grounds.
Why is it called Love Canal?
The landfill takes its name from William T. Love, whose plan it was in the 1890s to dig a power canal between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers to provide cheap hydroelectric power for a proposed model industrial city.
Does anyone live in Love Canal?
Prohaska: No, there are not. There are remnants of streets that stop at the fence of the containment area, and some don’t exist anymore because they’ve been buried, but no existing streets are blocked or officially uninhabitable.
Who invented Love Canal?
William T. Love
This circa-1940 photo shows Love Canal before it was contaminated. The canal was built by William T. Love in 1834 as a failed attempt to connect the Upper and Lower Niagara Rivers.
What happened in the Love Canal?
Love Canal is an aborted canal project branching off of the Niagara River about four miles south of Niagara Falls. From 1942 to 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, with government sanction, began using the partially dug canal as a chemical waste dump.
How long did the Love Canal last?
Love Canal’s notorious history began when Hooker Chemical Co. used the abandoned canal from 1942 to 1953 to dump 21,800 tons of industrial hazardous waste.
Is Love Canal clean now?
Two decades after Love Canal became the first polluted site on the newly created Superfund list, federal officials announced yesterday that the neighborhood that epitomized environmental horror in the late 1970’s was clean enough to be taken off the list.
Where Is Love Canal today?
Niagara Falls
The Love Canal site is located in Niagara Falls, New York. It was one of two initial excavations for what was to be a canal to provide inexpensive hydroelectric power for industrial development around the turn of the 20th century.
Who Polluted the Love Canal?
Hooker Chemicals
The Love Canal area was originally the site of an abandoned canal that became a dumping ground for nearly 22,000 tons of chemical waste (including polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, and pesticides) produced by the Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corporation in the 1940s and ’50s.
Did Love Canal explode?
In an article prepared for the February, 1978 EPA Journal, I wrote, regarding chemical dumpsites in general, that “even though some of these landfills have been closed down, they may stand like ticking time bombs.” Just months later, Love Canal exploded. The explosion was triggered by a record amount of rainfall.
What happened to Love Canal?
Love Canal. In 1978, Love Canal, located near Niagara Falls in upstate New York, was a nice little working-class enclave with hundreds of houses and a school. It just happened to sit atop 21,000 tons of toxic industrial waste that had been buried underground in the 1940s and ’50s by a local company.
What were the effects of the Love Canal?
Due to the negative health effect of the pollution, many families who lived in Love Canal had to be displaced. The residents of Love Canal had to deal with negative health effects such as leukemia and high red blood cell counts. The long-standing health issues were prevalent among the residents.
What is a Love Canal?
Love Canal: A Brief History. Love Canal is an aborted canal project branching off of the Niagara River about four miles south of Niagara Falls. It is also the name of a fifteen-acre, working-class neighborhood of around 800 single-family homes built directly adjacent to the canal.
Who was responsible for Love Canal?
The story of Love Canal begins back in the 1892 when a visionary named William T. Love proposed to connect the upper and lower Niagara Rivers by digging a 7-mile canal between them. He presented his scheme as an ambitious housing project to include a park, a hydroelectric plant and housing for 1 million people.