[Music] just east of Niagara Falls in Northwest New York State an area with a deceptively serene name of Love Canal turned out to be one of America's most notorious toxic-waste horror stories and inadequate cover on a chemical companies dump site allowed a deadly brew of toxins to leak into a suburban neighborhood a public health scare erupted over 900 families left their homes several years and hundreds of millions of dollars had to be spent to try to stop the further spread of the contaminants the Love Canal originally got its name from entrepreneur William T love in 1894 he began construction on a man-made canal that he envisioned would lengthen Niagara River to Lake Ontario his plan was to use the power of the river as it rushes towards the Falls diverting it before it goes over the falls and carrying north through a canal which would wind up at this escarpment or cliff and pour down and provide the power that's necessary to generate electricity the canal was essentially a trench dug in the clay soil of the area after only 3,000 feet were excavated a pair of unforeseen events brought construction to a halt one was the depression of the 1890s severe depression secondly was some named Tesla devised a way to have alternating current instead of direct current so you didn't have to be right on top of the source of power alternating current made it unnecessary to develop industry and loves planned City adjacent to his canal for the next several years loves unfinished canals served as a summer swimming hall for nearby residents then in 1942 Hooker Chemical Company acquired the canal they ended up using the property as it pretty much a 16 acre hole in the ground at that point 3,000 feet long by 80 feet wide 200 feet wide probably anywhere from 8 to 15 or 20 feet in depth and they used it for disposal of industrial waste from a period of time from about 1942 to 1952 or 53 by 1953 the canal was filled with over 20,000 tons of chemical wastes including caustic solvents and pesticides hooker had no further use for the canal and with no regulations in place to stop them at the time they simply covered the dump site with a layer of clay and soil from the area soon grass grew and helped hide what festered just a few feet below of course everybody played on that area because it's not a canal it's covered over and sometimes kids would get their feet would get irritated from running around in the canal as Niagara Falls growing population spread the New York Board of Education was looking for inexpensive land an expressed interest in the property hooker owned the chemical company offered to sell then no longer useful land for $1 the deed did contain a warning about the contents of the canal but that did not stop the sale well they didn't build the school directly on top of the canal they build a playground there and I'm the black top of the playground there was like a percolation of a taffy like watery substance coming out of the ground into this playground at around the same time there continued to be increased development in the area a series of homes went up around the canal none of the homes were built right on the canal they were adjacent to it and then a lot of residents complained of not only smells in their basement but of oozing of the similar types of chemicals into those sub pumps into the drainage ditches around their basements the leachate that that was found throughout the the Love Canal community was generally a black goop to use a technical non-technical term it was a very thick black material it was very oily based it almost looked like a tar like material it was what more watery in some instances than another those who had bought homes in the area hadn't been warned in their deeds of what was beneath the grassy field for new residents like Lois Gibbs something was clearly wrong in 1977 her son began attending the 99th Street School I just remember after living at Love Canal for a while Michael got sick and he kept getting new diseases he had asthma liver problems immune system problem urinary tract disorder which required two operations to correct I mean it was just like one thing after the other and I could not figure out what was wrong with him around this time a newspaper reporter wrote a story about the canal and what was buried in it now the residents had an explanation for the mysterious substances and illnesses and Lois Gibbs decided something had to be done first she tried to have her child transferred out of the school and they told her that they wouldn't do it because there was no problem there was no chemical problem there and so she started going up and down the street talking to people talking to neighbors asking they were interested in joining a little group they would try to get the school cleaned up awareness of the problem and complaints from the residents became much more widespread after the winter of 1977 it was the precipitation event the blizzard of 77 that actually overfilled the canal the bathtub effect with all of the the winter snow etc and the the actual wet season that we had in 1977 after this blizzard we had an early spring and early thaw and all the water was forced underneath the canal from this clay pit basically to the top and it started oozing out at the top of the canal in the late 1970s there were no conclusive answers about the health risks and long-term effects of exposure to toxic wastes nobody was really sure what wastes were in the canal but deadly dioxin was identified the Environmental Protection Agency had been formed just a few years earlier and had not dealt with a public crisis like this before a residents fear turned to frustration and anger the Love Canal became the focus of the growing environmental movement and was soon national news on August 7th 1978 then President Jimmy Carter declared Love Canal a disaster area and those living nearest to the dump site were relocated right after the first relocation in August of 1978 they erected a 10-foot fence a green fence oh it would be environmentally Pleasant around Love Canal and then they put signs on the fence and said hazardous area dangerous do not enter infrared pictures were taken from the air to track the spread of the contaminants gray or black in the photos revealed the presence of the chemical wastes after another two years of activism by Lois Gibbs and other residents a second presidential declaration cleared the way for another 500 families to be relocated except for a few families who refused to move Love Canal became a ghost town continuing studies revealed the contents of the canal there were over 400 chemicals found in the leachate from the Love Canal landfill from lead and arsenic to lindane variety of other pesticides to solvents such as benzene toluene xylene host of others many of these chemicals caused cancer some of them many of them caused liver problems liver disease many of them caused central nervous system problems some caused birth defects over the next few years extensive efforts were made to clean up the neighborhood we cleaned 65,000 lineal feet of storm sewers around that entire area and of course the hazardous waste byproducts did find their way underground to a nearby set of creeks the black and Berk holds creeks that flow just north of Love Canal we ended up testing the Creek sediment and discovering that the same hazardous waste byproducts that were buried now have worked their way via water under the ground to the creek areas one of the remedies were to actually dredge the creek crews dealing with the toxic dump itself decided that trying to remove transport and store the chemicals somewhere else was inviting further disaster the chemicals were going to have to stay where they were and a better cover and containment system put in place the 99th Street School and 239 homes were demolished and placed on top of the canal and then covered with clay and over the top of it we placed the synthetic liner and the synthetic liner went directly over the entire 40 acre area okay and then after we place the synthetic liner we then installed this plastic liner this liner goes over the entire 40 acre area so when it rains all of the the precipitation will go through the ground and will actually hit the top of this liner much like an umbrella it will run off of it the runoff is then collected in an underground barrier drain system it's then pumped up to the facility at the top of the Love Canal where it's treated by carbon filters it's been discharged via storm sewer to the city of Niagara Falls as wastewater treatment plant where it undergoes more filtration before clean water is discharged into the upper Niagara River the capping and drainage system handles the material so well that anything that gets through is minimal and we have a series of over 200 monitoring wells in the entire neighborhood to make sure that the groundwater is not being impacted by any of the contamination it's been more than a quarter of a century since the Love Canal first became a notorious environmental disaster new residents have been moving into the area but many of those who lived there previously will never consider it safe this is the earth the earth shifts and we saw what happened in the blizzard of 77 when we had the snow melt in the the river rose and and that but they believe created a lot of the Love Canal problem it's foolish to think that they can contain the crisis at Love Canal created greater awareness of America's growing problem with industrial wastes it was also primarily responsible for the creation of a federal program called Superfund since its inception in 1980 Superfund has spent more than sixteen billion dollars cleaning up over 2000 hazardous waste sites around the United States including the infamous Love Canal Boston Massachusetts