Love Canal Essay -- History Love Canal Research Papers

Love Canal When one thinks about an environmental disaster, the image of a large explosion in a highly industrial area comes to mind. Such is not the case in the Love Canal emergency. Unlike most environmental disasters, the events of Niagara Falls's Love Canal weren't characterized by a known and uncontrollable moment of impact. It developed over a period of several decades, since the effects of leaching chemicals is uncertain and slow in development and the visual effects are very limited. This disaster could have been identified earlier or later for as far as the rest of the world was concerned there was no emergency until the authorities made it public. The importance of Love Canal is that acknowledging the danger that existed made the country and world aware of the hazards of abandoned toxic waste disposal sites. The events that led up to President Jimmy Carter and the New York Department of Health declaring Love Canal the nation's first federal emergency for a nonnatural environmental disaster extend all the way back to the 1890s when the entrepreneur William T. Love wanted to build a canal to supply power to a utopian industrial community called Model City (Deegan 329). However, Love's dreams were crushed with the discovery of alternating electrical current which enabled manufacturing plants to be located further away from their sources of energy. Yet, Niagara Falls still became a center of chemical manufacturing due to the large amount of cheap electrical energy available. One of the chemical companies that was attracted to the area was Hooker Electrochemical Company (now a division of Occidental Petroleum Corporation), who in 1942, with the permission of the Niagara Power and Development Company began using the a... ...the safety risk is worth assuming and that is something that each individual has to decide for themselves. In the meantime, it is up to companies, like Occidental/Hooker and the government, like the EPA or Department of Health to maintain safe production limits and methods of disposal, so that another such environmental disaster won't take place in the future. Works Cited: Deegan, John. "Looking Back at Love Canal." Environmental Science and Technology 21 (1987) : 328-331. Hoffman, Andrew. "An Uneasy Rebirth at Love Canal." Environment 37 (1995) : 5-9. Levine, Adeline. Love Canal: Science Politics, and People. Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1982. Phibbs, Pat. "N.Y. state begins 5-year Love Canal health study that includes noncancer effects." Environmental Science and Technology 31 (1997) : 81A. http://web.globalserve.net/~spinc/atomcc/lovecana.htm