[CPEO-BIF] Love Canal (NY) at 35 years

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Love Hurts
On the 35th anniversary of Ameriac’s most notorious environmental  
disaster, there are new allegations of pollution at Love Canal

By Alexander Nazaryan
Newsweek
October 18, 2013

There are sinkholes on Floyd Maines's property, and there may be  
cancer in his lungs. The former are plain to see; the latter is  
suggested by the low thunder of his cough, though what he surmises  
may be a "spot" of mesothelioma does not prevent Floyd from lighting  
a Seneca cigarette. As for the sinkholes, he proudly takes me from  
one to the other, grinning every time I feel a depression in the grass.

"What's under there?" I say.

Floyd grins. His voice is raspy, and slightly insouciant. He sounds  
like a man who knows he has cheated death and may do so again.

"Who knows?"

He is right. After all, this is Love Canal; Floyd's low red-brick  
house is on the edge of America's most notorious toxic waste dump.  
Could be anything down there, and it probably isn't good.

This fall marks 35 years since Love Canal became "one of the most  
appalling environmental tragedies in American history," as the  
Environmental Protection Agency called it back then. It was in August  
1978 that New York officials declared a State of Emergency in this  
working-class community at the base of Niagara Falls, deeming Love  
Canal a "public nuisance" and ordering pregnant women and toddlers to  
leave.

...

For the entire article, see
http://mag.newsweek.com/2013/10/18/love-canal-toxic-waste.html

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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