Published: August 01, 2008 11:35 pm            

NIAGARA FALLS: Gibbs marks 30th anniversary of Love Canal declaration

NIAGARA FALLS — If it weren’t for the barren lots where homes once stood, it might have felt like old times at Love Canal.

Lois Gibbs and members of her organization, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, addressed a throng of reporters Friday morning near the corner of 100th Street and Colvin Boulevard. Several former residents of the neighborhood were there also.

The occasion was the 30th anniversary of the first state of emergency declaration in the neighborhood around the toxic dump known as the Love Canal. On Aug. 2, 1978, state Health Commissioner Robert Whalen ordered the closure of the 99th Street School and recommended the evacuation of pregnant women and young children.

Eventually, more than 950 families were relocated and 350 homes and the school were demolished as the situation generated local outcry and national headlines. It prompted a federal emergency declaration from President Jimmy Carter on Aug. 7, 1978, and was the inspiration for both the state and federal Superfund programs.

A 70-acre fenced cap over the original 16-acre landfill now covers the site of the former canal, where Hooker Chemical Co. dumped nearly 22,000 tons of toxic waste from 1942 to 1953.

Years of testing, cleanup and studies ensued in the wake of the initial reports. The widespread publicity made former resident Gibbs, the most outspoken of the neighborhood residents and former president of the Love Canal Homeowners Association, a household name. And it made Love Canal infamous.

But 30 years later, the people who did so much when Love Canal became an issue aren’t sitting back and reminiscing.

Among those walking in Friday’s procession was Luella Kenny, whose young child, Jon, died in October 1978 from an immune response disease. After that, she became a prominent voice urging government action in the area, logging the condition of the creeks behind her house.

Gibbs and scientist Stephen Lester used the occasion to cast doubt on a state Department of Health draft health study, released in 2006, the goal of which was to track and document negative health consequences on former residents of the neighborhood. Among their criticisms are that the study is an incomplete portrait because it doesn’t address health problems of residents while they lived in the area and includes only a fraction of the neighborhood’s residents.

To the north of the landfill is a thriving neighborhood, the site of once-abandoned homes, that has been repopulated and now looks much as it once did, with working class homeowners and their children.

Gibbs said at the very least, the state Department of Health and federal Environmental Protection Agency should do health studies there to determine if people are being harmed by contamination.

EPA spokesman Mike Basile said many studies and cleanups have been done in that area and that the state ordered the area safe in 1988 after rigorous testing.

Contact reporter Dan Miner at 282-2311, ext. 2263.

        

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