In the 1940s, Hooker Chemical bought the Love Canal site from the city of Niagara Falls and dumped 22,000 tons of toxic waste there, which included everything from pesticide residues to waste solvents, before covering it with soil.
About a decade later, the city took the land back via eminent domain and began building a neighborhood on top of it. By the 1970s, residents started complaining about serious illnesses, birth defects, and black sludge filling their basements.
After the EPA conducted tests on the site, it was discovered that 200 different types of chemical compounds were present and at least a dozen were carcinogenic.
The EPA’s Superfund Law was born from this event. While it says the neighborhood is now clean, and there are some residents, much of its streets have been overrun by nature or blocked off by a chain-link fence.
Also known as the Love Canal Containment Area, it contains some of the most hazardous chemicals known to man. They are buried beneath plastic and about three feet of soil, and some residents say they are still getting sick from it.
