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Hooker Chemical and Love Canal

The Hooker Chemical Company is a name that is unfortunately synonymous with one of America’s largest and most tragic chemical disasters, Love Canal. It is estimated that between 1942 and 1975 Hooker Chemical disposed of 199,900 tons of chemical waste at four dump sites in Niagara Falls, NY. One of the most notorious sites, Love Canal, was a dry canal bed owned by Hooker and located just east of its Niagara Falls plant. Amongst the chemicals that were buried in the Love Canal are twelve known carcinogens including benzene and dioxin.

In the early 1950’s the canal bed was lined with an impermeable clay shield and covered with soil. In 1953 Hooker sold the property the canal was located on to the State of New York, fully disclosing the presence of the waste buried beneath the soil. Throughout the late 1950’s a small community containing an elementary school, an expressway, and several dwellings was built above the canal. The construction of the community’s infrastructure breached the protective clay lining enclosing the canal’s chemical contents and slowly chemical waste began to seep from the canal bed into the surrounding soil.

Throughout the late 1970’s residents that lived above the canal began to experience miscarriages, birth defects, and high white blood cell counts. As the health of Love Canal residents began to decline, the chemicals that were buried in the canal almost twenty years earlier began to surface in their backyards and basements. In August of 1978 a federal health emergency was declared in the Love Canal community and its residents were evacuated.

In the aftermath of the disaster, and in addition to private law suits, The Occidental Chemical Corporation, Hooker Chemical’s successor entity, was ordered to pay three hundred and fifty six million dollars to state and federal government agencies to assist in the canal’s clean up and recovery efforts. Today, Occidental Chemical reports that the Love Canal has been successfully and correctly re-sealed and the soil surrounding the area is no longer polluted.