You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [79]
In the end, almost one thousand families were evacuated and relocated. Four different chemicals suspected of causing cancer were found in the air. EPA testing of thirty-six people in the Love Canal uncovered eleven cases of chromosome damage. The courts would be tied up for years with lawsuits, while state and federal agencies would pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the cleanup and reclamation efforts.
Today, the Love Canal remains surrounded by a fence and the cleanup and reclamation efforts continue. For all its efforts at deniability, Hooker Chemical’s role in this environmental catastrophe was undeniable and the company has had to pay more than $129 million of the cleanup bill. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “numerous toxic chemicals had migrated into the surrounding area directly adjacent to the original landfill…run-off drained into the Niagara River…(and) dioxin and other contaminants migrated from the landfill to the existing sewers.”
As a result of the Love Canal controversy and publicity, Niagara Falls identified three more Hooker Chemical dump sites in Niagara Falls containing over a million tons of toxic waste. Another estimated 250 smaller waste disposal sites are believed to exist within three miles of the Niagara River. Legislation passed in the wake of the disaster has created such boons as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Super Fund laws. Both laws were designed to force industry to place the safety and well-being of the public and the environment first, making the companies that generate hazardous wastes responsible for them from “cradle to grave” and to root out and clean up existing trouble spots.
While it may be argued that Hooker Chemical acted not out of malice but ignorance of the time bomb it had left buried beneath the ground in the Love Canal — and, incredibly, some have argued just that — the aftermath of this well-publicized disaster brought about some good. It created greater public awareness of chemical waste dumping and provided the funds for cleaning up contaminated sites.
And, most important, it made certain that some future Hooker Chemical company would not be leaving a Love Canal of tomorrow sitting atop a cesspool of death.
You Choose Whom?
Some compromises work better than others. Other times decisive action is required. Occasionally by mistake the former is actually the decisive latter, and what was mistakenly thought to be a compromise opens the door to something very different from what was expected. Here is one compromise that definitely has some major and unexpected results.
THE ELECTION OF JOHN XXII
THE VATICAN, 1958
Brian M. Thomsen
On October 9, 1958, after numerous long illnesses, Pope Pius XII expired at Castel Gandolfo, and immediately the search for his successor was begun by various Vatican power brokers. The actual and thought to be secret election process was clearly laid out by Church law, and was thought to be governed by divine intervention rather than internal Church politics, but as the Good Book reminds us, sometimes “the Lord works in mysterious way,” and even more so in situations regarding political wheeling and dealing.
Pius XII’s was not the most popular of papacies. He had succeeded Pius XI (under whom he had served as secretary of state) in 1939, and though he may not have been anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi, as recent allegations seem to contend, it is obvious that this wartime pope favored quiet forms of diplomacy and seemed to refrain from using his station as a herald for the masses or a voice of either solace or guidance during the troubled times. Indeed, even after the war had passed, the pope shunned as much contact with both his clergy and his congregants as was possible given his ceremonial role, enlisting the help of a nun (unofficially dubbed La Popessa) as a sort of private secretary/gatekeeper from both extra-Vatican matters and matters