A beautiful city, Niagara Falls in the state of New York, ruined by careless decisions of the city of Niagara Falls and The Hooker Chemical Company. Families suffered and died from several of diseases cause by toxic waste that was place underground near homes and schools. A mother, Louis Gibbs who lived near the Love Canal said, “ When I brought this American dream home my son was one and very healthy. Then he started to get very ill and experiences some liver problems, asthma, and then epilepsy. I could not understand, they came one after another, until I read a series written by Mr. Michael Brown, who explained that the Love Canal has toxic waste underneath the neighborhood school and it leaches in resident homes.” She continued on by saying, “I did not know anything or anyone else knew that the toxic waste was underground. Why sell homes if they are danger to people health?” Most people would think that environmental disaster occurred by accident, but this one happened quite differently. However, the Love Canal is one of the most devastating and well-known environmental injustices because the residents were unaware of the hazard and abandoned toxic waste.
It all started from the dream of a man William T. Love, who had great brilliant plans for the city Niagara Falls, New York. His plan at that time was to design a beautiful community with inexpensive electricity for a million of people to live. (Case Study: 6 Love Canal) The electric power would travel seven miles through the Upper Niagara region before dropping two hundred feet down the Niagara Falls. (Gibbs) Unfortunately, Mr. Love plans failed in a year because of the depression and not enough resources to complete his project. He had every opportunity to achieve his goa...
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...om another environment disaster.
Works Cited
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“Case Study: 6 Love Canal” Online Ethnic Center for Engineering 20 July 2006
National Academy of Engineering Accessed: Friday, April 29, 2011
DePalma, Anthony, and David Staba. "Love Canal Declared, Ending Toxic Horror."
The New York Times. New York Times, 18 Mar. 2004. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.
Gibbs, Lois. Interview by Joel Shufro. Left Forum 2010: Lois Gibbs. Web. 27 Apr.
2011.
Gibbs, Lois Marie. "Love Canal: Start of a Movement." Boston University. Boston
School of Public Health, May 2002. Web. 27 Apr. 2011.
In Our Own Backyard: The First Love Canal. Dir. Lynn Corcoran. Perf. Lois Gibbs.
1983. DVD
"The Love Canal Tragedy | EPA History | US EPA." US Environmental Protection
Agency. Jan. 1979. Web. 25 Apr. 2011.
The first Earth Day had the largest demonstration by having twenty million people attend, creating the next big wave of environmentalists. The neighborhood of Love Canal was a toxic waste dump. It had twenty thousand tons of poisonous chemicals buried beneath the ground that was leaking into the homes and schools of its residences. Lois Gibbs led the movement against Love Canal when she read an article by Michael Brown exposing the problem. Gibbs discovered that the majority of the neighborhood’s elementary school children were sick from chemical residue in the school’s basement. The chemical leakage was also causing birth defects and miscarriages. Lois Gibbs vigorously fought and protested for two years until the state was forced by the federal government to evacuate and relocate Love Canal’s
In the first chapter in the second half of the book Rosenbaum discusses issues that relate to air and water, which he describes as being the primary issues for environmental policy today. These issues are the most politically salient and most important. Rosenbaum explains the current condition of the air and water in America and explains the task that Americans face in restoring these; the idea of restoring America’s air and water sources has been a goal since environmentalism emerged. It is important to realize, however, that the slow progress is not entirely the blame of policy and administrative failure, but rather science and technology is constantly changing and therefore new and unanticipated effects are placed on the environment. On the flip side science is also constantly redefining the standards that need to be meet in regards to pollution. The way that he is explaining how the government is working to combat the problems of pollution he i...
By the time of its destruction, Seneca was a thriving village of working class minorities living in harmony. The property value was nearly quadrupled, showing the progress made by the Seneca community. This progress was stopped in an attempt to capitalize on property owned by New York City elites. For example, the mayor’s property value skyrocketed 50 times higher than its original cost.
Americans had knowledge of the events taking place during the war, but Carson shed a light on the ripple effects that the environment was experiencing. Silent Spring brings the focus to different threats that had arisen because of the war. In a way, Carson places the blame for the deterioration of the environment on mankind as a whole. In the past, wars had been fought without any use of nuclear weaponry. Carson’s writing really emphasizes the fault of mankind’s decision to hurt the environment. “Along with the possibility of extinction of mankind by nuclear war, the central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man’s total environment with such substances of incredible potential for harm – substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even penetrate the germ cells to shatter or alter the very material of heredity upon which the shape of the future depends.” (Carson, 181). The writing technique Carson uses in Silent Spring has a way of making the reader feel guilty, especially considering that at the time of publication there was so much environmental destruction occurring. Carson’s writing helped to educate the American population of the harm to the environment caused by the Cold War. Because the war’s dangerous strategies provided such a strong backbone for Carson’s argument, the American public was very receptive of the content and themes presented in Silent
On both the old "Clinton's Ditch" and in the early years of the Enlarged Erie Canal, both passenger boats (called "packets" or "packet boats"), usually horse-drawn, and working boats (also called "line boats" or "freighters"), drawn by either horses or mules, were common. Originally intended as a more comfortable alternative to the bone-jarring stagecoach, the packet boat fell out of favor as railroad travel improved, and basically disappeared by the latter half of the 1800s. On the current Erie (Barge) Canal, there being no towpath, line boats were replaced by tugboats ("tugs" or towing boats) with their attached barges, as well as motorized freighters. Today, the most common boats are recreational boats, although commercial traffic still
Love Canal was a small town in Niagara Falls, New York, located between two bodies of water: the Bergholtz Creek to the North and the Niagara River to the South. Seems innocent enough right? Wrong. This town was built on top of 21,000 tons of toxic waste (Verhovek). In the early 1890’s, William T. Love wanted to build a canal which would connect the Niagara River to Lake Ontario to generate hydroelectric power for his would be city. However, due to a severe drop in investors and laws passed by Congress, he was not able to bring his idea to life. By the time his funds were completely depleted in 1910, he had dug one mile of the canal, about 50 feet wide, and 10 to 40 feet deep and he had constructed a few streets and homes (Blum). In the 1920’s, the giant hole was used as a dumpsite for the nearby city of Niagara Falls, which lead the way into one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in American history (Beck). A small handful of people who decided they would not leave are all that remains of the town today; 90% of the buildings were demolished or boarded up (Verhovek).
... line the canal today. The development of the railroad in the 19th century and the automobile in the 20th century sealed the fate of the Erie Canal.
The adventurous but interesting story of how the United States of America became a global power in the world economy can be traced to the ingenuity of a small group of men, who defied all odds to construct a link between the Atlantic Ocean and the great Lakes - the “Erie Canal”, constructed in the eighteenth century America, was a 363 miles artificial waterway that connected the eastern seaboard with New York through Albany. In the book “the Wedding of the Waters” Peter Bernstein clinically depicts the story of how the Erie Canal shaped the economy of America, strengthened the Industrial Revolution, and actuated globalization. Not only was the project a large scale engineering that was completely man-made, it was also unique in that there was
...nerators, the Anti-Toxics movement is another important movement that has added to the struggle with Environmental Justice. The Anti-Toxins movement began in the late 1970s as soon as President Jimmy Carter acknowledged Love Canal, New York, a catastrophe spot. Carter in due course evacuated the area for safety reasons. Ever since the evacuation the former citizens of Love Canal got together to form the Citizens Clearinghouse of Hazardous Waste. Its goal is to aid thousands of neighboring clusters to fight against deadly waste exposures. Several anti-toxics movement have formed during the past several years to advocate for stricter government policy with regard to pollution prevention. These groups argue for the abolishment of toxic waste, arguing that some areas would be affected by pollutants given the structure of the economy of the United States of America.
Olga Bautista is a mother of two, she’s a Chicago resident and another problem has just been added to her list, one she can’t do anything about by herself. Her daughter attends elementary school along with nine-hundred other children and the school is being polluted by a dust that is full of heavy metals, petcoke. This dust is being stored only half a mile from the school and Bautista’s home. She along with Suzanna Gomez and many other South Chicago residents fear for their health and their families’ health “she worries about one of her sons, who’s asthmatic, but doesn’t have the money to move” (Webber, 1)
Slums usually develop in the worst types of terrain, and lead to flooding, landslides, and fires that destroy thousands of people’s homes. Yet population growth and the amounts of waste created by urban civilizations are also pushed on the hidden faces and locations of those on the outskirts of the cities. “If natural hazards are magnified by urban poverty, new and entirely artificial hazards are created by poverty’s interactions with toxic industries, anarchic traffic, and collapsing infrastructures” (Davis 128). People who live in slums usually are given the rest of the world’s waste to live near, which could be detrimental to their health if that waste consists of toxic or deadly materials. Mike Davis notes that “the world usually pays attention to such fatal admixtures of poverty and toxic industry only when they explode with mass casualties” (Davis 130). He also goes on to conclude that this century’s surplus humanity can only survive as long as the slum remains a franchised solution to the overflow of materials and waste created by the industrial society (Davis 201). The living conditions of the urban poor and those in poverty stricken slums receive the hazardous consequences directly from the growth of
The health effects due to the toxic waste dump are numerous and fatal. There was a high incidence of miscarriages and birth defects in children in the 239 families that lived here. The incident rate was so high that in 1978 New York State of Health issued a “recommended temporary relocation of ALL pregnant women and children under two” (Gibbs 22). In May of 1980 President Carter declared a health emergency because of the abnormal amounts of chromosomal breakage in the Love Canal residents. In October of the same year the President signed a bill to evacuate all families permanently from Love Canal.
Then the documentary tackles Puget Sound. The Duwamish River is the largest hot spot in the nation. In 2001, the Duwamish River was classified as a “Super Fund” site. This is given to a site that will receive federal assistance for clean up. But yet, it may be too late. Puget Sound in contaminated with PCP, lead and mercury. The threat comes from the giant industrial polluters of old and from chemicals in consumers’ face creams, deodorants, prescription medicines and household cleaners that find their way into sewers, storm drains, eventually into America’s waterways and drinking water.
Saukko , Linnea.“How to Poison the Earth.”The Brief Bedford Reader. Bedford/St.Martin’s Boston: 9th edition ,2006.246-247.
My childhood was a playground for imagination. Joyous nights were spent surrounded by family at my home in Brooklyn, NY. The constantly shaded red bricks of my family’s unattached town house located on West Street in Gravesend, a mere hop away from the beach and a short walk to the commotion of Brooklyn’s various commercial areas. In the winter, all the houses looked alike, rigid and militant, like red-faced old generals with icicles hanging from their moustaches. One townhouse after the other lined the streets in strict parallel formation, block after block, interrupted only by my home, whose fortunate zoning provided for a uniquely situa...