- published: 26 Nov 2013
- views: 46616
Love Canal was a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, located in the white collar LaSalle section of the city. It officially covers 36 square blocks in the far southeastern corner of the city, along 99th Street and Read Avenue.[citation needed] Two bodies of water define the northern and southern boundaries of the neighborhood: Bergholtz Creek to the north and the Niagara River one-quarter mile (400 m) to the south. In the mid 1970s Love Canal became the subject of national and international attention after it was revealed in the press that the site had formerly been used to bury 21,000 tons of toxic waste by Hooker Chemical (now Occidental Petroleum Corporation).[citation needed]
Hooker Chemical had sold the site to the Niagara Falls School Board in 1953 for $1, with a deed explicitly detailing the presence of the waste, and including a liability limitation clause about the contamination. The construction efforts of housing development, combined with particularly heavy rainstorms, released the chemical waste, leading to a public health emergency and an urban planning scandal.[citation needed] Hooker Chemical was found to be negligent in their disposal of waste, though not reckless in the sale of the land, in what became a test case for liability clauses.[citation needed] The dumpsite was discovered and investigated by the local newspaper, the Niagara Falls Gazette, from 1976 through the evacuation in 1978. Potential health problems were first raised by reporter Michael H. Brown in July 1978.[citation needed]
We set sailing
Floating down the love canal
We set sailing
Drifting down the love canal
We seem strange
Our bodies are breaking down
We are breeding
Our children look like monsters
We are breeding
Not to children but to monsters
We feel pain
Poison is killing our every cells
We are bitter
Poison is killing our very cells
We are dying
Our common grave is the love canal
We are dying