Jamison French Kendal Dentlinger /love-canal-protester.jpg

 William T. Love went to Niagara Falls, New York in the 1890s with a vision of making a enormous utopian metropolis. He planned to power the city using hydroelectric dams on a new 11-kilometer canal between the upper and lower Niagara rivers. However, the discovery of electricity that could be transmitted over long distances made Love’s canal seem unnecessary. The canal (pit) remained and became a recreational area until Hooker’s Chemicals bought the land in the 1920s.

 A town built on a chemical waste dump  Had an elementary school and approximately 100 houses to make a neighborhood  Hooker’s Chemicals bought the pit and filled it with chemical waste  After filling the canal with waste, Hooker’s Chemicals soldIt for a DOLLAR. jpg.jpg/ /love-jpg.jpg

 Heavy amounts of rain and blizzards caused a significant amount of chemical waste to rise to the surface.  In the following years the area was hit with higher rates of stillborn births and miscarriages, many babies were born with birth defects.  In the spring of 1978, Dr. Robert P. Whalen declared the area hazardous.  Therefore the school was closed and the land was sectioned off, and more than 200 families were evacuated.