Love Canal: The Story Continues

Rating:
Summary: Gibbs' book an inspiring & accurate account
Review: As a native Western New Yorker who lived in suburban Buffalo during the Love Canal era, I found Gibbs' account both accurate and inspiring. (I'm also a Ph.D. historian and am a stickler for evidence.) This book demonstrates that even one person can make a difference -- a lesson we need to hear today more than ever. The evidence of Love Canal's danger to residents is overwhelming. The book to which another reviewer refers as counterevidence (The Skeptical Environmentalist) has been widely panned in the scientific and scholarly reviews such as the journal Science as a highly flawed book which used secondary sources out of context. I invite you to visit Love Canal the next time you are in Niagara Falls, and you will see (and smell) for yourself the physical evidence of the chemicals which bloop and seep in the areas covered by a massive clay cap right across from the elementary school -- like some terrible modern-day burial mound.

Currently the NY State Dept. of Health is conducting both a massive cancer cluster study and an autoimmune disease study in Western New York in the area codes downwind from Niagara Falls plant sites. The cancer clusters, which in some cases have shown an incidence well above average (60%+), may be linked to a combination of low-level ionizing radiation from a WWII Manhattan Project plant near Niagara Falls, along with decades of pollution. (The studies are ongoing.) A new toxic brownfield where residents are living has been discovered in Buffalo in the last year. In the last six months, retired employees seriously ill with heavy metal contamination have admitted to the illegal dumping of heavy metals and other toxic chemicals into the water source during the 1970s.

The fact is that hardworking families scrimped and saved to buy houses in an area that both the developer and the city knew was heavily contaminated by chemical pollutants. Lois Gibbs, a concerned mother and housewife with little education, realized that something was terribly wrong. Illness rates had skyrocketed, especially for childhood cancers. Foul-smelling chemicals pooled in the school playground and residential backyards; children's sneakers which came in contact partly dissolved as a result. Gibbs shared her concerns with her neighbors, and became a self-taught grassroots organizer in the process. She and her neighbors carried out the simple data collecting which the DoH refused to do. Armed with files of evidence, Gibbs lobbied local officials, the city, the state, and even the company for help for her neighborhood -- and she didn't give up until -- finally -- President Carter did the right thing and relocated those families to safety.

If you still think an individual can't make a difference in today's world, you need to read this book. It is truly inspiring.

Rating:
Summary: Gibbs' book an inspiring & accurate account
Review: As a native Western New Yorker who lived in suburban Buffalo during the Love Canal era, I found Gibbs' account both accurate and inspiring. (I'm also a Ph.D. historian and am a stickler for evidence.) This book demonstrates that even one person can make a difference -- a lesson we need to hear today more than ever. The evidence of Love Canal's danger to residents is overwhelming. The book to which another reviewer refers as counterevidence (The Skeptical Environmentalist) has been widely panned in the scientific and scholarly reviews such as the journal Science as a highly flawed book which used secondary sources out of context. I invite you to visit Love Canal the next time you are in Niagara Falls, and you will see (and smell) for yourself the physical evidence of the chemicals which bloop and seep in the areas covered by a massive clay cap right across from the elementary school -- like some terrible modern-day burial mound.

Currently the NY State Dept. of Health is conducting both a massive cancer cluster study and an autoimmune disease study in Western New York in the area codes downwind from Niagara Falls plant sites. The cancer clusters, which in some cases have shown an incidence well above average (60%+), may be linked to a combination of low-level ionizing radiation from a WWII Manhattan Project plant near Niagara Falls, along with decades of pollution. (The studies are ongoing.) A new toxic brownfield where residents are living has been discovered in Buffalo in the last year. In the last six months, retired employees seriously ill with heavy metal contamination have admitted to the illegal dumping of heavy metals and other toxic chemicals into the water source during the 1970s.

The fact is that hardworking families scrimped and saved to buy houses in an area that both the developer and the city knew was heavily contaminated by chemical pollutants. Lois Gibbs, a concerned mother and housewife with little education, realized that something was terribly wrong. Illness rates had skyrocketed, especially for childhood cancers. Foul-smelling chemicals pooled in the school playground and residential backyards; children's sneakers which came in contact partly dissolved as a result. Gibbs shared her concerns with her neighbors, and became a self-taught grassroots organizer in the process. She and her neighbors carried out the simple data collecting which the DoH refused to do. Armed with files of evidence, Gibbs lobbied local officials, the city, the state, and even the company for help for her neighborhood -- and she didn't give up until -- finally -- President Carter did the right thing and relocated those families to safety.

If you still think an individual can't make a difference in today's world, you need to read this book. It is truly inspiring.

Rating:
Summary: Not the whole story.
Review: Before picking up Lois Gibbs's self-congratulatory tome, the reader would do well to research the whole story behind the Love Canal fiasco. In brief, Love Canal was a neighborhood in Niagara, New York, that was used by Hooker Chemicals as a dumping-ground for toxins in the 1940s and 1950s. As with many landfills, the area was covered and developed. An incident in 1958 in which three children suffered chemical burns from seeping toxins alerted local residents to the history of their lots. They nonetheless stayed for another twenty years.

Concurrent with the rising tide of environmental awareness, a series of events occurred from 1976 and 1978 that changed Love Canal forever. Two incidents stand out as critical: the first, a series of investigative articles in the Niagara Gazette by a local reporter named Michael Brown; the second, the formation of the Love Canal Homeowners' Association under the leadership of Lois Gibbs. The LCHA's sole purpose under Gibbs was to seek recompense for alleged environmental dangers and injuries suffered by the residents of Love Canal; Brown's newspaper articles basically served as free publicity for the LCHA, and its cause became a cause celebre in no time. In 1978, Love Canal proper was declared a disaster area, and the residents forced to move at government expense. This was not the end of Gibbs's crusade, though: her LCHA immediately began seeking government funds to move residents adjoining Love Canal as well. After several months of antics and hype (including one incident in which the LCHA actually took some EPA personnel hostage), the federal government in 1980 appropriated and razed the adjoining homes as well, leaving the once-pleasant enclave of Love Canal a barren, blighted wilderness.

It was, all told, a horrific miscarriage of science and justice. Lost in the media hype was the fact that no reputable scientist, or group of scientists, was able to find proof that Love Canal was a particularly dangerous place to live. One study which did purport such proof, done by the EPA, was quickly shown by the New York Department of Health to be flawed and useless. On the basis of anecdotes and fear (both spread liberally by Lois Gibbs), families who did not wish to leave their hard-won homes were ripped from their hearths by the might of a craven US government. Their neighborhood and playgrounds spent the next twenty years rotting and rusting under a giant clay mound placed there by engineers seeking to further isolate Hooker's old toxins. Decades of followup research have failed to validate the claims of the LCHA and Lois Gibbs; the American taxpayers and the dispossessed pay the price for their zealotry.

Gibbs got her way, and at the cost of hundreds of displaced families and her first marriage, she now lives confortably in Washington DC, receiving ritual praise from the likes of Ralph Nader, and lending her cachet to compendiums on "green feminist socialism."

If you buy this book, you would do well to balance it out with the purchase of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist, or at least research the history of Love Canal from third-party sources. Lois Gibbs wasn't objective or trustworthy in 1978, and she won't be today. Keep in mind, too, the ultimate damning fact: Love Canal was just approved for development again. They're going to build new homes there.

Rating:
Summary: Not the whole story.
Review: Before picking up Lois Gibbs's self-congratulatory tome, the reader would do well to research the whole story behind the Love Canal fiasco. In brief, Love Canal was a neighborhood in Niagara, New York, that was used by Hooker Chemicals as a dumping-ground for toxins in the 1940s and 1950s. As with many landfills, the area was covered and developed. An incident in 1958 in which three children suffered chemical burns from seeping toxins alerted local residents to the history of their lots. They nonetheless stayed for another twenty years.

Concurrent with the rising tide of environmental awareness, a series of events occurred from 1976 and 1978 that changed Love Canal forever. Two incidents stand out as critical: the first, a series of investigative articles in the Niagara Gazette by a local reporter named Michael Brown; the second, the formation of the Love Canal Homeowners' Association under the leadership of Lois Gibbs. The LCHA's sole purpose under Gibbs was to seek recompense for alleged environmental dangers and injuries suffered by the residents of Love Canal; Brown's newspaper articles basically served as free publicity for the LCHA, and its cause became a cause celebre in no time. In 1978, Love Canal proper was declared a disaster area, and the residents forced to move at government expense. This was not the end of Gibbs's crusade, though: her LCHA immediately began seeking government funds to move residents adjoining Love Canal as well. After several months of antics and hype (including one incident in which the LCHA actually took some EPA personnel hostage), the federal government in 1980 appropriated and razed the adjoining homes as well, leaving the once-pleasant enclave of Love Canal a barren, blighted wilderness.

It was, all told, a horrific miscarriage of science and justice. Lost in the media hype was the fact that no reputable scientist, or group of scientists, was able to find proof that Love Canal was a particularly dangerous place to live. One study which did purport such proof, done by the EPA, was quickly shown by the New York Department of Health to be flawed and useless. On the basis of anecdotes and fear (both spread liberally by Lois Gibbs), families who did not wish to leave their hard-won homes were ripped from their hearths by the might of a craven US government. Their neighborhood and playgrounds spent the next twenty years rotting and rusting under a giant clay mound placed there by engineers seeking to further isolate Hooker's old toxins. Decades of followup research have failed to validate the claims of the LCHA and Lois Gibbs; the American taxpayers and the dispossessed pay the price for their zealotry.

Gibbs got her way, and at the cost of hundreds of displaced families and her first marriage, she now lives confortably in Washington DC, receiving ritual praise from the likes of Ralph Nader, and lending her cachet to compendiums on "green feminist socialism."

If you buy this book, you would do well to balance it out with the purchase of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist, or at least research the history of Love Canal from third-party sources. Lois Gibbs wasn't objective or trustworthy in 1978, and she won't be today. Keep in mind, too, the ultimate damning fact: Love Canal was just approved for development again. They're going to build new homes there.

Rating:
Summary: Reminds us that citizens must remain diligent.
Review: Gibbs' book is important to the history of the grassroots environmental movement. It helps us understand where we came from and why it's so important to have programs like Superfund. It also reminds us that citizens must be diligent in their fight against polluting industry and the politicos who share their beds. While she often repeats herself, it's still a quick (and powerful) read.