Where did the Love Canal spill?

Answer 1

Love Canal was not a spill of anything.

It was an old abandoned section of a canal originally built by William T. Love in the 1890s (thus the name) near the City of Niagara falls, NY. After it was abandoned the roughly 1 mile long section of canal filled with groundwater and was used by children for swimming. In the 1920s, the canal became a city dump for the City of Niagara Falls. In the 1940s, Hooker Electrochemical Company (later known as Hooker Chemical Company) began searching for a place to dump the large quantity of toxic wastes it was producing. In 1942 the canal was drained and lined with thick clay to prevent its future contents from entering the groundwater. Hooker then began filling it with 55 gallon drums of toxic wastes while the City of Niagara Falls and the Army continued the dumping of refuse. After 1953, the canal was covered with soil, and vegetation began to grow atop the dumpsite.

Soon thereafter the Niagara Falls City School District needed land to build new schools, and attempted to purchase the property from Hooker Chemical that had been used to bury toxic wastes. Against the initial opposition of Hooker Chemical which cited safety concerns the School Board by threatening to have parts of the property condemned and/or expropriated, Hooker Chemical agreed to sell on the condition that the School Board buy the entire property for one dollar, and that the School Board take all liability for any future lawsuits related to the contents of the site.

Two schools and a number of housing developments were constructed on the site and surrounding areas. By the late 1950s the clay liner installed in 1942 was failing and groundwater intrusion began to wash toxic wastes into the nearby Niagara River.

By the middle 1970s severe health problems began to be observed that were unique to the area.

Love Canal, along with Times Beach, Missouri, are important in United States environmental history as the two sites that in large part led to the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) which is commonly referred to as "Superfund" which supplies money to cleanup sites with unusual high amounts of hazardous materials contamination.