The City Built on a Toxic Dump - Love Canal Documentary

A word of advice to land developers and aspiring designers: when you are given advanced warning that your new land is a dumping ground, don't pretend potential problems don't exist.

"Hooker dumps toxic waste into love canal" sounds like a fake news crawl from a video game

Contrary to popular opinion, the school district was the real villain.despite being warned that the clay should not be disturbed and no structures with basements should be erected they ignored it, with devastating effect.

Let's be perfectly clear, here -- Hooker Chemical "sold" the site to the city of Niagara Falls only after the city threatened to seize the site from Hooker Chemical via eminent domain. Hooker - knowing what would happen - told the city repeatedly that it was not a suitable site for a school or housing. When the company realized that the city was going to seize it anyway, they "sold" it to the city for a single dollar, and an acknowledgement of the city assuming liability for the site, despite the company telling them specifically that it was not suitable for anything but a park, if that. It was the city - not Hooker Chemical - that wanted to develop the area into a residential neighborhood, complete with an elementary school. The city knew that the site was a toxic hellscape, but they didn't care...until it blew up in their faces, and they started screaming to blame "eVil bUsInEsS sCuM". The people who suffered as a result didn't suffer because of evil corporate greed, but because of an out-of-control city government with delusions of adequacy, that refused to take responsibility for its actions.

Funny how the company told them what was in the ground, But they decide it was a good idea to build a school and house on the land. And somehow that was the companies fault?

Can we all just take a minute and appreciate the fact that at one point this area was technically the "Hooker Love Canal"

"Residents deal with inexplicable health problems to this day"....Gee, I wonder why. This is insane that this happened. Great video.

One of the first cases I've ever seen in which a big corporation is actually not the bad guy; they adhered to what was standard at a time, and did an effort that was not even required back then, to seal off all the waste they dumped there. But the city threatened to use eminent domain to get the land, since they wanna develop and get more taxpayers living there. The company told them what was underground there, and warned them not to build there, but they went ahead, and then looked the other way when shit hit the fan. It's a rare case in which I absolutely believe the company had no fault here, but even that considered they agreed to pay compensations. The city council, and mostly the school district, should've been held accountable the hardest.

My mom went to elementary school there before it was shut down and she’s had nonstop health problems her entire life she knows more people from school that have passed than people still alive

My dad taught me to never go near a hooker’s love canal. His advice definitely paid off.

This was really the fault of the housing developers and the city. They selected a toxic waste dump, bought it cheap, ignored the warnings, and made it worse by breaching containment. BUT it's far easier to sue a rich company than sue the city or the construction firm who definitely did not have the money to pay for the harm they did. It's a shame that's how lawsuits have to work, you don't sue who is most responsible but sue who is most able to pay.

The northern, rich areas of Oakland County, Michigan are built on landfills filled with PCBs, asbestos, and other contaminants from Detroit’s Industrial Age. The residents have no idea what is underneath them. Auburn Hills currently has a massive landfill. Right by the old Palace that was recently demolished. Methane gas can be smelled and tasted in the air at all the Mc Mansions.

I remember watching this when it first broke on the news. It was scary and heartbreaking. I remember an interview with one of the resident, a wife who had a garden growing fruits and vegetables. She was trying to keep her family healthy never knowing she was poisoning them because anything grown in that contaminated soil was deadly. Her husband died from a rare form of cancer and she was later to also develop cancer. They were just ordinary people trying to make it in the world and they were killed (actually murder would be more appropriate) by greedy developers and businessmen.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

Talk about a perfect storm. The dumping of chemical waste, school board purchasing the land for a buck (what a bargain), construction of homes, digging sewer lines only to dislodge and crack the drums and the rainwater. I remember when this happened. I read every book and article I could get my hands on at the time. The town of Love Canal fought long and hard to even get the EPA to test water and soil samples. It was mind boggling to me.

I have a friend who grew up on 99th. They never moved out. He sent me a picture of the "love canal goo" that came out of his sump pump. It looks like sewage but slightly more organic,and luminescent ever so slightly. Truly fucking scary

Here in the UK a local refuse tip (now closed) has dangerous things buried within it. As a child I sometimes played there and would often find things and can remember very clearly one particular find. In one particular 'crater' within the tip I happened upon large glass blocks. Now, as a child that's what I thought they were but I had a closer look and I'll describe as an adult what it actually was: Rounded drum shaped glass lumps - imagine pouring molten glass into a 25 gallon drum and peeling the drum away - that's the size and shape. The glass was of a low grade and clear. In the centre of the glass lump was a tin - much like a small paint tin with a pop off lid. The tins were about 8 inches tall. The tins were painted a pale orange colour and had a symbol on the side - as a child I didn't know what it was. I now know that sign to be a radiation sign. Both myself and other children spent ages throwing stones at the glass breaking it but we never managed to get to the middle of the glass and the tins. Yes - there was about 5 of these glass lumps. My local tip has radioactive waste dumped into it. The waste does not register with the tips official contents (here in the UK we can check). I also know exactly which part of this now closed tip the radioactive waste is dumped and I can also confirm that it's not very far down into the ground - perhaps 6 feet or less. I have no idea whatsoever the radioactive waste actually is. Being a small tin I can only assume it's an isotope/source? Someone reading this will know better than I do! For anyone wondering: The tip is in SE Northumberland and I saw these glass things in about 1972.

Having actually worked on top of a Superfund site, I can say that remediation work is not an easy task. I was not involved in the cleanup, the facility I worked at (A former nuclear anti aircraft missile site of the USAF) was actually the center of the Superfund site. It was related to the improper disposal of chemicals related to the maintenance of the missile fuel systems. I can tell you our facility was very strict on dealing with hazardous chemicals. Every year we had to get certified in the disposal/handling of hazardous waste. I'll also say I'm old enough to remember when Love Canal was in the news. 😎 Great video for sure.

There are toxic dumping grounds all over the western Salt Lake Valley in Utah. After my bf and I moved back to the area, we drove past an area that had been completely vacant when I was a kid, and it's now covered in luxury apartment buildings. We're just waiting for the lawsuits to start. Just down the road are a bunch of new stores. Bad move...

I remember first learning of Love Canal from an episode of Modern Marvels “Engineering Disasters” that aired back in 2004. I’ve always been fascinated with how such catastrophic incidents can occur, and how it’s being ensured that they don’t happen again.