THE LOVE CANAL BY FAZIRA AMIRA

Quite simply, Love Canal is one of the most terrible environmental tragedies in American history. But that's not the most worrying fact. What is poorer is that it cannot be regarded as an isolated event. It could happen again anywhere in this country unless we move expeditiously to prevent it. It is a cruel irony that Love Canal was originally meant to be a dream community. That vision belonged to the man for whom the three-block tract of land on the eastern edge of Niagara Falls, New York, was named William T. Love. Love felt that by digging a short canal between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers, power could be produced cheaply to fuel the industry and homes of his would be model city. But despite considerable backing, Love's project was unable to tolerate the one-two punch of fluctuations in the economy and Nikola Tesla's discovery of how to economically transmit electricity over great distances by means of an alternating current. By 1910, the dream was devastated. All that was left to commemorate Love's hope was a half ditch where construction of the canal had begun.

In the 1920s the seeds of a genuine nightmare were planted. The canal was turned into a municipal and industrial chemical dumpsite. Landfills can of course be an environmentally acceptable method of dangerous waste disposal, assuming they are properly sited, managed, and regulated. Love Canal will always remain a perfect historical example of how not to run such an operation.

 

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. It was a bad buy.

 

In the late '50s, about 100 homes and a school were built at the site. Perhaps it wasn't William T. Love's model city, but it was a solid, working class community.

PROTEST BY LOVE CANAL RESIDENT