Love Canal: A Tale of Environmental Negligence

The Love Canal is a great epitome of how the lack of environmental policy and government intervention with the private industry can lead to the creation of accessible hazardous zones which inevitably causes illness, diminishing property value, and political negligence to occur.

The Love Canal goes back to the late nineteenth century, when entrepreneur William T. Love received government consent to build a canal using the Niagara River in hopes to fuel the industrial city with an abundant amount of inexpensive hydropower. However, several factors prevented Mr. Love’s hydropower dream from succeeding. The most significant factor being, The Panic of 1893: a financial depression in the mid-1890s, much like the Great Depression in the 1930s (Vassar).

Within a decade from 1942 and 1952 over 21,000 tons of toxic chemical waste was disposed. All this chemical waste created a direct threat to human lives within the neighborhood. Horrendous odors were the least of it, spontaneous fires ignited and air pollution killed vegetation, but Hooker disregarded the burden they were imposing on both the environment and human health since the Love Canal was such an acceptable place for a chemical dumpsite. It had a vigorous infrastructure and was ideally positioned next to a low dense population, what more could the private industry ask for? Plus, it is important to note that neither the local or federal government was keeping a close eye on Hooker’s chemical wasteland. As a result from the lenient environmental policies at the time, the corporation would recklessly disposed waste directly into pits by covering up the chemicals with a small amount of topsoil with no penalty or fines to worry

The municipal government voted not to spend public money for cleanup (Lazer). Finally, a municipal employee reached out to congress. The district member of congress John LaFalce inspected the area, which led congress to finally pass what is known as The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act enacted in 1976 (EPA). This act allows the EPA to monitor the generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste (EPA). The act emphasizes proper underground tank storage for petroleum and hazardous waste. Although this act alone was not enough to restore or fix The Love