Love Canal encompassed 36 square blocks in the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls, New York. In the early 1890s, one visionary named William T. Love began construction of a canal system that would operate as a shipping lane to bypass Niagara Falls but his vision was never realized. Investors abandoned the project and Love was forced to fold. Soon, the canal filled with water and local children would use the area as a swimming hole. In the 1920s, Niagara Falls used it for a garbage pit and then sold it to Hooker Chemical Company to use for the disposal of chemical waste. The dumpsite remained in operation until 1953 when it was covered with soil and seeded. Nice fix, guys. Hooker Chemicals sold the property back to Niagara Falls for one dollar in 1953. Niagara Falls developed the area, adding homes and schools. Oil slicks developed in peoples yards, women experienced high rates of miscarriages and black goo coagulated in the basements of homes. In the 1970s, the Love Canal Homeowners Association discovered that 56% of the children born between 1974 and 1978 suffered from at least one birth defect. EPA studies would later show that 33% of residents had chromosomal damage and the National Research Council would prove an excess of seizures, learning problems, hyperactivity, eye irritation, skin rashes, abdominal pain, and incontinence in exposed children. Eventually, 800 families were relocated and reimbursed for their homes under the Superfund Act. The most toxic area of Love Canal was reburied and cordoned off with barbed wire fencing.
