Love Canal Cruise - Containment Area

[SuperHockeyguy14]

I live about a mile from here, The streets you taped are part of my morning jog. The place is just surreal. Not to mention the handful of dilapidated houses that still dot the outskirts of the confinement area.

[LakeNipissing]

@SuperHockeyguy14 Surreal is right. When walking on the overgrown sidewalks on 100th St., past what remains of old driveways, it is a strange sight to find chives and other herbs and perennials, which were once part of family gardens growing in patches of what would otherwise be an overgrown field of grass and weeds. The Love Canal neighborhood is one of the few examples of a reversal of civilization.

[ruixi111]

the trees still live!

[LakeNipissing]

Google Maps has a street view of the Love Canal neighborhood.

Copy this address:

577 100th Street, Niagara Falls, NY, United States

Go to the Google Maps web page and paste the copied address in the 'Search Maps' field.

Then click STREET VIEW.

Now you can tour the area yourself.

[spiritofwicca]

What happened to all the houses? Were they all demolished?

[LakeNipissing]

@spiritofwicca The 237 houses from the inner ring of 97th and 99th streets and the 99th steet elementary school were demolished and then buried under the grass-covered clay dome which covers the canal chemicals.

[SandBurn12]

ok mother fuckers im 13 and i live close to here.... there is a city of elegal mexicans that livein an underground town there no fucking lie.... we go in there to blow fire works off and they wanted us to stay the night!

[soylentcereal]

I see it was too late to save you from the chemical poisoning...

[braindeadsheep]

wow thats fucked up

[muffinbottoms]

metaphor for the current state of the "American Dream." What is it at the expense of? This.

[Hiteirish28]

yesterday i drove past love canal and theres idiots that live 20 ft away from the fences and the people who lived there were not warned about the chemicals at all and it wasnt hooker chemicals fault it should be blamed on the government. also if u want an interesting story read about Lois Gibbs and her family they were residents there

[MondoBeno]

The owners of the canal WARNED the town that there was toxic waste down there. They brought in an expert to convince the school not to build on the site. But the school board wouldn't listen.

People think it was the fault of Hooker Chemicals. But they all forget that it was Hooker that warned everyone DON"T BUILD ON THE CANAL SITE!

[IRAMightyPirate]

@MondoBeno Props for bringing this to peoples attention, the school board was the real criminals.

[fenderbender10]

ive been there and it was creepy

[he244238]

well both of you need to find common ground. Yes the government must be examined regularly by the citizenry in order to prevent corruption and keep politicians in line. The Love Canal Incident however was a story of terrible standards and poor planning.

[he244238]

Mr. Love intended to build a canal that would make the Love Canal area prosperous, bad economic times hit hard and Mr love sold his ditch to Hooker Chemicals and they dumped thousands of tons of hazardous waste into the halfway built canal, covering it up with soil 10 years later and selling it to the board of education for $1.

[he244238]

(bad idea)they built a school and nearly 200 single family housing units on the former hazardous waste dump site. consequentially cancer and post birth deaths rose dramatically. the site was evacuated and officially "cleaned" by 2004. CERCLA (superfund act)was created as a protective measure, but proved to actually be a hindrance on cleaning other toxic sites.

[stillrob420]

a guy from there is now fooseball champ! he has 4 arms!

[poppajah]

the thing that is scarier is that how many neighborhoods in america is sitting on toxic waste sites that either have been undiscovered, ignored, or covered up by the government. there's so much shit that we don't know.

[redbeakman]

The 'government'? The dumbass school board was in large part responsible for this disaster. Those people that made this decision could have been living next door to you. No coinspiracy here just utter stupidity and negligence.

The chemical company TRIED to warn them, it was public knowledge.

[poppajah]

what does that have to do with what i said? i think you misquoted me.

i'm talking about all the other toxic sites that have yet to be discovered for one reason or another.

[redbeakman]

'Covered up by the government' implies a conspiracy.  This isn't China, the outrage and subsequent Superfund bill spurred by Love Canal proved that.

[poppajah]

please, some of you trust your government way too much.

[redbeakman]

Yes, I'm sure the black helicopters are hovering over your home and G-men in hazmat suits are secretly burying nuclear waste under your house by cover of darkness.

I'd forgotten how evil our government is and how the illuminati want to destroy the countries population by top-secret toxic waste contamination.

Some of your distrust is at best born of ignorance and irrational paranoia. My guess is you use it to spice up an otherwise boring life.

[poppajah]

lol... my distrust comes from what i see going on.

and the fact that you trust the government shows your ignorance. i find it hilarious how people such as yourself trust the government with your life especially after 9/11 happened but you sure as hell wouldn't dare drive through a city like niagara falls with your windows open and car unlocked after you a black person and a couple of run down houses.

[redbeakman]

I had you pegged for a 9/11 conspiracy theorist yesterday. Thanks for confirming.

'you a black person...'?

You in a nutshell: Zero rational thought, no reason or insight, some anger because you're unable to get ahead in life and you think the world owes you something because after all you're 'you'. When you haven't been rewarded handsomley for being 'you' you must compensate your superiority complex by being more perceptive than the common idiot.

[poppajah]

first of all, you completely misquoted me looking for somebody to argue with.

second off, read what i first said. you completely understood what i said.

and now you wanna play psychology with me. i mean dayum talking about going off topic. if you need to be explained as in word from word with what i said, then ask. you trying to turn this into an intelligence contest like i give a shit.

[LakeNipissing]

While I am far from being a conspiracy theorist; those parties responsible for the Love Canal essentially owed up to it, and the contents have been documented as best as was possible with the limited record keeping from when the landfill was in active use, and certainly it has been well publicized. But what is stored and buried at the old LOOW site north of NF, near Model City for the most past remains a mystery today, after being cloaked in secrecy for decades. Check it out on Google Earth...

[poppajah]

i googled what you talked about right now and you KNOW that they hiding something really big in order for them to be all quiet about it.

[victor856]

@poppajah the falls really aint as bad as you might think

[EmChick14]

Its such a ghost town! I just read about it and was so shocked at what happened. Has anyone looksed on Google Earth? Seriously creppy to look at that big patch of land vs. the city on the otherside. My thoughts go out to all those families!

[Concordelover]

Very sad. I was about 3 miles away from it on my vacation to Niagra Falls 5 years ago.

[xBlindPassx]

The whole thing is just so shocking. I live just 2 miles away from Love Canal and its just so scary to hear the stories of the waste oozing into peoples basement walls and all the people dying, and the fact that some still live over there is just worse. You watch, the county will do something with the land and put a park or something above it.

[jumboshrimp09]

yea i know right, im about two or three miles from there myself. its a shame how much me can destroy this beautiful world without even caring sometimes.

[rayknox101]

Damn!... How the neighborhood has changed. Too bad nothing but greed and shortsightedness could devistate what was once and vibrant, charming place. I grew up there.

[LakeNipissing]

And it is exactly that point that compounds the disaster; Love Canal in the 1970s and 1980s was one of the more desirable neighborhoods to live in the NF, NY area. The initial NYS DEC remedial construction plans also realized this, and intended to preserve the neighborhood, even homes on 97th and 99th streets. Later soil and water tests proved contamination had spread for blocks - what once was a nice community became a boarded up ghost town until demolished in the late 90s. Six families remain.

[Matheu24]

My family lived there and still live a few miles from there. Everytime I visit, I take a ride around the area. Sad realization in American history.

[greyhoundfriend123]

Who said that chain link fence contains the radioactivity?

[exkalibur25ca]

Nobody, because it isn't radioactive.

[AKJackie]

Thank you very much, puts things into perspective!

[womanintheshadow]

Very cool! Thank you!

[LakeNipissing]

This shorter length video suffers less compression loss from the YouTube upload process than the longer one, so details are better. Sorry about the wind noise from the camera microphone outside the car window.