Love Canal lives - Niagara Falls, New York suburb after chemical waste cleanup

E: The Environmental Magazine, Dec, 1994 by Andrew J. Hoffman

After a Major Cleanup and Financial Settlement, People Filter Back

The tree-lined streets have an eerie quietness. The neighborhood, with its orderly rows of World War II-era homes, looks as though there should be activity, but there is none. The grass is cut and the trees and bushes are trimmed, suggesting some civility to the shady streets, but these tasks are performed by the state to ward off trespassers. Such efforts have plainly been in vain, as many homes are marred by graffiti, vandalism and looting.

In what remains of this suburb of Niagara Falls, New York, signs of a former life prevail. The flower beds bloom for an audience that has long since moved away. Although most windows in the homes are boarded up, those that remain are still adorned with the curtains that were last drawn over 10 years ago. On 101st Street, the Lutes family didn't even bother to take down the sign on the lamp post that still bears their name.

But the sense of an abandoned community is not complete: some 72 families chose to defy the government's 1980 evacuation order when a chemical waste dump was discovered beneath their feet. "For Sale" signs dot the neighborhood, and children play among the boarded-up homes.

Though it now seems anticlimactic, Occidental Chemical Corporation and the State of New York have finally reached an out-of-court settlement regarding responsibility for the Love Canal disaster. Concluding a lawsuit filed over 14 years ago and argued over three years ago, Occidental has agreed to reimburse the state $98 million for its cleanup expenses and assume responsibility for the future maintenance of the site's treatment system.

Is this the last we will hear of Love Canal? Probably not. The ultimate test of the success of the Superfund program will rest on the social aspects of rehabilitating this once-vibrant neighborhood. The process has begun, as a 1988 New York Department of Health study deemed 234 of the original 492 evacuated homes safe for resale. The Love Canal Area Revitalization Agency (LCARA) has begun renovating the homes and offering them at 10 to 15 percent below market value. Since they first went on the market in 1990, 91 have been sold and 70 more have committed buyers.

Rather than performing a standard risk assessment, the Department of Health's study based its findings on a comparison of Love Canal contaminant levels with those at four other sites in the Niagara Falls area. The Canal sites were found to be equal or lower in contamination, and so were deemed "clean."

Former resident and founder of the Love Canal Homeowners' Association, Lois Gibbs, calls the study "fundamentally illegal" and considers the below-market pricing "unethical." "It's like comparing one rotten orange to another rotten orange, saying that they're both rotten, so it's OK for poor people to move in," she insists. Currently the director of the Citizen's Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste in Falls Church, Virginia, Gibbs led an unsuccessful attempt in 1990 to block the sales in court.

The first adjustment potential residents will have to make is to accept the presence of the neighborhood's most prominent resident--the landfill. Resembling nothing more than a grassy mound, the landfill extends 3,200 feet by 1,000 feet, rising gently to a height of 30 feet in the center, and covering 40 acres. Were it not for the eight-foot chain link fence, evenly spaced warning signs and orange, ground-water monitoring wells poking through its surface, it would be easy to forget that it quietly conceals more than 21,000 tons of toxic chemical waste, as well as the remains of 239 contaminated homes that lie beneath its surface. So serene is the setting that some have suggested it be made into a golf course.

According to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC), the waste within the landfill is contained by an impermeable clay liner, covered with a polyethylene cap, and surrounded by a trench drain system which directs contaminated ground-water to a carbon filtration unit. Although this system is considered state-of-the-art, consultants acknowledge that it would be naive to consider it a permanent solution. Under the settlement, Occidental will now be required to maintain the treatment system, to periodically monitor the surrounding neighborhood for contaminant migration and to repair the polyethylene cap which, installed in 1984, has only a 20-year warranty.

Beyond the constant physical reminder of the area's toxic past, residents will also have to make some personal assessments about the real or imagined threats from trace contaminants that remain. Searching for a clear government opinion on safety is no less confusing. Michael Podd of the NYDEC reduces the role of government to "providing the public with the necessary information and letting them make the decision for themselves."

George Cook has lived within view of the Canal for over 30 years, and speaks with an apparent peace of mind that defies the desolation just outside his door. Not a neighbor can be seen, just boarded-up shells of homes. "I'm not denying the dangers of chemicals; they can kill," he says. "But this has been a comedy of errors since it started." Cook describes government. officials, covered head to toe in white "moonsuits," carefully taking small samples from the sewers, while small children on bicycles peered over their shoulders to see what was happening.