Love Canal: A Toxic History from Colonial Times to the Present

by Richard S. Newman

In the summer of 1978, residents of Love Canal, a suburban development in Niagara Falls, NY, began protesting against the leaking toxic waste dump in their midst-a sixteen-acre site containing 100,000 barrels of chemical waste that anchored their neighborhood. Initially seeking evacuation, area activists soon found that they were engaged in a far larger battle over the meaning of America's industrial past and its environmental future. The Love Canal protest movement inaugurated the era of grassroots environmentalism, spawning new anti-toxics laws and new models of ecological protest.

Historian Richard S. Newman examines the Love Canal crisis through the area's broader landscape, detailing the way this ever-contentious region has been used, altered, and understood from the colonial era to the present day. Newman journeys into colonial land use battles between Native Americans and European settlers, 19th-century utopian city planning, the rise of the American chemical industry in the 20th century, the transformation of environmental activism in the 1970s, and the memory of environmental disasters in our own time.

In an era of hydrofracking and renewed concern about nuclear waste disposal, Love Canal remains relevant. It is only by starting at the very beginning of the site's environmental history that we can understand the road to a hazardous waste crisis in the 1970s-and to the global environmental justice movement it sparked.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Environment

328 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2015

About the author

Richard Newman (Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo) is Professor of History at Rochester Institute of Technology. He directs the Library Company of Philadelphia and specializes in the study of American reformers in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, including early black leaders, abolitionists, and modern environmentalists.

Reviews

[Ioana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love & a Hooker: The Birth of Public Awareness of Toxic Waste (in the US)
(not a bedtime story)

In the spring of 1953, the Niagara Falls School Board thinks itself mighty lucky for scoring the purchase of a site (Love Canal) for a new school for only $1. Ok, so it has been warned that underneath the seemingly idyllic pastoral landscape, a seething 20,000 tons of toxic waste percolates the earth. How this may be relevant, no one (wants) to guess, not even when the foundation of the new school sinks into an oily fetid pit. Undeterred, construction moves a few paces north, and the school opens in 1955.

Fast forward a couple of decades. Women in the Love Canal community have been experiencing a dramatic rate of miscarriages (as high as 1/3 by some estimates). Children have been dying mysteriously from curable conditions after playing in public playgrounds. People's hair has been falling out. They've been developing cancer. Suicides are spiking. Many are anxious, angry, or depressed. Public consciousness that something is terribly wrong in Love Canal is growing, and residents are beginning to mobilize.

In 1978, the Love Canal Homeowners Association (LCHA) is formed and immediately proceeds to file suit against Hooker Chemical (the prior owner of the property), the city of Niagara Falls, and the Federal Government. Journalists swarm into Love Canal, and explode the story of Love Canal's residents on the front pages of most national newspapers. The entire country is riveted. In the gripes of a contested election, President Jimmy Carter declares a national emergency on August 7, 1978. It is the first time such an emergency has been declared over anything other than a 'natural' disaster (floods, tornadoes, and the like). People in other parts of the United States begin to ask questions about their neighborhoods. Congress calls committees, agencies, and a string of hearings into being (including The Superfund and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) - providing cash & a structure for responding to environmental contamination by hazardous waste).

As residents of Love Canal mobilize, the rest follow. The public's eyes are opened to toxic waste as a potential hazard; the budding environmental movement vigorously takes up the cause; researchers turn their efforts towards entirely new genres (toxic histories and deep histories of places); scientists begin conducting tests at thousands of national sites; Congress passes laws requiring sellers and landlords to disclose potential hazards.

Yet, as we move only slightly towards the cusp of the 21st century, memory begins to fade. After Reagan is elected in a sweeping victory, he proceeds to diminish environmental protections (now, up to 25% of landfill waste can consist of liquids, up from naught). The Chemical Manufacturers Association throws its weights around a little and purchases good-will. Some progress is made with cleaning up Love Canal, and after two Republican presidential terms, Democrats are back in the game.

In September 1988, now Health Commissioner David Axelrod announces that Love Canal will be resettled. Protest ensues, but this time it is not enough. By 1990s, ten families have moved into the new homes (acquired for 20% below market-price; not $1, for sure, but a steal in Niagara Fall's suburbs). By the end of the decade, the neighborhood is once again a model city, this time with a new name: "Black Creek Village".

At the time of this publication, Black Creek Village residents are reporting birth defects, gastrointestinal and reproductive disorders, cancer, heart, and several other conditions. Testing is once again in progress. Citizens are mobilizing.

What will we learn this time, and how long will we remember?

-

Love Canal is a sweeping "deep history" of the Niagara Falls suburb whose plight birthed public awareness of toxic waste as an environmental hazard. Newman's work is meticulously documented, highly engaging (though also academic), and breathtaking in scope. The rough outline above does not even begin to cover all the nuances that Newman addresses:

- from the pre-history of Love Canal (back to its settlement and Native American protest and resistance)

- to a detailed biography of Love, who initially built the canal as a future conduit for a river sourced by Niagara, and whose ambitions to build a "model city" failed miserably

- to another biography, of chemical innovator and future giant Hooker, who deeply held to Dupont's Depression-era mantra, "Better Living through Chemistry", and who fashioned himself a progressive, even an environmentalist (but who dumped 20,000 tons of toxic waste without further consideration into Love's Canal)

- to an exploration of the history of the chemical industry (and its alchemical mystique)

- to a discussion on the role and predominance of women in the movement

- to an analysis of race (the renters in Love Canal were mostly black while the owners were mostly white, and cleanup policies often favored the 'owners')

- to an honorable mention of religious conservationists' efforts to modify prior trajectories of dominance over earth to stewardship of the earth in God's name and for his glory

- to numerous asides about other interesting facets, such as philosophical foundations of humanity's will to conquer nature

An absolutely staggering, eye-opening book that will appeal even to those who have never thought about this issue before - it's the kind of work that will make one pay attention and care deeply, because it affects us all so profoundly. Living in the midst of chemicals and toxic waste is no less than a matter of life or premature death, disease, or debilitation.

I found this book especially profound because I don't think much (at all? only fleetingly?) about this. Interestingly, Newman writes as if we all remember Love Canal. I personally was clueless to almost everything in this book before taking it up (my excuse is, I wasn't around at the time. Perhaps if you were, you can (in)validate his suggestion). So, I'm profoundly grateful to Newman for bringing our attention back/to this vitally important topic (one that it would have never occurred to me to consider otherwise).


Bravo! A+
Highly Recommended!

I received my copy courtesy of the publisher through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love Canal was a neighborhood near Niagara Falls, Ny. In the 1970s, residents become aware of cancer and other disease and that a huge amount of chemicals were buried underground. This is a story of the land from the first time of human habitation to the present. The story of a beautiful native land for the Iroquois to a chemical wasteland buried there by the Hooker Chemical Company. Quite a extraordinary story of an environmental movement. That changed the responsibility of corporations to the land.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Requesting the book Love Canal: A Toxic History from Colonial Times to the Present by Richard S. Newman was personal. I have lived near two toxic waste sites left by Hooker Chemicals.


I was born in Tonawanda, NY an old industrialized area along the Niagara River. My hometown dump contains radioactive waste from the Manhattan Project. Just down river near the city of Niagara Falls, Hooker Chemicals took advantage of an unfinished canal to dump industrial waste.

The canal had been part of William T. Love's plan to create a Model City. The chemical industrialist envisioned a self-contained city with homes and parks. Clean, hydroelectric power was to come from an artificial falls. A canal from the Niagara River would be built to divert water over another section of the Niagara escarpment. Love mismanaged his money. All he accomplished was to leave a big ditch.

The city of Niagara Falls needed to expand and bought the land. A community of homes and a school was built over the filled-in canal. The young families living in Love Canal believed they were living the American Dream. Their dream turned into a nightmare.

They noticed basement seepage, chemical odors, rocks that burst like fireworks, grass that left chemical burns, and a high rate of miscarriages. Their complaints were unheeded. Housewives turned into activists. It was the first grass roots movement for environmental justice.

It took years for government leadership to act. The activists influenced the passage of environmental laws and in 1980 the creation of the Superfund for hazardous waste remediation. (Which under President Reagen was already being weakened with reduced funding in the battle between what is good for business vs. what is best for the people.) Love Canal has become the poster child for American environmental disasters.

I wrote about organizer and environmental activist Lois Gibbs and Love Canal at: http://theliteratequilter.blogspot.co...

America's toxic past is never 'in the past'. The Environmental Protection Agency states that one-quarter of all Americans live within five miles of a Superfund site, the worst toxic dumps in the nation.

Consider my own history.

My family had moved from Tonawanda in 1963 when I was ten, several years after the first basement seepage was reported in Love Canal. President Carter approved emergency financial aid to Love Canal the year I graduated from university.

When my son was a tot we moved from Philadelphia to a small Michigan town where a chain link fence separates a toxic waste site from a park with a little flowing stream. An elementary school is on the other side.

We moved again. Our church needed to expand. They bought adjacent land then discovered the business had left toxic waste. They took out loans to supplement Federal aid to clean up the site. It took nine years. Half the land was sold for a charter school and senior housing.

We moved again, to a city on a lake that fed into Lake Michigan, with a picturesque marina, sand dune beaches and a light house near by. The lake had been foully polluted by a tannery and the clean up had been going on for decades. The town was also home to Michigan's worst toxic waste site, left by Hooker Chemicals. Montague, like Niagara, had a massive salt mine. The rise of a chemical center brought much needed jobs to the area. And a sad legacy. A woman in our church lost a child to a rare cancer. She began collecting stories of other cancer victims. Days after moving in, I met a neighbor while walking our dog. She said three dogs on the street had died of cancer.

My retirement home is a half mile from a 'spill'. Superfund money is limited and spent on the 'worst' sites. The rest are just fenced off.

Newman grew up in the Buffalo area, and like my family, visiting Niagara Falls was a typical family day trip. He worked on this book over a long time, writing Freedom's Prophet about former slave and African Methodist Church founder Richard Allen in the meantime. (A book I would love to read!)

The book covers:
The first European explorers, who identified it's economical potential
The rise of the 'chemical century' and industrialization of the area with particular attention to Elon Huntington Hooker, including information based on new archival research
The rise of citizen environmentalism in the 1970s and 80s
The partial resettlement of the Love Canal neighborhood in the 1990
The legacy of Love Canal

I appreciated the book's inclusiveness, especially the 'big picture' of the Niagara Frontier's industrial history. Love Canal is a story of failure and success, of how citizens can alter policy. It raises issues of responsibility and the role of government in monitoring industry. Can we contain the toxins we create for the products we demand? And what becomes of the land that has been poisoned? Montague residents worried that people will forget and build on the Hooker toxic waste site. Well, they did at Love Canal.

I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[Michael Webb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This history of the Love Canal disaster is pretty broad in its scope as author Richard Newman begins the narrative with the very settling of the Niagara region, why the canal itself was dug, explains how the chemical concern Hooker came to exist, and finally details the more famous late 70s-early 80s narrative of a community in crisis.

The narrative is well-paced and does an excellent job of laying out the origins of the crisis and the ultimate outcomes (most famously: partial resettlement and the creation of the Superfund program).

The text is probably at its weakest in giving a real human element to the story; some of the best books in this broad "man made disaster" genre, like Dekok's Fire Underground (covering Centralia, PA) are able to both cover the history, but also humanize the struggles of the inhabitants more effectively. Newman is at his weakest there, but the text is still effective as a work of environmental and community history. Recommended for those with interest in such topics.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the late 1970s, there were two places in America that evoked a sense of dread anytime they were mentioned. One was Three Mile Island, the nuclear power plant outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania that leaked radiation into the atmosphere and could potentially have caused a meltdown. The other was Love Canal, a toxic waste dump in Niagara Falls, New York where an entire neighborhood had been built. Richard S. Newman’s Love Canal tells the story of the latter, covering the business practices of the man who gave the site its name, the chemical company that dumped their waste there, and the grassroots protest movement that grew around the discovery of the deadly deposits under the soil.

Newman begins his account with the American Indians’ reverence for the famous Niagara Falls and the coming of colonialists who saw the potential for using Lake Ontario and the Niagara River for the transport of commercial goods. Later, when the Industrial Revolution kicked in and the falls became important for generating electricity, Niagara Falls became a boom town for manufacturers. Out of this economically expanding community came a man named William T. Love. He had a vision of building a canal running off the Niagara River that could be used for generating power in order to expand the growth of the small city southwards where more factories could be built. Love’s enthusiasm was infectious enough to raise investments and his employees went to work building the canal which they named after him, dubbing it the Love Canal. But William Love was more of a dreamer than a doer; he ran out of funds and he abandoned the canal project after its being only partially built.

Years later, Elon Hooker founded the Hooker Chemical company. It was a successful company, especially in the World War II era when they began manufacturing chemicals to be used in various ways for military equipment. Hooker Chemical also took off because they produced important chemicals used in making plastic. Like any other industrial companies, they produced tons of waste. The city of Niagara Falls allocated the Love Canal as a dumping ground, so Hooker Chemical poured all their toxic sludge into flimsy metal barrels and dropped them into the ground, covering them with a topping made of clay.

A couple decades later, the city government allowed housing developers to build a low-income subdivision with a school and a housing project tower block for African-American renters all on top of the Love Canal toxic waste dump. The houses were cheap and a lot of blue collar workers thought they had bought into the American Dream. But then things started to go wrong. Rates of cancer and other diseases became disproportionately prevalent in the area, the rate of miscarriages skyrocketed, birth defects were common, and everybody in the neighborhood smelled a sickening stench in the air. Strange things were happening too like when children threw rocks they found, the rocks would explode and dogs that played in the grass would lose their hair. As it turned out, the barrels underground that were meant to contain the industrial waste had corroded and toxic chemicals were leaking into the soil and air, depositing in people’s basements, and getting into their drinking water. The locals got together and started a protest movement that got national attention. They added more fuel to the fire of the exploding environmentalist movement of the time. The author goes into all the fine details of what they did, how successful they were, the government’s reaction, and the long range impact of the political movement.

Throughout the telling of the Love Canal story, the author writes in a subtext, giving details about the ecological and environmental attitudes in America going back to the founding of the nation. Really that part of the history is taken up with the Transcendentalism of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. After that there were various movements in favor of conservation and the preservation of nature. It wasn’t until the 1960s though that environmentalism intensified and a Return to Nature and Save the Planet ethic took over. People began seeing the natural world as not just a place to escape to for recreation or relaxation, but something we need to be part of in order to survive. All of this eventually merged with the activism of the Love Canal community and furthered the cause of environmental protection.

There is a lot to admire in this book. The chapters on the industrial and commercial history of Niagara Falls are fascinating, especially for those inclined towards an interest in modern history. The story of the Love Canal neighborhood and the activist movement that grew out of it are well-presented and sufficiently detailed too. The author also rightly make a point of explaining how toxic waste is a problem that can be effectively managed with technology when giving the proper funding and attention. The darker side of the story is the reminder that the Republican party and big corporations are working together to roll back all the progress that environmentalists have made, making future ecological disasters a probability. Sadly, people have short memories and living in a country where history is rarely ever taught, the future doesn’t look too bright.

Love Canal is a good book and especially the kind of thing the younger generations should be reading. Until recently, the environmental movement was growing and people of my generation were expecting to pass that torch onto the next generation. Unfortunately, when they picked uo the cell phone they dropped the torch and now pollution levels are rising exponentially, our water is filled with microplastics that kill wildlife and find their way into our food supply, more fossil fuels are burned then ever before, and global warming is accelerating rather than slowing down. Caring for the planet has become less important than staring at a screen all day watching reels of dogs on skateboards, people eating themselves to death in mukbang videos, and the latest, dumbest dance trends. People became so hypnotized by the internet that they forgot about everything that matters. Pay attention, kids...the next Love Canal disaster could be happening under your feet right now. If your phone is more important than the survival of the planet we depend on for life, then maybe we don’t even deserve to survive.

[Charity · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obviously, I've heard of the Love Canal Tragedy throughout my life but clearly, didn't know that much about it. This is an in depth study of the area from the time it was settled to the present day. There is a lot of science and history throughout the book but it's written in such a way that the reader doesn't have to be a scientist or historian to understand it and gain both the significance and practical messages throughout.

I truly can't imagine living through something like this. I had to remind myself that this was during a time when people, in general anyhow, believed the government wouldn't let harm be done to them, at least while knowing about it. This was before information like this leaked and traveled. I can't imagine being a mom, like one (for an example) in the Love Canal, who sent her son to school only to begin to be frequently called to pick him up because of different sicknesses. Then, knowing in her gut that something was really wrong; he wasn't the "sickly, whiny" child the school staff was saying he was. A mom who went as far as to take her concerns to the school board only to be told the same thing. Imagine how it would feel to find out later that that same school board bought the land for ONE DOLLAR and was TOLD not to build ANYTHING on it where digging would have to occur. Imagine seeing actual HUGE BARRELS of rusted out, toxic chemicals start breaking the surface of the school yard where your child had played (while again, being told you were just a worrywart housewife with too little to do). Imagine being Luella Kenny (who still conducts toxic tours of the Love Canal to the disgust of the residents who currently live there) and having your seven-year-old son named Jon DIE and be told by an independent doctor who performed an autopsy that there were MANY life-threatening toxic chemicals present in your child's blood. When she took those results to local officials, medical and governmental alike, she was told it proves NOTHING. It wasn't until after THAT time that she found out she had literally been living atop a chemical dump for ten years and that the government, that knew it, had no obligation to tell her.

The bottom line is this: had women like Luella Kenny and Lois Gibbs (known to be the leader of this movement), regular women (most without college degrees or ANY experience in organizing or public speaking) who were PISSED OFF because their CHILDREN were being harmed, they might have NEVER known what happened and never gotten their families, and hundreds of others, off the land and compensated, throughout their lives, for their illnesses, etc.

It's impossible not to think of the Margaret Mead quote that goes like this:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has."

[Edward Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where to start? Love Canal was a community built in New York by William T. Love in 1890 as a place along the shores of Lake Ontario that he envisioned to be a beautiful planned community. Unfortunately, there were several failings in the markets and his dwindling resources at the time, and Love abandons the site to the city of Niagara Falls, which turned it into a landfill despite children and families using the area for summer swimming and winter skating. Fast forward many years and Niagra Falls grows immensely in both population and industry and when the Hooker Chemical Corporation comes knocking, looking for a place to dispose of their industrial waste of chemicals and hazardous materials. The city allows them to utilize the landfill and from 1942 to 1952 Hooker dumps 19,800 tons of chemicals, waste products, and caustic substances into the ground.

Fast forward 2 years and Hooker gives the land back to the city and informs them that it should remain a "vaulted" location (meaning that nothing should be built there due to the toxic waste below) but they make sure it's in writing that they are absolved of all consequences when the city decides to start building schools and a small community around the dump.

The book then dives right into the deep end of that mess of sewage, sickness, and subsequent fights for not just the town of Love Canal, but the soul of environmental cleanups. If not for the courage of a few activists and a hardcore grassroots push that went all the way to the White House, the term Superfund would have never come to pass and we would never know of the mess that was left behind.

As stated before, I grew up near a Superfund in the old Philadelphia Coke Plant, which we never knew was toxic while spending time fishing off the old railway piers into Delaware River, exploring the old facility buildings, and picking our way through some of the tunnels left behind from the original owners. Thankfully I am still okay and not a mutant (more than normal)

[Susan Olesen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but not earthshattering. I can remember - sort of - the original newscasts, but not many 13 year olds pay much attention to the news, certainly not the details. It's most interesting historically in that THIS was pretty much the beginning of chemical responsibility and understanding of toxic waste and landfills and their links to health, which is mindboggling that no one ever connected it before. You could dump anything anywhere, and even when they KNEW that the land was poison, and the company triple-checked that the school board really wanted to put a school there, and signed all these waivers that they knew there were chemicals there and the company could not be held responsible, they still went ahead and put homes and schools on the poisoned land. It's astounding that women of the time were seen as pets to be patted on the head, that women becoming activists couldn't be imagined - so many, many, many things we take for granted not only today, but in the 1980's, just six, seven years later when I was in college and I knew no limitations. I wanted a book with more case histories and science; this wasn't it, and I'm not sure such a thing exists; everything was too new at the time. Literally, American policy on just about everything was being forged day by day as activists refused to settle for anything less than total evacuation of the area. Mindboggling.

[Anna Engel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the most comprehensive book on the history of Love Canal that I’ve read so far. Recognizing that tragedies like Love Canal don’t happen in a social or historical vacuum, Newman starts the story waaaaaay back in the colonial period. The author moves through time and space to cover not just the industrial development of the Niagara Falls area, but also the evolution of what “nature” is, how women moved out of the home and into the public sphere, and how environmentalism became a movement.

“Love Canal” is a very scholarly book – founded on deep research and a thorough understanding of the region. He takes some of the drama out of the story in favor of telling a fairly unbiased version of the tragedy – one that’s been repeated in hundreds of communities around the country. The result is kinda dry, but it’s still a fascinating read.

One of my pet peeves is poor editing. I came across several dumb editorial mistakes that should have been caught. Like “full proof” (i.e., foolproof) and “citing” (i.e., siting).

[marcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers really great information of the history of the Love Canal tragedy. I found out about Love Canal is my AP Environmental Science book and was intrigued to learn more! I recommend for anyone wanting to learn about environmental policy and conservation! The only reason why I’m giving it 4 stars is because I felt like the timeline could have been presented a bit better.

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Love Canal: A Toxic History from Colonial Times to the Present" is a informative read.

The only thing that could have made the book more presentable is a timetable outlining the names of significant persons and their associations.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enlightening. Well-written and meticulously researched. Newman argues that the History of the Love Canal must be broadened to include the colonial past as well as stretched into the present day. He also argues that activists were and are central to Love Canal history. In this way, he writes a relevant story and adds to the body of history about the Love Canal environmental crisis.
In providing a deep history of the region, he shows how European colonial notions of the landscape ultimately led to the Love Canal disaster. He also writes a cautionary tale about science, technology, and economic growth. Finally, he provides a powerful overview of the resident activists, especially the work of Lois Gibbs-a true pioneer of environmental justice.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has to be the best written book I have ever read. Newman does Love Canal justice by starting all the way at the beginning - from when the land was first being discovered and stolen from the Indians to present times. The narrative is so well done, this was all I could think about the 6 days it took me to read this book. I simply couldn't put it down.

So, I grew up 5 miles away from Love Canal - which was my original interest when I saw this book staring at me from the New Non-Fiction section at the Library. I knew vaguely of Love Canal - we learned about it in school, of course - basically, that there was a community in the Falls built on top of a chemical dump and that there were protests that led to evacuation. Knowing the Falls, it really was not surprising (which I gather this stereotype probably stemmed from Love Canal itself). I don't really recall learning about the whole grassroots movement and all that it entails. I think this would be so inspirational to young adults that it should be the highlight of telling the Love Canal story. That we can stand together and make a difference!

Newman brings transparency to the story that is Love Canal. He never inflicts his opinion (very much appreciated), he is just honestly telling us the facts and the opinions of both sides of the debate of the history and safety of Love Canal. Yes, there are people, particularly politicians (surprise, surprise), that believe Love Canal was safe. I feel that Newman's honesty is able to reflect how complicated examining remediation really is. It seems that there are always pieces missing - is this done intentionally? The public needs to pay attention to issues such as this and inform themselves before just siding with industry and/or politician opinion - our health and wellness depends on it.

This book could have been enhanced with maps of the area - specifically of the Love Canal area - streets - showing where Newman was refering to at times. Also, more pictures would have been nice also. All the pictures were printed on the pages within text and sometimes I think that took away from the harsh reality that is Love Canal.

If you care about the Environment and would like to be inspired by a successful grassroots movement, or if you are interested on an honest protrayal of this time in history - Read this book!! You won't be disappointed!!