A Brief History of: The Love Canal (Short Documentary)
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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.
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Sources:
1.www.health.ny.gov/environment...
2.archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/...
3.www.health.ny.gov/environment...
4.buffalonews.com/2018/08/04/a-...
5.www.nytimes.com/2004/03/18/ny...
6.www.washingtonpost.com/archiv...
The crazy crap here is that the chemical company was actually trying to warn them not to build on it but the city did anyway. Not everyday the company is the... Umm... The semi responsible party
Hooker Chemical 1) Followed all state and federal laws. 2) Were threatened with losing the property by eminent domain if they didn't sell it to the city. 3) Decided to get a waiver of liability and give the property to the city for $1. 4) Warned the city not to build on the site or disturb the clay containment system. Yet the company still got their ass handed to them. It's government incompetence at its finest. Had the city not disturbed the clay containment system, the site would have remained completely harmless and would not have had any public health or note worthy environmental impact - clay does an incredible job at containment of such things even by today's standards. Hooker chemical was NOT at fault. And even if they were, the city agreed any potential problems would be the responsibility of the city. My dad remembers when this hit the news. Everyone at the time knew the city was to blame for the catastrophe. We're supposed to have a common law legal system here in the United States - things like this prove that legislative, statutory, and regulatory laws were illegally usurping common law even 40 years ago.
They actually followed protocol and didn't hide information, people love to hate big companies however in this case they are actually innocent.
@@DisasterLord and future companies are encouraged to cover up and maintain plausible deniability at all costs. No matter what they do some future Pandora is sure to break into their carefully constructed Box and stick the company with the bill.
It makes me think of the language experts trying to come up with a timeless message to prevent nuclear waste storage from being breached. If a local government is so careless mere decades later there is no hope for the distant future.
It's a crooked city, mark my word. I've lived out here most of my life.
Yeah the city was definitely more at fault
At least their drinking water was safe inside lead pipes
Farce and Furious
Uh. Back then almost all house paint had lead and I bet all the old plumbing and fittings contain lead
Tests have been done with lead pipe and it's not as bad as you would think, you would have to drink the water for 2000 years before you even got to the maximum safe level but still not the best idea
lol
Actually the lead pipes are fine as long as the water is treated correctly, its only if you put water with the wrong properties through the lead that will make it leech into the water
Lead pipes are usually fine as long as you dont do a Flint, MI
"Hundreds of Families Sick from Hooker's Love Canal"
ferret150 that’s some toxic love
'Hooker dump troubles neighbors in lasalle'
Coming up, on Sick Sad World! (jingle plays)
If you want into Hooker's Love Canal, you must wear protection.
@@bytesabre La la la la la (excuse me)
*camera switches to Jane telling Daria something completely unrelated. *
"Yeah I'll buy the toxic waste dump for 1$"
* 2 hours later *
"Pssst hey kid, wanna live on this pristine land?"
That's in chapter 1 of a land developer's playbook
Psss kid, wanna live in a hooker’s love canal?
@@marialiyubman oh shit dude
Earthbound.
Well it was that or the Indian burial ground.
I really had to marvel at "Various residents complained of strange odors, minor unexplained fires and odd puddles of chemicals."
If you ask me, any unexplained fire isn't a minor one.
@@Calvin_Coolage That's what I was thinking, too! And "odd puddles of chemicals" is very alarming, to say the least.
usmale 49 technically all puddles are puddles of chemicals.
@@SteelyEyedMissileDan
Congratulations!
You passed 8th grade Biology!
Sounds like something that would be in The Simpsons
"Dirty Hooker's Love Canal Oozes Noxious Waste"
I was trying to put it like that, thank you for saving me the trouble lmao
Well, we've all been there....🤣
IF i recall correctly Hooker thought the whole liability for the Love Canal dump was off their books and no mention of it was brought up when they sold the company to Occidental. The fines imposed by retroactively assigning liability to Oxy Chem almost put them out of business. What happened in Love Canal was horrible for those affected, but the School District, The City of Niagara Falls and the developers were primarily responsible and they all walked away scott free while a company that had absolutely nothing to do with it had to pay hundreds of millions out.
Pretty much. Hooker did all they could to prevent bad shit from happening and get liability off of them once it was clear they couldn't avoid the sale, and yet they still had to pay and had liability forced back onto them.
Well, that's how you do it. Fuck up big and get someone else to eat shit. /shrug
And people why companies try and cover up, either do it all by the book and get fucked, or cover up with chance to get no fuckedy
Didn't the chemical company warn them not to build houses there?
@@dx1450 yes, they specifically said not to.
I love it. The government gave approval for these companies to dump in the canal then allows communities to be built on the dump. Decades later, health problems begin. Does the government take any responsibility? Nope, they make the companies retroactively pay for the clean up and allow them to be sued.
I’m not saying the company isn’t at fault, or the families don’t deserve to be compensated. I just pointing out that this happens all the time. They never take responsibility for hurting their citizens
Two different governments. The one who really screwed-up here is the city. The ones who cleaned it up is the federal. They are quite nearly unrelated entities.
Got to push that libertarian muh govt baaad ideology hard eh?
yeah, like private company always takes responsibility....
this is why communism is much better. government is always responsible, and if gov. do smth bad... what can you expect from the commies hehehe
That's because in a democracy, ultimate responsibility for a government's actions lies in the citizens since they elected them.
I know of one small time trucker whose company made non chemical hauls to a legal dump that later became a 'superfund site'. 99% of the noxious dumping was done by one major company but his little truck biz was included in the suit. He lost EVERYTHING and was BANKRUPTED.
"Hooker dump troubles neighbors".. For non-english-speaker , took me 3 minutes to figure it out what it actually means
It really does sound hilariously awful! XD
Here's one for you, a common legal phrase in the US: "Void where prohibited."
Yeah, in most countries you need to responsibly dispose of your used hookers. It's a shame, but in some parts of the US they dont even compost the hooker after they've strangled her, they just dump them near rivers or in the woods where they poison water supplies.
Hooker dump? Tell her to wait until she's home to do that, that gross.
@Mialisus if voiding a contract is prohibited, which is pretty much everywhere, which is why that quote is funny.
In 1972 my cousin was replacing a sump pump in Love canal home when he braced himself to pull out the normally very heavy tank, he flew backward and just had the top of it. The rest was gone. Rotted away. Never saw that before or since. That was in someone's basement.
Hard water
Wow!
the city government was coercing the chemical company into selling. the chemical company was refusing to sell and warning the city government that the land contained a chemical dump that was sealed with a clay liner and must remain undisturbed. the chemical dump would probably still be safe and contained if it was not for the development that damaged the seal.
In this case, the local government was the villain, not the chemical company.
I think its both their fault. The company should never had dumped it there in the first place. The clay barrier was no way permanent and this site would have been toxic no matter what. The real problem was lack of regulation and oversight of these companies back then. Environmental protection laws are important. Corporations cannot self regulate. They will put profit over safety 100% of the time. The local government is definitely also at fault. I think overall environmental awareness just wasn't there yet, and they didn't fully realize the massive problem they were sitting on. The promise of cheap land drove them to make very poor decisions. In the end, as always, the victims were the innocent public in the middle.
RM1178 the clay barrier would have been entirely permanent if it wasn’t breached. It’s *still* pretty close to the gold standard for this sort of thing.
But this is why you put parks on top of toxic waste sites, not schools and houses.
Dear China, this is the kind of bullshit you have stored up for yourself in the last 30 years...
@@JimmyRussle Governments poison people all the time. Their monopoly status over their subjects shields them from market forces that bring down irresponsible private companies. Currently, in my backyard, government schools in Philadelphia are still exposing students to asbestos. What private company has been able to expose employees to asbestos at any time in the last three decades without drowning in lawsuits? Its a clear double standard.
@@JimmyRussle they were following US law at the time, not to mention had the clay stayed intact with no building it would have been MUCH better. I would say the government owns this 95%.
The possible headline for this story can be totally accurate and not what you may think at the same time. "Hooker's Love Canal screws over community"
"Hooker's Love Canal spreads disease to community"
@@TheDeadfast damn, that was a good one
Sounds like a VD outbreak 😂
That sounds pretty...
Fucked up.
ba dum tsh.
This reminds me of the headlines over Deiselgate.
Volkswagen, AG is sometimes abbreviated as VAG.
"VAG emissions scandal creates big stink, cost millions."
I think this the first time I've felt bad for a chemical corporation.
They warned the city not to put anything underground there
Part of being a rationally moral human being is the ability to recognize something as unfair, even if it's being inflicted on somebody you don't like or approve of. In Marxism, there's nothing you can do to a corporation that they don't already deserve; by definition, what they deserve is death. The unfairness is baked into the system based on the little box you've been assigned, same as the Nazis did with race. I don't feel bad for the company itself: what I DO feel bad about is that there was no possible outcome for Hooker other than being demonized to please the political climate in 1970s America.
I had read that many people get ill from using their (toxic) products like lip sticks at that time, too
If that is your takeaway from this I am truely disgusted. That corporation cut every possible public safety measure to try and stay in business and petal a product noone was buying. They killed hundreds of thousands with their negligence and greed.
Union carbide and corporations that operate similar to them deserve to be put down like rabid dogs.
Hooker Chemical didn't cut any corners. They went above and beyond what the law even expects today. They used disposal methods that are still considered valid. It was the city's forced sale of the land, as well as improper development of the land that led to this.
Sounds like one of the few examples where a chemical company acted more responsibly than most others at the time, and then the local government fuckes it up anyway.
In fairness, Hooker wasn't acting "responsibly" in the general moral sense, but the legal sense. They knew 100% that building anything on top of the canal was a shockingly terrible idea, one that would expose the public to danger and themselves to massive lawsuits. They were legally responsible for the Love Canal, and intended to remain so by refusing to ever sell the land. This was vastly cheaper than cleaning it up themselves, and legally just as good. But the school district was so dysfunctional/corrupt/Marxist that they assumed the company was merely stalling for more money as a negotiating tactic. So they basically told them "We think you're lying about the waste dump, we think you just want more money. You'll either sell it for below market value or we'll get the city to seize it using eminent domain, and you'll get $0, you corporate jerks!". Hooker was really in a pinch at this point, because the city was bound and determined to take the canal and build on it, so their only option left was to sell for $1 with the provision that they get to add a really nasty warning in the sale documents, stating with full and total honesty that the site was a clay-capped toxic waste dump and if you built anything on top of it, it would crack the clay cap and the waste would get out. The city said "Yeah yeah, whatever, corporate cretins lose again." The results are just as you see. Everybody was mad at Hooker, nobody was mad at Niagara Falls and a bunch of impoverished kids got exposed to chemicals. Welcome to the Carter administration.
@@gastonbell108honestly, I really think love canal was when corporate America just said, "f--- it, we're the bad guys even if we try to do the right thing, we might as well reap some benefit from it" and stopped caring about civic responsibility.
@@MrKeserian if you consider 1$ as reaping the benefits. Sure
@@NoFlu That was his point. Hooker tried to ensure that they (and everyone else later) were covered by issuing a big, crystal clear warning of what was hidden under the cap , and then gave up the fight by selling for a buck. Afterwards, they got the royal screw anyways because the city government lied by omission.
So you're screwed harder by trying to do right in this instance, which MrKeserian points out could be the moment other corporations realized "Government is in it only for itself, maybe we should imitate".
@@gastonbell108 No they were acting responsibly in every sense. They created the toxic waste so they had to keep it from contacting people or wildlife. They did this.
I'm from this area. Born in the mid 80s, my parents born in the early 60s. The amount of people with autoimmune and endocrine diseases, cancer at a young age, and other genetic anomalies is insanely high, including several members of my own family (myself included).
So sorry. GOD bless!
Sorry to hear that. So... no superpowers?
Has there been any compensation from the government at all?
@@chrislair6832 Not that I'm aware of. Possibly in the 70s when it was first exposed. The area I'm from is very poor so I doubt it.
@@jerit7529 That really freakin pisses me off I know it was an easy Google but I wanted to hear from somebody who's been there. I am sorry you had to deal with that period I've always grown up thinking I lived in the best country in the world these last 2 years have made me think a little differently
This was a wild ride from start to finish and a truly fascinating topic. Thank you for covering it, please keep up the good work!
Thank you!
It's not often you find a company trying to be responsible.
Local Government: "We wants the lands, we wants the precious. We's going to take the lands from yous""
Hooker: "Look you can have it. For free but you must never ever build anything on it. It's too dangerous"
Local Government: "We wants to builds schools on de precious Full of lovely precious chemicals for the childrens. We're goings to takes its if you don't sells the precious to us"
Should have just let them use eminent domain, that way is the government problem.
They weren't being responsible, they were covering their asses while trying to offload a serious problem so they didn't have to deal with it anymore.
@@IstasPumaNevada It was legal to bury, when they did it...
@@DynamicSeq Yeah, but irresponsible. And just because it wasn't prohibited doesn't mean they were immune from civil liability. Owning that dump was a huge liability that they were undoubtedly thrilled to be rid of.
@@somethingelse4424 what else could they do? That was what they meant to do. In the middle of no-where. It wasn’t irresponsible. It Just happened that people started living near it and the government forced them to sell ut
This whole thing reads lout ike a legal aide's nightmare-
Town: "Hey, we're running out of space here- do you think we could buy some from you?"
Hooker: "Well, we own a junkyard that we use for storing scrap, but there's some aggressive, semi-feral guard dogs living there that we haven't been able to catch and remove. You can store your stuff there, but don't send any unprotected people in, ok?"
Town: "Nah, we're gonna build a school there."
Hooker: "Um, don't do that. In fact, our contract forbids that-"
Town: "Lalalala, we can't hear you!"
Hooker: "..."
~Later~
Government Officials: "Your dogs mauled a bunch of people- prepare to pay!"
Hooker: "...wtf."
What really sucks is that by the time it wound its way through the courts the people who had originally sold the city the land were either dead or long since retired. So the new owners of a different company had to shell out for someone else's screw ups.
And people wonder why companies cover up everything now.
Plot twist: Hooker bred and trained those dogs and intentionally ditched them there instead of safer disposal when they decided it was the cheapest way to deal with them. Hardly 100% innocent.
@@tsm688They performed state of art procedure.
My parents and brother lived in their house that was part of the "inner ring" area that was immediately condemned. My mother died of cancer in her 50's, father of pulmonary fibrosis in his 70's. I have no doubt the cancer was related to this, as it was both highly aggressive and, I quote from the doctor, "strangely mutated". Also a miscarried child. The whole situation was f*cked.
I’m sorry for your loss no matter how long it’s been. It always hurts.
“The Love Canal” sounds very NSFW without context
We get snickers outside the area if it ever comes up.
*V O R E H O L E*
Giggedy
What is NSFW please?
@@sparkfishes not safe for work
I used to live in Brussels, Belgium and grew up in an appartment building built on a dump site. Everybody knew, so i find it incredible that people bought appartments there.. One day i remember an excavator working right in front of where i lived, doing some maintenance work on the sewers or something. It would dig up car tires and all kinds of stuff. At some point gas escaped from a small pocket, producing white vapor. I was a kid but thought it was crazy, yet everyone seemed to find it sad but normal. At what point does the average human finally think "dude this is f*cked up"? Clearly those who decided to build housing on a dump site didn't think that way.
12 year olds: *clicks video ready to giggle*
12 year olds after video: bruh
i was envisioning something far more....tragic....
Wait for it....
I visited Love Canal in person a few years ago.., its a eerie sight to say the least. As mentioned in the video, there are still homes and families living there, about 2-3 blocks removed from the main canal site. When I drove by I saw a man outside mowing his lawn casually, his property could not have been more than 1000ft. from the "dead zone" where the school once was. Upstate NY is a poor, often forgotten part of our country.
Niagara Falls is western NY, specifically the Buffalo Metro area. Buffalo Metro is extremely poor, has severe problems with gang crime, and was at one point in the 90s the murder capital of the US (beating out Detroit). "Upstate NY" has nothing to do with Buffalo.
@Johan Faul Listen buddy, when you’re from Jersey everything past NYC is Upstate New York, alright? Sure Buffalo is in the western part of the state, but the same poverty persists throughout. Buzz off
Every time I see the two Hazmat guys and ones stepping on his foot it gives me immeasurable happiness
That cover photo is something out of nightmares
Its like a dude in a hazmat suit who is dying
dude, im at 5:16 an already horrified!, can you imagine spending all of your money to acquire a house and then for all of it to have this stuff?!?!, complete madness!
@@Solesz he is on a hole
AMONG US
Trouble started when it was decided to turn a nice water canal into a dumpster.
You should do a video on the Clyde Ohio cancer cluster. It's a rather recent event and goes along with your general vein of videos. The absolute saddest part of it all all of the victims were younger than 10.
clyde, Ohio? When I used to run through there in the semi I always had to squelch my C.B. radio all the way down do to massive electrical interference, I wonder if that might have something to do with the cancer?
@@kdrapertrucker the whirlpool company owned a piece of property and dumped all kinds of nastiness on it. When they were done they donated the land to the city and it became the city park.
@@kdrapertrucker No, that electrical interference was likely caused by a radio tower. The cancer cluster was caused by PCBs in the ground.
I live around the area and one of the craziest things is that so many places once again ignore the warnings of all the chemicals. There is a retirement home near the blocked off area of love canal, a few parks and a city pool, a road that drives right through it, one of the most contained areas right next to the Niagara River where you cannot convince me that runoff does not get into the water. It’s a mess still and people pretend it didn’t happen.
I grew up in a news-family and learned to read on my grandfather's knee at the kitchen table. Even though I was a kid, I understood what the papers were reporting. When this story hit the evening news in the mid-70s, though, I learned irony trying to piece together how something so awful was called the 'love' canal.
I actually live 20 minutes away from this place, it's a bit of a local legend
Love Canal and Jonestown, what a fun time to be in the womb! Took me almost this long to finally learn about them.
My grandmother's niece lived there - I was young when she died of cancer but both her kids had vision loss and developmental issues. I remember the adults talking about what she was like (healthy/happy) before she lived there
I would love for someone to cover The Whiddy Disaster.
It remains Ireland's largest marine tragedy, and I believe that it deserves to be mentioned.
I remember this blowing up in the news and being on the cover of Newsweek. My parents had a subscription for years. We even ended up talking about it in my biology class because it was a scientific current event.
This was really unfair to the company. The government is true villain here.
So, another day, another legislative fuckup.
Government is ALWAYS the villain.
The company did dump numerous toxic chemicals but ok....
@@frevazz3364 the company did warn them about it…
As kids, we used to play in the big ditch in the field covering the dump. We also played a game called "touch the witch" where we'd push sticks in the cracks of the basement walls to watch the green goo ooze out. Good times.
0.0
And you’re still around?
@@rosaamarillo2110 no she's responding from the other side
Holy crap!
Oh my...
I want to see video on Minamata disease where people get mercury poisoning caused by release of mercury sulfate from a factory to sea and people consumed fish from there
Thanks for the suggestion!
Isn’t this the thing that caused the creepy dancing cats?
@@uzaiyaro yep. That'd be the one.
IS MINAMATA'S CAREER OVER??
so your saying I should stop dumping used motor oil in a hole in the ground?
You change your motor oil? I just wait for the engine to run it all up and the motor seizes.
Only if your motor oil has dioxin in it .
That hardly ever happens
What some do with old motor oil is often daft'er.
I used to work in groundskeeping, and once found a "bites" bucket - the kind one sees in places like Marks & Spencer - on the kerb in one of the parking bays, but full of used motor oil. An empty container of Wilko motor oil was lying in a nearby bush.
Somebody had apparently pigged out at one shop, decided that they Re~ally needed to change their oil completely, and did so in a OTSC car park... deciding at some point to use their recent indulgence's empty bucket, and just leave it where it could spill & cause a significant hazard.
I hated that groundskeeping job... mainly because it tested my faith in humanity.
Even weirder examples of flytipping than that transpired... but I think that's illustration enough XD.
@@jimtaylor294 what is fly tipping
My school library when I was a kid had 3 books from the same company, one was over Chernobyl, one was that 1980s chemical incident in India, and the last one was about love canal. This is almost an audio book.
Chernobyl nuclear disaster
Bhopal union Carbide Methyl Isocyanate leak
Love canal superfund disaster
@@haruhisuzumiya6650 yes!! Those are the ones!
I went to kindergarten at the 99nd street school in 1964. I walked to school every day, right through all of that. I guess I should be happy that we only lived there for 2 years.
Cool vid! Another topic you may enjoy covering and I would love to see would be Centralia Pennsylvania, underground mine fire burning since 1960s, inspired silent hill actually.
I've been looking forward to this episode.
I hope you enjoyed it!
Speaking of Dioxin , check out the Times Beach disaster . It was so bad that the whole town was written off as a loss and was destroyed .
Weird smells and unexplained fires. I don't care how much I have sunk in a joint. I'm sick an shits just starting on fire I'm out. I'll fight this from a new home far away.
...if you have the money to leave.
My cousins lived there. I remember smelling chemicals in the summer.
not entirely sure how it is that I ended up stumbling across your channel, but goddamn am I glad I did!
this is a situation I'd heard a little bit about in rather short, far less detailed videos but *all* of the disasters you cover in your videos are incredibly detailed & I thank you for the both highly informative and entertaining content.
you sir, are a gem amongst all the toxic waste contaminated dirt that is 99% of the bullshit youtube's algorithm forces people to create in order to be successful on this platform. keep doing you, and stay awesome, man!!
appreciate yah bud, sending all the love and respect from Canada.
stay safe & healthy out there my dude.
Blame the guys who warned the city that the land was bad and not to build on the land
Thank you for this. I was just entering Junior High School when this story broke. Even then, as a youngster, I knew about the dangers of pollution, such as the phosphates used in laundry detergent. Still, this was beyond appalling. Hooker had a chemical plant in my home town. I remember seeing trains of orange and black tank cars. Love Canal and Hooker. What a combo!
It's the city that built there and poisoned everybody
I feel like I knew what Love Canal was before seeing the video, but got it confused with other disasters. It's really hard to keep up with all of the environmental disasters! There' so many! Luckily it's not so easy to sweep everything under the rug these days....mind you, I said "not SO easy," as these events continue to happen.
I agree, I was thinking Love Canal had something to do with Three Mile Island. Don't ask me why as I have no idea why I would even think that.
Thanks, I worked in the UK waste management industry from the mid 1970s, and the Love canal problems also prompted changes in the UK, as well as COPA, the control of pollution act, which was early 1970s when dumped drums of chemical waste, including cyanide were involved in serious incidents.
We were very lax in those days, thankfully much better now, hope we have no more "Love canals".
Family told me to look this particular disaster up before I go back to school for Envir. Science. I knew you would have it covered my man!
I remember reading that kids in the area would find clods of dirt in their yards that would burst in a shower of sparks when they were thrown against a wall.
Yeah I want some of that.
Love the content. Keep em coming
Thank you!
as long as your love isnt a canal.
"trust the government"... YEAH, RIGHT!!!
The most terrifying phrase in the world is “we are the government and we are here to help.”
I live about a few miles out from Love Canal. I never go anywhere near there.
For anyone after an interesting listen, check out the “swindled”love canal podcast. Bloody awesome, he covers heaps of other awesome subjects too.
Will confirm
Thanks for the suggestion ill check it out!
Here's a short documentary from the late 70's that starts off with Love Canal, The Killing Ground:
th-cam.com/video/F4udLhOdPro/w-d-xo.html
@@PlainlyDifficult thanks for your amazing content too! Been subscribed for a long time.
“This place is dodge Bruv”
I wish some day in the future you'll cover the Wohan Lab Incident.
Will need to let the story gain a vintage first ! Thanks for the comment!
@Ron B No one said that.
@Ron B As of this writing many people in the world dont know if it is intentional or not. I am leaning to my theory that some lab guy or costodian guy that instead properly disposing a specimen, he sell the bat in a nearby exotic animal market.
These are great films...congratulations Prof Simon...ex BBC science
Thank you! I really appreciate it!!
This is CRAZY because I just began researching this for myself YESTERDAY and you release this TODAY!!
Thabks for a great. Video!!!
I remember when this happened, and they taught us in Grade School that it was the fault of the company. I found out years later that it was the fault of government.
Love Canal is only part of a much larger environmental problem in the area. Hooker was only one of the companies doing illegal dumping in the area, especially during World War 2. Carborundum and Union Carbide were contractors for the Manhattan Project, doing early stage processing on Uranium ore to make it ready for enrichment at Oak Ridge. The processing produced enormous amounts of highly corrosive and slightly radioactive waste that was first dumped into city sewers, then into abandoned wells when the city told them to stop using the sewers, and occasionally into a stream that ran through a park when the wells plugged up. Tailings and other solid waste ended up buried in nearby land at first, then in the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works site, a TNT plant (!) built at the start of the war, and still contaminated from that use. That site, just outside Lewiston, is a dump site today, with a variety of radioactive and biological waste - including Dan Rather’s anthrax-contaminated desk. Love Canal is only the tip of the iceberg.
Yep you are right ! Any industrial town at the turn of century. All dumped in rivers ,ravines or right in the town dump
Six families never left, to the east of the canal on 101st and 102nd. Their houses stand alone, and they still live there today. I still go skateboarding on the abandoned streets adjacent to the canal, but 100th is getting pretty overgrown now. There are still remnants of sidewalks, hydrants, driveways, foundations, and even former resident's garden perennials!
A co-worker went to school at 93rd Street elementary and described the gravel for the baseball diamond was bubbling and frothing with chemicals in the 1970s. They used to dare each other to go into the basement of a friend's house on 99th where the concrete block walls were bleeding terrible smelling iridescent liquids, and they were pooling on the floor. Life in the 70s!!!
I love your videos! I think they are very informative. For the last couple of year I really got into learning about radioactivity and now I got a nice collection of uranium glass as well as other radioactive things ☢! Can't wait for the next episode!
Glad you like them!
It's always easy to say that these things happen or happened in less developed nations with more relaxed laws. However, there are 1344 CERCLA sites in the US ranging from more common issues featured in this video to radioactive contamination and stockpiled VX gas and blistering agents. The only difference is that we're allowed the responsibility of demanding action from our government.
If your doing the Love Canal, then I'd also like to toss in a recommendation for the community of Times Beach, Missouri.
Times Beach would make for a good video. I live near there and it is insane how much dioxin was sprayed on those gravel roads for years. It's a nice State Park now.
I was very much under the impression the Times Beach was the real first superfund site. Love canal may started the idea but Times Beach earned the title.
I live about 20 minutes away from the site and drive through it occasionally. Didnt even know it was there.
I must say that your videos are very well constructed. Not only are they educational but entertaining too! Thank you for your uploads!
Do a video on Centralia the town with a coal fire under it for 40 years.
As someone who lives in WNY I've gone near the love canal area several times when I was young and it was pretty damn creepy seeing entire streets of houses falling apart and everything abandoned
Selling all that land for a dollar should have been a giant red flag
Well, that and the waiver that declared it to be a literal toxic dump. I like how the company got blamed for buying a site that was already a dump, the city buying it knowing it's a dump, and building houses on it knowing it's a dump. Totally the company's fault
Hooker would have been paid more than a dollar if the city took the land by eminent domain. The dollar is the token price of changing ownership in our old English common law deed system. Hooker may not have even been paid the $1.
Thank you for the great content! I'd like to see a video on "The Valley of the Drums" in Kentucky. Since it was one of the first Superfund sites.
''just drain the chemicals via the sewer'' ... uhmm
This was a much more difficult wank than the title implied but I got there in the end.
0:55 Ah, even back then parents used their kids to send messages.
Especially gotta love the logic in this case: "There's dangerous chemicals everywhere here, I'm gonna make my kid stand outside in it with a sign all day."
"Work has to be done. At most we can pass it on to those after us, and suffer in the meantime." - some guy (I forgot the name) about climat change and pollution.
The more of these videos I watch it amazes me that the human race even exists. All of the chemical, environmental, and nuclear accidents that have occurred in the last 80 years. It's no wonder there's more cancers and unexplainable health issues in the population now
Insert Arrested Development meme: "Do not open! Toxic Waste!" [DIgs into containment lining.] "Well, I don't know what I expected."
Most of the cancer is from it being correctly diagnosed more often, and people live longer which means they are more likely to get cancer at some point during their longer lives. 70 years ago people "up and died".
To be fair these companies dont just produce waste. That would be a terrible buisness model but produce modern technology that might be part of the bigger machine that extends your life to 80+. Maybe the plastic factory produxes stents for hearth surgery or just plain one time use overalls for doctors. Point is, with progess comes cost.
Im three and a half minutes in and HOW did nobody up to this point EVER think "hold up maybe this is a bad idea..."??
Government, they love terrible ideas.
Amazing work, again. I’m addicted to these avoidable catastrophes.
These are always excellent. Concise, well-researched, clear and a great chance to learn something.
I was looking forward to this
Thank you!
@@PlainlyDifficult keeping doing the good work
The phrase "the toxic waste dump in the love canal" sounds like a euphemism for something disgusting.
Google "Alabama hotpocket"
I don't think I want to.
I actually lived relatively close ( a couple miles) and went to school at a place in the Niagara Falls area. Let's talk about some fun things I learned here:
*Love Canal is not the only chemical dumpsite in the area, one of the other ones that was just as bad is a park (according to locals).
*There is literally a senior living center across the street from the main containment/cleaning site.
*Another one of the roadways in the area apparently had radiation buried underneath it to the point that people at my school were getting calls not to have kids for a couple years after graduation.
*There is a playground near the main containment area.
*containment are also spreads across the LaSalle - there is a park right next to that as well.
Lova Canal is a terrible chemical disaster that no one really talks about. I honestly never heard of it until I lived in the area.
If the site has been properly contained to prevent leaching of the waste chemicals, and monitored regularly, then that's possibly an acceptable risk to have a park there.
Thanks putting this together.
Could you do a video on the Picher Oklahoma ghost town? Aka the failed Tar Creek Superfund. Deemed too deadly to clean up.
The amount of mine waste in Tar Creek is truly unbelievable.
Love it when they’re in my back yard....
same
Bend over
I live about 30 minutes ish outside of Love Canal and I can tell you first hand that the surrounding areas never bounced back. The Niagara Falls area really only has it's tourist area and the casino, venture past that area at your own risk.
This was an amazing video. I remembered my wife telling me about Love Canal when we lived in Tonawanda, NY. The amount of damage was beyond what I could had comprehend (at the time).
Because of this, I dove into the Chernobyl Rabbit hole , because I was extremely interested into the radioactive effects into nuclear power plants and the isotope handling itself.
Seeing damage the 😈 Core can do first hand (I learned about this from you), it really made me appreciate the risks in those kinds jobs that deal with ☣, power plants, space, or medicine.
Woooo, saved from boredom for 11mins
I'm glad it helped!
I'd like to see deepwater horizon
Geographics did an excellent documentary on it mate.
@@spud3149 The channel uscsb also made a great video regarding the incident.
@@spud3149 thx mate
Exploding Fertilizer sounds more interesting as a topic, and less done to death.
Tar Creek in Picher, OK is another interesting, and fairly unknown, superfund site.
DUUDE this channel is fricken lit. Quite well researched and entertaining
"Hey, the ground where we wanted to build the school has a bunch of exposed chemicals that might make the foundation break"
"Oh, shit, you're right, lets move the school a couple streets over"
Toxic clips are your forte, and that is not an insult.
😬😬
US Lead in Hammond,IN and the 9th Avenue Site in Gary, IN are two Superfund sites local to me. I'm sure there's several more in this area. All steel mills, refineries and industrial chemicals around the southern tip of Lake Michigan
Learned about this particular spot in one of my geology classes in college, thanks for taking a dive into it!
Like Poltergeist but with toxic waste
I thought this would be the thing from Spongebob lmao
Love canal be like: "You used me for land development!"
I recently came across your channel and have been bingeing your videos the past few days. The Love Canal is very close to where I live, this is very interesting. Thank you for making this video.
Holy shit. My father used to work on this site while working for one of the local generator companies. He fucking hated working on it. You had to sign several liability forms, wear a full chem suit, and this on top of that fact that he was there to work on generators... Namely to winterize the bastards before the Lake Effect snow in WNY.