Unit 5: Hazardous Waste and Love Canal

1. Unit 5: Hazardous Waste and Love Canal Module: Environmental Justice and Freshwater Resources

2. UNIT GOALS • Discuss Love Canal from a historical and environmental justice standpoint. • Articulate the events that led to the passage of the Superfund Act. • Demonstrate how geology and hydrology facilitated the flow of toxic materials at Love Canal.

3. Hazardous Waste and Love Canal: Part 1 1892: Love Canal began as a plan to connect the upper and lower Niagara Rivers and generate hydropower. • 1920: Sold at public auction, became a dumpsite used primarily by Hooker Chemical Corporation (subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum), but also by the City of Niagara and the US Army. • 1953: Hooker filled the canal, covered it with dirt, and sold the land to the Board of Education for $1 with the "warning" that chemical wastes were buried on the property. • 1954: 99th Street Elementary School built on the property.

4. 1970s: Approximately 800 private homes and 240 low-income apartments were built around Love Canal. • 1976: A study revealed toxic chemical residues in the air at a high percentage of homes at the canal’s southern end. Drums of chemicals were found just beneath or on the surface, and high levels of PCBs were in the storm sewer system. • Love Canal Homeowners Association collected health data from families which showed clustering of diseases in neighborhoods. • 1978: the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) found high levels of contaminants and recommended that the 99th Street school be closed, that pregnant women and children under age of two be evacuated, and that residents not eat out of their home gardens, and spend minimal time in their basements. • 1980: President Jimmy Carter ordered evacuation of Love Canal.

5. Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation & Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) • Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) manages cleanup of contaminated sites. • Companies have to pay for costs of cleanup. also known as Superfund

7. Love Canal Today

8. Visit Love Canal Site in Google Earth Questions: Compare and contrast the present day and 1978 images. What are the major differences? Use the ruler tool to estimate the distance from the center of the canal site to the “old” neighborhood and from the closest neighborhood to the west today. Note the location of the Niagara River to the south and a creek to the north of the landfill. How do you think these features interact with the contaminants? Click on this map to launch Google Earth

9. Hazardous Waste and Love Canal: Part 2 Question: Why didn’t the chemicals and other hazardous materials simply flow downward and deeper into the ground?

10. Below is a simplified cross section of Love Canal. • Note the relative thicknesses of materials and locations of home basement. • Note contrasting geology: • Sandy silt near surface allows material to flow from dump into homes. • Clays farther down provide barrier to flow laterally and vertically. • Note the permeability values given. Home basement West East Love Canal Topsoil – sandy silt * - 4 to 5.5 ft Hard clay Depth unknown - 12 ft * Soft clay - 23 ft Glacial till - 38 ft Lockport Dolomite *Permeability: > 10-5 cm/s * Permeability: 10-8 to 10-9 cm/s

11. What is permeability? To visualize the concept of permeability, click on the Compare button on the animation linked below. Gravel Sand Silt Clay See the animation: http://techalive.mtu.edu/meec/module06/Permeability.htm

12. Precipitation Infiltration Love Canal dump Appx 150 m Home site Groundwater Topsoil – sandy silt , allows fast infiltration and lateral migration 4 to 5.5 ft Leachate Permeability: > 10-5 cm/s Basement Hard clay – Less permeable and acts as a barrier to downward water migration and infiltration and slows leachate flow Confining Layer ~ 8 ft Leachate Permeability: ~ 10-9 cm/s Not to Scale

13. Question: How long did it take for chemicals and contaminants to flow from the dump at Love Canal to homes nearby?