You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [78]
In spite of warnings from one of their lawyers, the school board signed off on the deal, and in 1955 four hundred students began attending the newly constructed 99th Street Elementary School. The school had no basement or swimming pool; though seemingly unconcerned that the structure sat atop a lake of lethal sludge, the builders knew enough not to dig too deep and risk disturbing or damaging the barrels of waste.
Soon after, houses were being built on the fringes of the dump site, a neighborhood growing up around this fouled area. Though what lay beneath the surface was common knowledge, homeowners were not warned of the potential hazards percolating beneath their streets. But soon, children were wearing handkerchiefs over their faces to block out the smells as they walked to school. Chunks of phosphorus had worked their way up from the underground dump to become playthings called “fire rocks” by kids who liked to make them explode in a shower of sparks by throwing them against the ground. Children were being burned by waste that began oozing to the surface in yards and playgrounds. By 1976, the odors and waste seepage had reached disastrous proportions. Unusually heavy rain and snowfalls over the previous two years had caused the groundwater level to rise, forcing the waste to the surface, contaminating ponds and other surface water, including the Niagara River itself. Poisonous sludge giving off fumes that caused nausea and headaches was oozing into basements and sump pumps installed to drain it were quickly eaten away by chemical corrosion. Increasingly noxious fumes caused the paint on some homes to turn black. Muddy ditches burned children’s skin or covered them in strange oily substances, while trees and gardens slowly blackened and died.
And, most ominously, the Love Canal district suffered an unusually high number of birth defects, incidents of cancer, and nervous system disorders. A study of women in a certain age group showed that more than 35 percent of them had experienced spontaneous abortions, far in excess of the national average. Children were born with cleft palates, eye problems, deafness, and retardation, among other congenital defects. Studies by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry showed an incredible 418 different chemicals in the air, soil, and water of the Love Canal area, including deadly concentrations of benzene, a known carcinogen.
Finally, in April of 1978, after years of crusading by the editors of the Niagara Falls Gazette and demonstrations by residents, New York’s health commissioner, Robert Whalen, declared the Love Canal a threat to the public health and safety. The area around the landfill itself was fenced off and the 99th Street School closed. Whalen further recommended that all pregnant women and children be evacuated from the immediate area. In August of the same year, New York governor Hugh Carey announced that the state would purchase two hundred houses located in the worst of the contaminated area. On August 7, President Jimmy Carter ordered the Federal Disaster Assistance Agency to provide emergency financial aid to the stricken area, the first time emergency funds had been approved for something other than a natural disaster. The Love Canal was eventually declared a Federal Disaster Area in order to qualify for additional federal aid.
What followed was years of upheaval, relocation, and tests, as well as efforts on behalf of the state and federal governments to clean up the mess left behind by Hooker Chemical. In spite of the company’s efforts to distance itself from liability, more than eight hundred lawsuits totaling $11 billion were filed against Hooker, the city of Niagara Falls, and the Board of Education by 1979. In March of 1979, a company vice president testified before a Senate subcommittee that Hooker Chemical had no legal liability for the Love Canal disaster. In December of that year, the Federal Justice Department filed a $124 million lawsuit against Hooker, and in 1989, New York State initiated a $635 million suit against Hooker’s