 Thank you to my Patreons for voting for this subject. If you'd like to vote on future videos and get early access to videos, then you can for $1 per creation. I also have YouTube membership where you can get early access to videos for 99 pence per month. A community should be a safe and secure place to live and raise a family. At least, that is what most look for when finding a place to live. However, below one particular community, tons of dangerous pollutants sat waiting to be discovered. It's August 1978 and for the first time in US history, emergency funds are to be used for a situation other than a natural disaster. President Jimmy Carter declares a public health emergency in a community near Niagara Falls and would be the first entry in the Superfund list. This would affect hundreds of families, meaning all would have to be relocated, essentially dismantling a small community. But Love Canal disaster story started many decades before. In 1894, William T. Love began to dig a canal between Upper and Lower Niagara Falls City in New York, which is around here on a map. The cutting was intended to be used to provide hydroelectric power to his dream of a model town. Love's plans were shattered by economic difficulties and an alternating current, which negated the need for locally sourced electricity. The canal by 1910 was 3000 feet long, around 80 to 100 feet wide and between 7 and 16 feet deep, with one end around 1500 feet from the Niagara River. The ditch went out of use for many years, filling up with water and occasionally being used for swimming by the locals in the summer. However, the municipality decided the big ditch would be perfect for use as a dump. Throughout its use as a dump, little care was taken to the future of the land. The disposed waste lay in the canal without adequate protection to the environment. In the 1940s, the Hooker Chemicals on Plastics Corporation, looking for a new dump site, bought the canal, including the banks, and lined the cutting with thick clay. For 11 years between 1942 and 1953, Hooker Chemical dumped between 21 and 22,000 tons of chemical waste. Around 200 types of known chemicals were disposed of at the site. For example, lindane, which in large enough doses can cause damage to your nervous system. Hooker Chemical in 1953 sold off the land to the Niagara School Board for a princely sum of $1 and the dump was covered with soil. The Niagara School Board had been inquiring about the land as early as 1952. Originally, the chemicals company had sought to deed the land to the board for the sole use of a park. This was refused by the board and instead the land was sold for $1 with an extensive contract limiting any future liability to the company from the waste buried below. As the housing needs in the Niagara Falls area increased in the 1950s, the now covered-over love canal started to see development, starting off with the construction of the 99th Street School in its originally proposed location. However, after construction works had begun, some exposed waste led to the project being slightly moved for fears of foundation issues due to the unstable ground. After the 99th Street School was completed and began teaching its some 400 students, another school, the 93rd Street, opened. After completion of the two schools, the committee sold off the remaining land to private and city developers for housing. Due to land being sold on, the dangerous chemicals were unknown by the new property developers. During various works in the area, including building of sewers for the new properties, the clay cap and protective walls to the waste dump got damaged. Because of the lack of knowledge by the developers for the dangers below, no contamination monitoring took place. The damage to the clay linings allowed the deadly chemicals to seep into the ground and be washed away by rainwater. During construction work on the Lacell Highway, some of the chemicals managed to find its way into some of the houses, backyards and basements. By 1972, nearly all the houses in the area were built, with many having their backyards adjacent to the old dump site. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, various residents complained of strange odours, minor unexplained fires and odd puddles of chemicals. Between 1976 and 1977, high amounts of precipitation caused a ground water level to rise. In 1976, the Niagara Gazette reported over two months that materials from a chemical landfill between the 97th and 99th streets had been seeping into basements of the homes in the area, as well as seeping into storm drains leading into the Niagara River. Something was not right with the area as trees died in people's gardens and the air became hard to breathe as noxious chemicals seeped out of the canal. The newspaper sent two reporters to a number of pumps around the area to carry out independent testing. The results indicated a presence of 15 organic chemicals, including free toxic chlorinated hydrocarbon. The articles in the Gazette prompted residents to start contacting the local government and throughout the 1970s organised protests. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation visited the Love Canal in late 1976, due to suspicions that Hooker had dumped Myrex during the area's tenure as a dump site. Myrex is a deadly chemical that has been used in pesticides, however it has since been banned. During 1977, a study was undertaken around the homes closest to the canal and detected numerous volatile organic chemicals, suggesting a serious health threat in the air of the property's basements. In early 1978 reporter Michael Brown undertook a door-to-door survey investigating reports of elevated health issues amongst the Love Canal community. During his survey, multiple cases of birth defects were found. Around this time, several residents protest groups were formed. On the 2nd of August 1978, Lois Gibbs of the Love Canal Home Owners Association began to rally residents. Gibbs had enrolled her son at the local school in 1977 and he had developed a number of conditions including epilepsy, asthma and a low white blood cell count. Lois would become a very well known face of the whole disaster and the community's uphill struggle to get recognition for the health effects of the wider community. In August 1978, the New York State Department of Health declared the site a health emergency. The health order suggested closing the 99th street school, evacuating all pregnant women and all children under the age of two. It also suggested limiting any time that residents spent in their basements and to refrain from eating any produce from home gardens. Governor Hugh Carey announced that the houses closest to the canal known as the Hazard Zone would be purchased, meaning around 239 families would need to relocate. Not long after the governor's announcement, President Jimmy Carter declared a federal state emergency, allowing federal funds to be used in dealing with the unfolding health disaster. As a side note, Carter had a number of big things to deal with during his time as president. By the end of August, around 98 of the families had been moved on, with another 46 in temporary housing. By the time that the 200 plus families had been re-housed, the cost of purchasing the houses ran to around $7 million. The EPA set out to tackle the contamination in the area. Their plan involved a trench system to drain the chemicals from the canal into the sewers, adding a polyethylene containment around the outside of the canal and a new more resilient clay cap. However, the works were considered controversial as the local activists groups pushed for an evacuation before excavation policy for the wider area outside of the deemed Hazard Zone. Which in understandable worry, as various studies and medical surveys estimated that 75% of Love Canal residents would face elevated health risks. The tensions at the worksite ran into fever pitch as protesters including Mrs. Gibbs were arrested, although charges would later get quietly dropped. Surveys around a 93rd Street School also showed elevated levels of contamination, and more and more families around the area began to try and move away. By 1980, around 710 families were being prepared for temporary evacuation. These families came from an extended 50 square block area around a dump, and was funded by a second federal state emergency declaration. Some were to move only temporarily, where others moved out for good. Some were offered buyouts, where others were offered low interest loans. Also in 1980, the US government passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, better known as the Superfund Act. One part of the new act was that it could be retroactively applied. This meant that any company responsible for an environmental disaster could be held liable for cleanup of the waste, even though it followed US laws when disposing of it. This would bring Hooker Chemical back into the picture. However, it had been sold in the late 1960s to Oxidental Petroleum, and this would get expensive. For the next few years, the boughtout houses began to get knocked down, as residents tearfully left the neighbourhood. Two rings of houses immediately around the canal were condemned, however it was unknown if any more houses were habitable. In 1982, the EPA confirmed that the properties outside of the initial two rings of houses would be habitable again. Around this time, the EPA found that the dioxin levels at the canal were 100,000 times the toxic level for lab animals. In 1984, Oxidental settled with the residents a $20 million lump sum. The lawsuit had some 1328 named residents. This worked out as $14,250 on average per resident. An additional $1 million was set aside for a medical fund. This was following the 1983 suit brought against a company from the government. The company would carry on paying out for years to come in the form of insurance and personal injury claims. For the remainder of the 1980s, further cleanup and remedial work would be carried out, including cleaning out the sewers and regular testing of air and soil samples. The Love Canal Area Revitalisation Agency was set up for redevelopment of the habitable areas north of the Love Canal, resulting in the new Black Creek Village, consisting of around 260 renovated homes. About 150 acres east of the canal were sold to commercial developers for light industrial uses. The health effects on the residents were drastic, with around 33% of those tested in 1979 had chromosomal damage. Higher than the national average were reported of low birth weight children, as well as higher birth defect rates, and sadly higher miscarriage rates. Reports of high white cell blood counts, a precursor to leukemia, were also linked to the disaster. After 20 years of cleanup efforts estimated at around $400 million, the EPA delisted the canal in 2004 from the Superfund list, although it was largely symbolic as the area continues to be monitored. After a 16-year court battle, Occidental agreed to pay $129 million to the government for the cleanup, in a total around 950 families were affected at the Love Canal disaster.