Canal Cleanup

Coping with toxic wastes

Love Canal. The very name of the chemical dumping site has become a symbol of the larger problem of hazardous waste disposal by corporations. Last week the Environmental Protection Agency moved to transform Love Canal from a national skull and crossbones to what it once was, a quiet residential neighborhood near Niagara Falls. The agency also established a new set of rules for dumping industrial wastes that could mean no more Love Canals in the future.

Forty years after the Hooker Chemical Co. used the site for disposal, and four years after residents discovered the toxic effects from seepage of the waste, the EPA has determined that most of the 400 nearby homes are now safe for habitation. "The Love Canal area is ... as safe as other residential areas in industrial towns around the country," announced Dr. Clark Heath of the Department of Health and Human Services. Only those houses within a block and a half of the canal, many of which have already been razed, are still considered dangerous.

Some former Love Canal residents were outraged. "The EPA is as dependable as a wet noodle," said Robert Kott, who moved his wife and five children away from their home near the canal two years ago. Indeed, some members of an independent panel of experts that was asked by the EPA to analyze the data felt that the material made available to them was "of very poor scientific quality." Says Member Steven Aust, who is chairman of the Michigan toxic substance control commission: "I do not see how anyone could conclude with much assurance that the area was habitable."

Local officials have been pressing for the clean bill of health so that the state can resell homes it bought from fleeing homeowners and begin rehabilitating the neighborhood. The day after the EPA issued its report, the agency allocated $7 million to build new water-treatment plants in the area and extend the clay "cap" that now partly covers the canal.

The Love Canal report was released the same week that the EPA set new standards for hazardous waste disposal on land, culminating six years of tug-of-war between corporations and citizens' groups. The Environmental Defense Fund, which has been sharply critical of the EPA, described the new guidelines as "a mixed bag"; the public interest group claimed that the regulations were adequate to control new dumps but not restrictive enough on the 2,000 hazardous sites already in existence. Nonetheless, the EPA's 500-page rulebook requires the monitoring of contamination levels near waste sites and the use of double synthetic liners at new facilities to prevent the type of leakage that occurred at Love Canal. Compliance could cost industries more than $500 million a year.

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