Tag: childhood

2 August 1978 – The New York State Commissioner of Health declares a state of emergency at the Love Canal site in Niagara Falls, New York. All pregnant women and children under two are advised to seek shelter somewhere else, if possible.

The fated day. The day that we knew it was all real. That our fears had been realized. There were real chemicals bubbling under the ground in our backyards. There was toxic waste seeping through our basement walls. We were being contaminated by a substance that was decades old and the only solution was to run.

Being merely 4 years old, it was difficult to understand exactly what was taking place. My grandparents house was a nice vacation and that was all I believed I was taking. A vacation from home. A day at the pool. A fun time that would end when my mother would pick me up to go home. Little did I know, there no longer was a home. Home was where the toxins lurked and my mother made sure we were moved out that day.

2 August 1978 – The last day we saw our house from the inside. The rumours around the neighbourhood all came true on that day and the reaction was quick and severe. There was no time to waste and my mother would never let her child enter that home again. Even though I left a toy or two. Even though I wanted to go back in. My mother stayed strong and didn’t let me see her tears as she drove me away from the only house I had ever known.

Panic-stricken. Any 25 year old mother being evacuated from her home because of contamination within would have felt it. Any 65 year old spinster would have felt it. Anyone with any sense of fear at all would have most certainly felt it.

2 August 1978 – The day that my parents dreams were dashed. Their first home as a couple and family had turned out to be a toxic bomb. What would happen now? How would we be able to rent an apartment or get another mortgage if we couldn’t pay off the first one? Would the government come through for us?

7 August 1978 – The President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, declared Love Canal an emergency and provided funds to relocate the 239 families in the area. Our prayers were answered, for now. This was a great relief and my parents were happy to be able to not worry about the home, but what about the effects of the chemicals on our bodies? What would be the long term effects? Would my mother become sick because she spent much of her time in the basement doing laundry right next to the seeping sludge through the wall? Would I be effected as I grew because I was in the basement much of the time with my mother?

Health problems are never connected to chemicals. Doctors will not admit that a chemical substance could be attributed to any sickness. Why would they? Lawsuits are sticky and more trouble then anyone needs. You could have a chemical dumped on you while walking down the street and there would be a way for the doctors to turn it around on you. It would be your fault for walking down the street at that particular time and therefore, your sickness was caused by you.

This is not to say that some doctors may concur that certain illnesses can be attributed to chemical factors, they just don’t want to committ to that on a personal level with their patients.

Take a drive through Love Canal and notice the signs. “Deaf Child Area” on every street. Coincidence? Practically every home had a child or adult with a medical problem. Birth defects ran rampant for citizens in this small section of Niagara Falls.

This weekend there were several events involving the Love Canal mouthpiece, Ms. Lois Gibbs. She came back into town for a rare visit to give toxic tours of Love Canal and other dumpsites in Western New York. Ms. Gibbs fled from the scene after the evacuations, but her voice was still loud and clear. She continued to fight for the rights of the residents, she just did it from a safer place. Unfortunately, when Ms. Gibbs visits Niagara Falls, she brings negative attention to the area. She gets to go home, but there are still residents in other areas of the city other than Love Canal. This has become a downtrodden area and bad publicity is not the solution.

One Superfund site and the whole city gets a bad rap. Not to say that there are not other areas in Niagara Falls that needed cleanup, but they have been contained. It is not the best idea to move back to the Love Canal area, but other parts of the city are still habitable. Ms. Gibbs blows into town, makes a few headlines and then bolts back to her home far away.

In 1978, the lives of hundreds of people were changed. Upheaval was a daily occurance and there was nothing that anyone could really do about it. The city officials of the time were paying the price of city officials decades prior and the blame was falling squarely on their shoulders. They had to try and right the wrongs of the past. They had to see through the eyes of the families that were effected.

2 August 1978 – The officials saw. The people were set free from a life of contamination. The eyes of the world were opened and millions of people were exposed to something that they could not believe. The country was better for it. The citizens were united because of it. The world is wiser from it.

Peace,
Hippiegrrl

Before we dive in…this is a continuing piece. The previous entry gave a history of Love Canal and it can be found in my archives under “My Life and Love Canal…Part 1”. So…without further ado…away we go…

Next year will be the 25th anniversary of the evacuations at Love Canal. My family was one of the first to leave the area and it was an extremely traumatic experience at the time. Being a 4 year old, I didn’t have a complete grasp of the situation, but now I have come to realize the magnitude of it all.

I recently took a drive around what used to be my “old neighbourhood”. It is chilling to see that the 5 blocks in which my home and, what would have been, my grade school are fenced off. After the evacuation of all the families in Love Canal, the city had the houses torn down and buried. A fence was erected around the area and ominous signs were posted displaying the tag lines “warning, dangerous area, keep out” and the like.

To think that people lived here, that they raised children here, is sad and difficult to comprehend. How could the toxic contamination of 400 families go on for so long unchecked? What has become of this area now?

The funny (in a morbid sort of way) part of the story relates back to one of the best movies of the 1980’s… In the film “Tootsie”, Bill Murray plays a struggling writer who is the roommate of Dustin Hoffman’s main character. The play that Murray’s character is writing is called, “The return to Love Canal” and it depicts a family that moves back to the ill-fated area after a “clean-up” has taken place. Hoffman’s agent in the film, played by Sydney Pollack, comments to Hoffman that the play concept is far fetched because “who wants to see a play about a family who moves back to Love Canal…it isn’t realistic…nobody will ever move back there…”.

The irony is that people have moved back. The city told residents that the other side of the cross street (Colvin Boulevard) that runs through the site was safe to return to. Many houses were restored and sold for low mortgage value, which sounds like the cycle repeating. The same thing occured in the 70’s, when the city put up low income housing on the most detrimental part of the land and didn’t warn any of the residents of the dangers their homes may possess.

An interesting side note to my journey through the modern Love Canal area is that a brand new apartment complex was constructed a few years ago on the opposite corner from the fenced in area. This complex is a senior housing community and when these old folks sit on their back porches, they have a fantastic view of the dumpsite. I guess that the city feels that these individuals are getting near the end, so a few chemicals shouldn’t matter now…Morbid, I know, but likely. After all, the city and school board of Niagara Falls built a grammar school and homes right on top of the site in the 70’s, so why should anything change now.

Overall, my drive through the “old neighbourhood” gave me an eerie feeling. I have looked at several maps of the entire expanse of Niagara Falls, New York and noted that Love Canal is not the only dumping ground in this old industrial town. Any day now, the whole city could turn into a dump, and it wouldn’t be a big surprise, but the area that used to be my home is empty and fenced off, giving a chill to any Sunday driver who may venture there.

Don’t worry…my next entry will be more light-hearted. At least, as light-hearted as is possible for me. I just thought that it was useful to let people know what happened back then and to show the magnitude of something that has been buried in the press ever since. Next year will be 25 for us evacuees and it is about time somebody started talking about it! Lois Gibbs has been talking for years, but one woman just isn’t enough. Former residents need to stand up and let the world know what happened to them. We need to remember, so that it never EVER happens again!

peace!
hippiegrrl

please check out the links below to find out other ways you can be an active member of society (or activist for short).

On the 13th of November 1974, Karen Silkwood, a union member and activist hero, was run off the road in a mysterious “one car crash”.

One day earlier, on the 12th, I was born in a sleepy suburban area of Niagara Falls, New York. At the time it was called LaSalle, but would come to be known, over the world, as Love Canal.

Was it coincidence or fate, that I would be connected in some way to both of these events in history?

Until now, I have been mainly an armchair activist. Doing research and complaining about the circumstances surrounding me, but not really making an effort to do anything substantial to change the world, as it were.

After some time searching and realizing that it may be destiny that I am connected to both a plutonium plant worker/union martyr and one of the most horrific incidents of toxic waste poisoning in history, I feel that it is now, finally, my time to stand up for what I believe and start doing something about it.

This piece (in 2 parts) is my first act of trying to put across to people who probably have no idea about the events of 1978 and 1979 in Niagara Falls exactly what happened and why we need to prevent things like this from happening in the future.

Let me begin first by giving you a small synopsis of the events in Love Canal. It seems odd to me (because I lived through this) that people don’t seem to know what love canal was. Many people on the internet (from extensive researching I have conducted) seem to think that it either never happened (ala urban myth) or that it wasn’t that serious.

Background: In 1898, William T. Love had the grand idea of digging a canal to connect the Upper and Lower Niagara River to use as a conduit for hydro-electric power. This was quite the undertaking for the time period and this canal would have brought great things to the city of Niagara Falls. However, as many projects ended up in this era, Mr. Love’s canal was never to be finished. Essentially, he ran out of dough. So, he decided to sell the canal to the chemical company in the area (Hooker Chemical) who would in turn use the canal to dump over 20,000 different types of chemical compounds. Being that the base of the canal was clay and the cap that Hooker placed on top was the same, there would have been no problem whatsoever with the dump.

Enter the Niagara Falls School Board.

During the baby boom era, Niagara Falls was growing faster than people could imagine. The school board needed more land and decided to acquire the canal property to build a grade school and several ranch house units. Hooker sold the property to the school board for a token $1 and stipulated in the contract that there was to be no digging deeper than 4 feet into the ground.

Let me pause here to state that although chemical companies are usually held culpable for their actions, Hooker was very thorough when looking at future problems and their involvement. Many times during construction at Love Canal, representatives from Hooker warned the city government of future problems, but the city wanted to build up the population and didn’t seem to care about future consequences. This, by no means, should be assumed to be an “okay” from me for the Hooker Chemical company policies. The problem with the situation is that in the early twentieth century, America was beginning to produce more and more chemicals to help us supposedly live better (“better living through chemistry”) and disposal tactics were not quite up to par.

Continuing the story…after the school and homes were built, families began moving in to these beautiful new residencies. This was a model community in the fifties and the residents had no idea what was lurking under the surface. However, soon enough strange things began happening. Brown sludge began seeping into basements. After large winter thaws residents could smell strange scents in the air that seemed to be of the chemical variety, but they didn’t think anything of it. After all, why would the city put it’s residents in any danger?

This is the big question? Why?

In 1978 everything came to a head. It was August and the cap was beginning to subside on the dump. This brought about large quantities of chemicals in our backyards, in holes which we presumed were “mole holes” but in reality were holes that had been eaten out from underneath the surface by such lethal agents as the dreaded dioxin.

To wrap up this portion of my posting, the state government became involved and evacuated 400 families in the area and closed down the 99th street grade school, which sat directly on top of the main dump area. We were forced to find alternate housing and were basically afraid for our lives.

My parents were shocked to find out that their idealic home and life was about to be ripped apart due to the travesties of the city government.

That is probably enough for now. I will continue with the story on my next entry, but until then please view the links below to see what you can do to help out present environmental problems.

peace –
hippiegrrl