Love Canal The New YorkToxic Wasteland Term Paper

Love Canal The New YorkToxic Wasteland - Term Paper Example Love Canal and associated citizen action is a milestone in American history, it was the extensively publicized citizen action that proved to be the starting point of activism against people exposition to toxic and hazardous chemical wastes. It also drifted federal policy to provide Superfund for cleaning Love Canal and other hazardous waste sites (Brown and Clapp, 2002, p.95).According to Center for Health, Environment and Justice, history of Love Canal takes us back into 1892, when William T. Love put forth a proposal of connecting upper and lower Niagara River by a canal for generating cheap power. However, due to economic pressures, the project was abandoned and land was auctioned and until 1953, it is used chemical disposal site. Hooker Chemical Corporation that was a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum in addition to City of Niagara and United States Army used this site for dumping chemical to warfare materials. In 1953, Hooker sold this site to education board after covering the area with dirt and clay. In this way, the site became in direct use of unaware citizens and most importantly school kids who never imagined about living on 20,000 tons of toxic waste materials. Despite of citizen complaints of odors and health issues, no considerable action was taken until a female citizen and mother of two kids, Lois Gibbs took stand and rest is the history. This paper identifies the lessons learned in the whole journey of Love Canal, the hazardous waste site in New York (Love Canal, n.d.p.1). Love Canal became the typical example of hazardous waste and Superfund program. Surprisingly, it was not the top-ranked Superfund site of New York in 1983 when National Priority List was formulated. Even it was not the major dumping site of Hooker Chemicals. Hooker dumped their major wastes at three sites in Niagara County; 102nd Street Dump, Hyde Park in north and in S-area that was next to city’s water treatment plant. Love Canal has got edge over all these