ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Love Canal resident Arthur Tracy: I want to say something. I'm sure that God is not going to send me to hell because I found it here on Earth.Â
TEXT ON SCREEN: Niagara Falls, New York, May 1980Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Love Canal resident Arthur Tracy: I'm 65 years old almost. I'm sick and tired of being a yo-yo. Pulled this way. Pulled that way. Pulled the other way. Somebody's going to say to me, what do you want Mr. Tracy? After 35 years in this Love Canal, I'll tell you what I want. Just give me my 28.5 that you appraised my house for. All I want is my 28.5 and give it to me tonight and I'll go down that road and I'll never look back at the Love Canal again.
Residents: We want out. We want out. We want out. We want out. We want out. We want out. We want out.Â
Bonnie Casper, Congressional Aide: It was hard to believe. This could not happen in the United States of America.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: For years, the Love Canal Homeowners Association has cited evidence of significant health problems in the neighborhood. Birth defects and miscarriages…Severe migraine headaches. Respiratory disease…Already eight cases of cancer on a fifteen house street. Resident: I thought I just had problems with my one daughter and we just found out our other one has rheumatoid arthritis. We have hearing problems with all the children. The baby, he has a deformed foot, so it's just, it’s just constantly still running to the hospitals and children's hospital.
Bonnie Casper, Congressional Aide: People were talking about how they were ill, but nobody exactly knew why they were so ill or why so many people were so ill.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Now a quarter of a century after it went in, chemical waste is coming out of the ground.
Amy Hay, Historian: People had no idea they were living on top of 22,000 tons of toxic chemicals.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Health experts found more than 80 dangerous chemicals oozing to the surface.
Jennifer Thomson, Historian: All of a sudden on a dime, everything blows up. More people are sick. There's, you know, black sludge coming into their homes.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: The family’s even afraid to go in the basement because of high readings of an explosive chemical called toluene.Â
Richard Newman, Historian: Love Canal was the first chemical disaster to unfold before Americans’ eyes.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: We are dying, literally dying from benzene. We're getting cancers from all these other compounds. Now you're talking about nerve gas. There's just no way…
Lois Gibbs, Resident: It's much worse than I even imagined. Certainly much worse than what the government is saying.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Luella Kenny: Can you tell me when I'm not going to lose any more children because one is already dead? Please tell me those things.
Patti Grenzy, Resident: It really hit it home for us that at this point we're on our own. We have to make this happen. They're not going to do it for us.
Jannie Grant-Freeney, Resident: So, that spurred me to want to do something.
Carol Jones, Resident: We've got to do something.
Barbara Quimby, Resident: I mean, the fight came to us we didn’t look for it.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: Each and every one of you in this room are murderers. Resident: You’re a bunch of sick sadistic people.Â
Patti Grenzy, Resident: They looked at us as hysterical housewives and they figured, oh, well, they'll give up. They'll go back to their knitting and to their babies and this will blow over. But we were stronger than that.Â
Richard Newman, Historian: This incredible group of women become the faces of environmental reform. But there was absolutely no roadmap.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Barbara Quimby: I'm sick of being a Guinea pig. I want out. Test me later, but my God, get me out now and my kids.
Jennifer Thomson, Historian: The fear was it could happen to all of us, and the thing was it was happening to other people, in places throughout the country.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: The Love Canal is merely the tip of a dangerous and terrifying chemical iceberg. Lois Gibbs: I am not moving until I get an answer why.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: I wasn't thinking about building a movement or anything like that. I was thinking about survival. How do we get out of here? We need to do something and I don’t care what it takes.
Barbara Quimby, Resident: It was just such a nice neighborhood. To a child, oh my goodness, we had fun there. A lot of times we would just be more near the school playing baseball or something, but we always ended up where what we called the Black Lagoon.
Patti Grenzy, Resident: On the surface, it had like an oily substance to it, like a green and a blue. And if you, like, drop something into it, it would bubble up and sink. So we called it quicksand.
Barbara Quimby, Resident: It was like a wonderland. We had these rocks that we called pop rocks, and we used to just slide them across and they would actually have a flame. It was like fire. And all I remember, my mother always yelled about our shoes. This one time she had bought me new sneakers and I came home and she said, ‘What? It looks like your sneakers are burnt. What happened to all the rubber around it? You're not getting new sneakers. What are you doing?’ ‘I'm just playing at the school.’ I mean, nobody went and investigated and said, why are these shoes burnt?
Lois Gibbs, Resident: I found the house on 101st Street, the one in the Love Canal neighborhood. It was starter homes for the most part. And it was the perfect neighborhood from my perspective. It had the Niagara River to the south. To the north was a creek and the kids could go and walk along the creek and pick up pollywogs or, you know, it was just a cute little very shallow creek, good for children. We moved in with Michael, who was one years-old by then, a healthy little boy, and then we had our little girl. I really believed I achieved so much. I had this house and a husband who was gainfully employed and these beautiful children. You know everything seemed to be fine.
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: Love Canal was government subsidized. My husband wasn't making very much money and they made that a very tasty little deal to move into. We paid $135 a month to live in a brand new home, which was really unusual. I wasn't going to question it. And so we felt quite lucky that we fell in at the right time.
Luella Kenny, Resident: I lived in Niagara Falls all my life. When I married, my husband was from Niagara Falls. We had two boys and we saw this beautiful brick house in Love Canal with one acre of land all around it and it sat on a creek and it was just, it was just ideal and we were thinking, what a place to raise your children.
Jannie Grant-Freeney, Resident: I moved to the development called Griffon Manor. It was a brand new housing project. A beautiful place. Flowers, the grass was green. There was like a little pond that the kids used to play in and had trees and all of that, and they would swing on the branches and what have you.
Carol Jones, Resident: We had a small yard in the front and in the back we would see, I'm going to call it water, but swamp land that just looked oily. At times It smelled like burnt rubber or a strong cleanser. It was just a foul, foul odor. Often enough to choke you. But we didn't pay that any attention. It was normal to us to smell these smells.
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: People always knew when they were getting close to our home because we had this horrendous smell behind our house. Actually the whole neighborhood.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: The mailman even carries a gasmask on his delivery route. Mailman: It smells like hell. You got that one house at 510 99th street, it’s one of the worst smells I ever had around here in a long long time, it’s terrible.Â
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: If you were to drive down Buffalo Avenue where all the chemical industries were, you would smell that. My dad worked in the Hooker Chemical. That was the smell we had from our backyard. That's why it was real familiar. It smelled like dad.
CHEMICAL COMPANY ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Narrator: Today and for the years to come the world looks for better things for better living through chemistry. The science that has played a major part in the perfection of practically everything we use.
Richard Newman, Historian: Niagara Falls in the 1970s is a place that is synonymous with chemicals.
CHEMICAL COMPANY ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Narrator: Chemists make things as far apart as insecticides for the farmer and cosmetics for beautiful women.
Richard Newman, Historian: Roughly ten different chemical companies that are situated along the banks of the Niagara River. Before you see the mist of Niagara Falls, you smell all of that chemical production. It permeates the car, it's in the air, it's thick.
CHEMICAL COMPANY ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Narrator: Substances that are shipped out in tank cars and bear names like styrene, vinyl chloride, acrylonitrile.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: Chemicals were a part of our life. You know, when we smelled chemicals, you smelled a good economy. You knew that you were going to be able to put food on a table, you're going to be able to pay your mortgage, you're going to be able to buy a new car someday.Â
CHEMICAL COMPANY ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Narrator: When modern chemistry and modern industry join hands in serving modern America.
Marie Rice, Reporter: There was a spot in Niagara Falls called Chemical Row because there were so many chemical manufacturers along there. You know, places like Carborundum and DuPont and Olin.Â
Bonnie Casper, Congressional Aide: I know, like, Union Carbide was there.
Marie Rice, Reporter: Goodyear and Goodrich I think was also along there. And then of course, Hooker, Hooker Chemical.
Michael Brown, Reporter: Hooker originated in Niagara Falls. They had started out with electrochemicals. Everything from caustic soda for chlorine to pesticides, herbicides, especially chlorinated hydrocarbons. Hundreds of chemicals, just about any type of chemical that you would need. Of course, at the same time, these chemicals create toxic waste.
CHEMICAL COMPANY ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Narrator: Hazardous wastes are generated from the production of paints, pesticides, plastics, leather, textiles, medicines. The challenge is to develop systems to handle the millions of tons of hazardous wastes produced every year.
Michael Brown, Reporter: Chemical companies in Niagara Falls and across the United States were dumping in holes. They were digging, excavating and burying their waste. That was the way you got rid of it.
CHEMICAL COMPANY ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Narrator: 55 gallon drums are used as containers for solid materials. They are stacked compactly in the landfill cell and then cover is applied to keep the rainwater out and keep the waste in.
Michael Brown, Reporter: No one back in the fifties knew quite the ramifications biologically of many of these chemicals.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Grace McCoulf: I used to have garlic and wild onions and strawberries and tomatoes and cucumbers, beets, carrots. We used to have everything, beans, Italian beans, regular beans, just all kinds of stuff and…
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: Nobody could get a garden to grow. We had one beet grow and it weighed almost seven pounds and you probably would've needed an ax to cut it in half ‘cause it was like a small bowling ball. That was the only beet that grew. I thought my husband wasn't doing a very good job planting. I didn't know.
Barbara Quimby, Resident: We had so many animals die. It was unexplained. The fur would just be off of them or so many of them died of cancer. It seems normal because it happened to other people's animals too.
Jannie Grant-Freeney, Resident: And then there was something else strange happening. We would see people were developing what they thought was asthma. People started to have kidney problems, bladder problems, some of the children had behavior problems, a complete change from how they were.
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: So there were issues. It did smell, but the Blizzard of ‘77 was the worst thing could have happened to us. That blizzard is what brought those barrels up.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: More than 150 inches of snow have fallen so far this year, almost four times the normal average. What it adds up to is the worst storm of the worst winter in the city's history. Downtown Buffalo is like a ghost town, nearly all business at a standstill just like the thousands of…
Michael Brown, Reporter: In 1977, I was a reporter for the Niagara Gazette covering the city of Niagara Falls. There had been a very hard winter and when the snow melted, it was an incredible scene. I remember there were drums exposed, they were collapsing and chemicals came out and started seeping though the ground.Â
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: In my backyard there was a hole in the ground, about the size of a dinner plate. And it was black goo in it and it smelled and it was all foamy around the edges and stuff. And as the days went on, that hole kept getting bigger and bigger. And this black goo started to show up in other people's backyards.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Resident: I lived here a good 10 years and they tried to tell me that it's tar, but nobody's been around to check it. They said, how about digging it up? I've tried to dig it up. It's just way down deep and it's all over the backyard. It's in the side of the field. It's even in my neighbor's backyard.
Jannie Grant-Freeney, Resident: And then there started to be something backing up in the basements of our homes in Griffon Manor. Black sludge. And no matter what we did, we couldn't get rid of it.
Michael Brown, Reporter: People start telling me things, and I knew it was anecdotal information, but I also knew something bad was going on.
Richard Newman, Historian: Residents are starting to acknowledge all of the weird things that have been going on in the neighborhood for years. The first thing that residents do is reach out to their local politicians. Niagara Falls officials really push them off. That's when they find an angel in John LaFalce, who is the representative for the area of Niagara Falls in Congress.
Bonnie Casper, Congressional Aide: We told several of the residents that we would come out to, to look at the canal. And they took us into their homes. We went into the basements and we saw the oozing. It was like black tar. I couldn't even truly describe the smell.
John LaFalce, U.S. Representative: Well, it didn't smell like lasagna sauce. It smelled like chemicals to me, and I wasn't sure what chemicals, I wasn't sure if it was harmful, but what you don't know can hurt you.
Bonnie Casper, Congressional Aide: We could see a couple of the barrels and we saw the school, so there was the playground on the canal. The residents told us that their kids played in it all the time, you know, played in the canal, played– that's where they went. That was their backyard.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Official: Give me your last name.
John LaFalce, U.S. Representative: I wanted to know how it became a dump site for chemicals. And then how that land could have been used for housing, used for a school, used for a playground where kids would be playing on a daily basis. I considered the problem a very serious one and was going to do whatever I thought necessary to deal with it. And that was not the disposition of other officials.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Michael O’Laughlin, Mayor, Niagara Falls: I am concerned about the people. All of them. I can't, as a mayor, though, jeopardize our city. And a first responsibility I have ….
John LaFalce, U.S. Representative: There were some who were very, very worried that this might tarnish the image of the city.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Michael O’Laughlin, Mayor, Niagara Falls: And I'm continually being cautioned to be careful not to make blatant statements that could incriminate the city.
John LaFalce, U.S. Representative: Niagara Falls, of course, was known for its tourist industry. And there was an understandable concern about the effect that it would have.
Richard Newman, Historian: For centuries Niagara Falls has had this outsize existence in the American mind. People have visited it to be overawed by nature, to feel its power. It's moving, it's sublime. But beginning in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a lot of people visited the falls for something else. They're dead set on developing it for industrial use.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Narrator: The mighty waters of Niagara Falls pour some 9,000 cubic feet of water per second over this 165-foot precipice.
Richard Newman, Historian: In the 1880s when hydroelectric power developers arrive in Niagara Falls, they change the falls. They electrify it. They make it an important part of a new era of hydroelectric power.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Narrator: To serve the needs of industry and the welfare of mankind.
Richard Newman, Historian: Not just in Western New York but across the Midwest. Niagara Falls is at the very center of the American industrial dream.
Michael Brown, Reporter: In the 1890s, there was a railroad entrepreneur, William T. Love. He came up with the idea to build a canal from the upper Niagara River circumventing the falls to the lower river. It was going to be for transportation and at the same time create power.
Richard Newman, Historian: Love wanted to produce something called Model City, merging industrial power with utopian design. He tells people I can create a bigger hydroelectric power station, I can generate more wealth, more investment in the area, and people are willing to believe it because they see Niagara Falls as the next big thing in American industrial life. William Love is so successful in his investment plan that he actually has enough money to start digging out portions of his canal. And he’s saying to people you're walking in the future site of American industrial power right here at Love's Canal.
Michael Brown, Reporter: I mean, he sounded like kind of a showboat. He would go around with a brass band and circulars and advertisements, and he even had a diddy that was to the sound of Yankee Doodle. ‘Everybody's come to town those who left we pity, for we all have a great old time in Love's new Model City.’ Yeah, Love’s new Model City. He went bankrupt soon afterwards.
Richard Newman, Historian: In many ways it is a Ponzi scheme. He promises to pay people in the future, but the future comes on fast. He can't pay all those debts. Love’s Canal is never finished. Model City is never completed. Both of these dreams lie fallow, and they're sort of a monument to failure. But there is a groove of earth in the Niagara Falls landscape that's going to sit there. No one knows what to do with it. Enter: Hooker Electrochemical Company in Niagara Falls.
Keith O'Brien, Author: In the 1940s, with the war effort in full swing, Hooker Chemical was producing more chemicals than ever before. And like any manufacturer, it needed someplace to dump its residues and wastes.
Richard Newman, Historian: So Hooker Chemical locates a great area for this just four miles away from its production site where William Love started building out his artificial river 50 years beforehand. They think this is perfect for burying chemical waste.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Bruce Davis, Hooker Vice President: The canal was further excavated and then the drums were stacked into this mini vault and then the drums were covered over with four feet of clay.
Charles Warren, Regional Administrator, EPA: At the time there were no laws that governed that dumping, so they just were able to dispose of it in any way they thought was appropriate.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Arthur Tracy: They would back those trucks in, you know, and they would put a drum off here. Sometimes the lid would come off, sometimes it wouldn't because they were sealed. Reporter: Now what happened when that hit the water? Arthur Tracy: It would come open and there would be a flash of flame, like fire going up in the air. Boom, it would go, you know.
Bonnie Casper, Congressional Aide: Everybody knew Hooker was a chemical plant. People certainly knew many of the chemicals that they had produced. Nobody knew, however, what they had actually dumped as waste material. And nobody really knew how many drums were buried in Love Canal.
Richard Newman, Historian: They filled up the entire area with about a hundred thousand chemical barrels. People at Hooker Chemical weren't thinking in terms of long-term chemical risks. And they thought when they dumped this stuff, even if it broke out of the chemical drums, the landscape itself would just absorb it like a big sponge.
Michael Brown, Reporter: In the 1950s, Niagara Falls was an expanding city. Everything was going great guns economically.Â
Amy Hay, Historian: Most of the individuals who bought homes worked at Hooker and other chemical companies in Niagara Falls. And so it was seen as this great neighborhood that had good transportation to their jobs at the chemical plants.Â
Richard Newman, Historian: This is a time when people looked at a landscape and didn't worry about what's underneath it. And Love Canal, the covered over chemical dump, is actually viewed in the 1950s as a great developmental opportunity.Â
Keith O'Brien, Author: In the spring of 1953, Hooker Chemical sold the land to the Board of Education in Niagara Falls for a dollar, and they got out of the Love Canal business.
Richard Newman, Historian: The Niagara Falls school board signs an agreement with Hooker chemical which basically says there is chemical waste buried underneath the Love Canal site, but it doesn't say exactly what type of chemical waste is in the ground. This is where they're going to put the 99th Street School. They're going to work with developers to build out a subdivision which will have new housing stock, playgrounds. People who are in charge of hazardous waste landfilling were not really concerned about what happens next. They don't want to know, they don't need to know because government officials were not pushing them. For people in Niagara Falls you don't want to scare off the chemical industry. Less knowledge is better for business.
John LaFalce, U.S. Representative: In the summer of ‘77, I wrote to the head of the Hooker Corporation saying, I want to know exactly what you buried. And I want to know if what you buried could be dangerous.
Michael Brown, Reporter: When I first came onto the story, it was an environmental problem. It was not considered a health threat at that time, at least not that anyone was telling me. I was shocked when I went door to door and found out that people were actually becoming ill from what was in their homes, the odors that were very obvious at the time.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Resident: I contracted asthma. Resident: I lived here three years and discovered I had cancer. Resident: Two children that are legally blind. Resident: My child has rheumatoid arthritis and asthmatic bronchitis, and she is missing part of her second teeth.
Michael Brown, Reporter: Everyone had a story, from skin rashes to cancer. They're talking about birth defects, they're talking about miscarriages. My editor held me back from printing a lot of the health effects because he wanted to hear it from a health official. When you saw what was going on at Love Canal, it was very difficult to remain a reporter because it was like watching an accident in slow motion.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: You could see the fear on faces today as men, women and children gathered at a neighborhood school on the edge of the former chemical dump for blood tests.
Richard Newman, Historian: As state officials learn more, they start extensive testing.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Official: We're looking for evidence of leukemias, anemias, toxic liver conditions.
Richard Newman, Historian: They also set up in people's homes, they went into people’s basements, they monitored leachate, tested what kind of chemicals were maybe seeping into backyards.
Michael Brown, Reporter: They had started to conduct air tests and for three months I tried to get the results of those tests. No one would tell me what they were, and finally I found out that there was benzene in the air there, which was extremely alarming. That's a known human carcinogen.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: The EPA identified three compounds in quantities 5,000 times higher than levels considered safe, and three others known to cause cancer in animals measured at 250 times safe exposure levels.
Michael Brown, Reporter: And then, things got even worse. Hooker had another dump that was just across the road from Love Canal. They also had a dump site next to the water plant, supplies the water for the city of Niagara Falls. And their biggest dump was called the Hyde Park Landfill, and this dump was three, four times the size of Love Canal. How come we didn't know this? How could we not know this?
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Not only do state officials not know what chemicals are buried here in the Love Canal, they don't even know how many chemical landfills there are in Niagara County.
Charles Warren, Regional Administrator, EPA: EPA said we need to get an inventory of toxic sites over the country. And when we did that we found many sites of all kinds. We had them out there and nobody was doing anything about them and, at the time, we didn’t think we had the weapons to really deal with those sites.
Keith O'Brien, Author: The EPA was one of the youngest federal agencies, still really finding its footing. It was founded in 1970 by Richard Nixon and it was playing catch-up, especially when it comes to orphaned dumps and chemical landfills. They were scattered all across America.
Charles Warren, Regional Administrator, EPA: We actually got a tally. And it was in the thousands.Â
Richard Newman, Historian: Almost every state has a problem like Love Canal, and every single one could be a ticking time bomb.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: After we lived at Love Canal, maybe a year, Michael started getting sick, so, you know, first it was, like, asthma, then it was a urinary disorder, and then when Michael was in kindergarten, he was spending a lot more time in the school, and that's when he had his first seizure. We were actually at a fast food restaurant and I thought he was choking, but he wasn't choking and it scared the dickens outta me. The pediatrician had no answer, and so I'm looking at these articles and I'm reading this stuff about benzene and toluene and other chemicals– I didn't even know how to pronounce 'em back then. And then they were mentioning the 99th Street School. I'm like, whoa, whoa, what is going on here? I believe Michael got sick because he was in the school and also because we played on the playground almost every single day. So I put together a petition to close the 99th Street school.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: How many chemicals have been identified as being underground here? Official: So far we know of 88 specific chemicals that have been identified. Reporter: And of those 88, how many are suspected of causing cancer? Official: I think the number is 11.
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: It was really getting kind of frightening. They were running around in their moon suits and they came in with all kinds of machines and stuff so they could do the ambient air in the basement. They'd say you had benzene and toluene and trichloroethylene and all these ‘enes. That was Greek to all of us. And then it wasn't too long after that when Lois showed up at my back door and I said, oh my God, we went to school together. We were in Girl Scouts together.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: So we sat in her living room and talked for quite a while. She talked about her miscarriages and she talked about all of the other health problems she had. Debbie was the first one that agreed to go door knocking with me.
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: I just felt -- sounds silly -- but it was like a calling that I had to do that and I was hell bent.
Patti Grenzy, Resident: I remember Lois coming down the street with her petition and I remember thinking, oh God, what's she selling? There were articles in the paper, but I had two young kids and one on the way. I didn't pay that much attention to the news. Lois began telling me about birth defects and miscarriages and stillborns and all that. That's pretty scary when you're pregnant, to hear that. We all think that's not going to happen to me, that happens to the guy, you know, down the street. Well, we found ourselves being the guy down the street. It was happening to us.
TEXT ON SCREEN: AUGUST 2, 1978
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Today in Albany, the New York State Health Department declared a health emergency in the neighborhood and recommended…
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Keith O'Brien, Author: By August 1978, state officials couldn't sit on this problem anymore. They make this stunning announcement, encouraging the evacuation of about 200 families living closest to the canal. But it was just pregnant women or children under the age of two. Other people in the neighborhood wondered immediately, of course, about their own health, the health of their children.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Heisner: I am really, really afraid. We have decided we're going to get out one way or another.
Richard Newman, Historian: People realize they were living not simply on top of a dump that was leaking, they were living in a chemical disaster zone. And that set off all sorts of terrorizing conversations.Â
TEXT ON SCREEN: The day after New York State declared a health emergency, officials visited the 99th St. School for a community meeting.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: This was the first chance residents had to vent their frustrations into the ears of state officials. State Health Commissioner Robert Whalen tried to tell the crowd that Albany is doing all that it can to get rid of the poisonous chemicals seeping into their homes, but the people feel that the wheels of government move too slowly. Resident: And you guys represent us. You're going to have problems. We're going to do everything...
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: The meeting was, it was doomed to be a screaming match right from the beginning because we have now been given some information of what we've been exposed to and how dangerous it really is.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Resident: Eight-month pregnant woman here. We've lived in that house for two years. Nobody told us this was happening, man, nothing. She's been there for eight months. What are you going to do for my kid? What are going to do? Nothing. The damage is done man, the damage is done.
Richard Newman, Historian: The state health department was really most focused on the first two rings of homes around the old canal dumping grounds. People who weren't in the ring one or ring two homes thought that they were trapped in a death zone.
Patti Grenzy, Resident: Ring three was just outside of that area, which is where we lived. Our front yard faced 99th Street’s homes’ backyard. So we were really, really close.Â
Richard Newman, Historian: If this is a ticking health time bomb, why are you only evacuating people who live on 97th and 99th streets?
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Whalen was also criticized for advising only pregnant women and kids under two to evacuate the area. Lois Heisner: Would you please tell me, do I let my three year old stay? What do you expect of us? That is my child. Where is the difference? What about the seven and the eight and ten year-old kids?Â
Keith O'Brien, Author: Up until that moment, these people believed that government was there to protect 'em. That government did right by Americans. These were families who had husbands who had served in Vietnam. These were mothers who didn't see themselves as part of the feminist movement.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: I can't see anything going on in the state of New York that is more important than these people's lives.
Keith O'Brien, Author: But the community changed that night. Changed forever.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: As families with pregnant women and small children moved out of their Love Canal homes today and into surplus military housing. New York State officials…
John LaFalce, U.S. Representative: I could very well understand the perspective of the homeowners there. But I could also understand that this might be a very expensive undertaking.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: John LaFalce: I'm aware of your problems. I've been living with them. I’m aware of your health problems, your housing problems, your school problems. So I’ve requested that the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration declare this an emergency and a disaster area…
Richard Newman, Historian: Up until that time, the only disasters that had ever received emergency or disaster declarations by the federal government were natural disasters, so hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes. But Love Canal is overwhelming all of the resources of the local government. It's even overwhelming the state. And it's rising to the level of a natural disaster.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: For the first time, a strictly manmade disaster has been declared a federal emergency, allowing the government to provide assistance to the area.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: When Carter says his emergency, we're like, yes, now, the White House knows we exist. We have a problem and, you know, they're going to help us.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Hugh Carey, Governor, New York: Money. That’s the, that's the good news, money.
Keith O'Brien, Author: Governor Hugh Carey comes to Niagara Falls to meet with residents at the 99th Street School.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Hugh Carey talked to residents of the beleaguered Love Canal area.
Keith O'Brien, Author: That night in the school, Carey announces that not only will they be evacuating residents of the neighborhood, but they will buy their homes.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: In one of his most popular moves, a promise to pay full market value for the now worthless houses.
Michael Brown, Reporter: For the people who were close to the canal, Governor Hugh Carey was a white knight, came in on a horse. So there was a lot of relief on one hand and then you had the other people who were stuck. There were about 700 families left behind and, you know, these people are watching just about daily as more and more is coming out about Love Canal.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: It’s going to cost more than $9 million to clean up the canal. And once the work actually begins it will take three months to complete.
Richard Newman, Historian: They want to make sure that chemicals are contained and they don't leak out to further homes in the subdivision or neighborhood.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: The construction plans call for the installation of a clay cap to be laid on top of the canal.
Richard Newman, Historian: They’re going to seal it up and it will be covered over with clay. So they’re not taking toxic chemicals out of the ground.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: A chain link fence will also be installed here around the Love Canal area.
Richard Newman, Historian: But the first thing they do is they put a fence through the middle of the neighborhood separating the inner ring homes, ring one and two, from the rest of the neighborhood.
Michael Tolli, Resident: I remember them putting up the fence. The first two rows of houses were abandoned. It was strange. There's tons of people around, then there's nobody around. Then, now it's a ghost town.
Ernie Grenzy, Resident: The fence was right down in front of my yard. And they're saying, ‘you're okay, this across the street is not okay’. And that's how we lived for a long time. It was devastating. I mean, you're worried about your kids primarily and my wife being pregnant, what's going to happen to the baby? And you're frustrated because you can't do anything about it.
Richard Newman, Historian: Residents at Love Canal, they really thought that the government was going to rescue them, that once they declared that there was a problem at Love Canal, that they would be saved. And they learned that these officials were dealing with a problem that was as new to them as it was to the residents.
Keith O'Brien, Author: They realized that in order to escape from their own homes, in order to even understand the scope of the problem, they need to organize.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Within days of the emergency declaration, a small group of residents formed the Love Canal Homeowners Association.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: Our first Love Canal homeowner's office was at the 99th Street School. It was a classroom. And because I had knocked on everybody's door, they recognized my face. And so I was voted in as president. I was terrified of being a leader. You know, I'm a shy, quiet person and all of a sudden having hundreds of people counting on me, and they are angry and frustrated and terrified, and so it isn't just being a leader, it's being a leader in a crisis.
Marie Rice, Reporter: Lois was very nervous and I always will remember it. She had her notes kind of scribbled on a small piece of paper, and she was standing in front of the microphones and her hands literally shook. She was so nervous. But what was so interesting for reporters, we saw her go from that to being unbelievable in front of the cameras.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: We've come a long way. We've gotten Ring One evacuated, we've gotten Ring Two evacuated. We now have an emergency. They're talking about purchasing our homes in Washington. The decision is not made. There is only one thing that's going to make the decision and that's public opinion, so none of you should be a bit surprised…
Lois Gibbs, Resident: Our main goal was anybody who wanted to leave could leave with their homes being purchased at fair market value. I wanted out, just like all my neighbors, wanted out. I wanted to be gone. I want somebody to buy my house. ‘Cause that's all the assets I had in the world and I wanted to move and I wanted to have that happy life I had before when I would walk my son to school, when I would pack my husband some lunch and when I would cook a green cake for St. Patrick's Day. I wanted it all back.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: As president of the Love Canal Homeowners Association, Gibbs has gone from quiet housewife to neighborhood advocate to an outspoken spokesperson on the topic of hazardous waste disposal. Now, the Homeowners Association works out of this house, one of the homes abandoned by Love Canal evacuees. Lois Gibbs: We definitely need a doctor tonight. Marie Pozniak: At John’s. Now she told you about the six o'clock bit? Lois Gibbs: Why don't you talk to Mike? Marie Pozniak: Why don't you answer that phone? Lois Gibbs: Love Canal. Lois.
Barbara Quimby, Resident: I went to the office every single day and opened up. There was a core group and we were there every day. The phone never stopped ringing. People would come in. Lois called us all by our last name. It was like we were in the service, you know, in the army or something.
Grace McCoulf, Resident: My kids were little, so they were in the office with me. I did some fundraising, sent letters to all kinds of businesses trying to raise money so that we could do things, you know, have meetings, print up flyers.
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: I was eventually voted in as the vice president and Lois always used to kid me I was the vice president of the art department because most of the signs you saw in that neighborhood were built by me. At that time, I had already moved, so when I could find childcare, I would come back to the office and work with the girls. I just didn't have the heart to leave them when I had the opportunity to move away from all of the danger– my heart wouldn't allow it. My gut told me, you have to stay there and help.
Patti Grenzy, Resident: When you look back, at that time, the men were the ones that got things done. Men didn't look at women as being smart, as being determined or stepping outside the circle of their family. At the office, there were some men that were retired. Then there were men that worked shift work so they could be there as well, but for the most part it was the women. It was the moms that did the groundwork.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: Okay, tell her that we're going to set up a clinic tonight, probably at Jan's hotel, in room 416. I just don't know the time yet. Marie Pozniak: That should be 12 o’clock, and why does the state want to make things easier for themselves instead of us, huh?
Keith O'Brien, Author: Almost everyone fighting to escape was a woman and almost every person in power was a man. And so it turned into this real gender battle.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Patti Grenzy, Resident: Mrs. Kenny lost a child, I lost a baby before it was even born, my next door neighbor had a stillborn. Her son is sick, her son is sick– how many more kids have to be sick, how many more kids have to die, we’re not going to let it happen.Â
Amy Hay, Historian: Activism connected to motherhood has a long, long history in America. And it is often something that will mobilize apolitical women. It starts with a sincere desire to protect their children. But then, once they realize how powerful that is and how effectively it plays in the media, they realize they have a winning strategy.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: The leader of the group, Lois Gibbs, a media star, attractive, articulate, and persistent.
Keith O'Brien, Author: The press absolutely loved these women.They gravitated to tell the story of Lois Gibbs.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Lois Gibbs leads the fight for the people still living in the Love Canal area. Reporter: Lois Gibbs continues to have doors slammed in her face. Marie Rice: Homeowners President Lois Gibbs has fought for relocation for over 700 Love Canal families. She's with us tonight. Mrs. Gibbs 700 families….
Marie Rice, Reporter: Instinctively, I knew history was being made here and I just felt I had a ringside seat to history and I didn't have to buy a ticket.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: The education board bought from Hooker for the price of a dollar all this land.
Barbara Quimby, Resident: Lois said we have to stay in the news. She kept saying we have to keep this front page. We can't let them forget about us.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: We have to keep the pressure on President Carter, and in order to do that, we're going to have to send telegrams, scream and holler and be heard.
Richard Newman, Historian:Â Folks covering the Love Canal saga as a media event, often, too often, focused in on Lois Gibbs and the struggle of the homeowners. But there are other people in the neighborhood, people who don't own property in Love Canal, who had many of the same fears, many of the same concerns as the homeowners.
Keith O'Brien, Author: Just on the downtown side of the canal was one of the newest public housing developments in the city of Niagara Falls. It was called Griffon Manor and it was home to about 250 families.
Carol Jones, Resident: Griffon Manor, it was just a close knit community. Most of the families there were actually related to each other. Even before Love Canal was on the news, my mother was talking about it. I remember she said, there's more going on here that meets the eye. We've got to do something. Our table was completely covered. My mother had notes everywhere. There was research material, newspaper clippings. There was data from surveys that she had taken from people with health issues and she found that a lot of the people who lived in Griffin Manor had illnesses that were concerning. From my memory, my mother should have been on the news every day because she was always out there talking to reporters, answering questions, offering information, just as Lois Gibbs was. But there were many nights when we would watch the news and there would be no clips of anything that she had discussed, and she'd just sit there at the table and then she’d just put her head down and she’d just cry. Love Canal was not Griffon Manor. There were two different places. It was like being in two different cities.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: How many families are there amongst the renters in a similar situation? Jannie Freeney: I would say at least half of the population in that area are severely ill. Resident: I've been living out here since I was about four years old. I have a seizure disorder.
Jannie Grant-Freeney, Resident: Renters were not getting their health addressed as the homeowners were. Some of the healthcare professionals, they were saying that because of us not taking care of our children properly, that's the reason why they were sick.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Resident: And my doctor, he still don't want to say that this is the cause or related to it.
Richard Newman, Historian: Renters feel marginalized on a number of levels. So Griffon Manor residents form their own activist organization.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Resident: To the people that live in the Niagara Falls Housing Authority, there will be a meeting specifically for us because this is what happens to us. We get jumbled into people that own homes or outside… Resident: Why don’t you buy one?! Resident: Why don’t you buy one?!
Jannie Grant-Freeney, Resident: We had many meetings with homeowners. They were mean people. What they wanted us to do was to stop complaining. They need to be taken care of, and then when they got taken care of, then address the renters.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: State Official: Governor Carey was in Buffalo yesterday and he especially pointed out to me that don't forget the people on the outside of the present perimeters and especially Griffon Manor. And he, so we're very, very aware of it and we're going to be watching it. I promised Mrs. Gibbs she could be next...
Carol Jones, Resident: My mom and Lois Gibbs talked about what was going on in Griffon Manor. There's nothing that makes me believe that Lois wanted anyone to be forgotten about. But they had different roles to play. Lois' role was to take care of the people who lived outside of Griffon Manor and my mother's role was to take care of the people inside. And it became somewhat of a competition to get what you could for the people that you represented.
Keith O'Brien, Author: Homeowners believed that people living in Griffon Manor could just move. They were renting, they weren’t invested into their homes with their life savings.
Amy Hay, Historian: But Griffon Manor was some of the best public housing in Niagara Falls. They had units with three or four bedrooms, which meant that if you had a large family, you could actually live like a family. There was no comparable public housing anywhere else in Niagara Falls.
Jannie Grant-Freeney, Resident: We did have large families, so of course you would have to rent a house or a large apartment and it just wasn't affordable for people. So it was devastating. It really was. It's like you're in a fire but you can't get out. Sometimes, you know, it make you want to cry now because they had no way out. No way out.
TEXT ON SCREEN: OCTOBER 1978
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Finally late this afternoon the green light. Workers wearing air packs and disposable uniforms stood by as the first shovel of dirt was removed from the Love Canal. Slowly the odor that residents here have been living with for years started to permeate the air. Clean-up began two months after the first two rings in the Love Canal neighborhood were evacuated, but health and environmental testing continued.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Health Official: As you all know, two of the contaminants that have been found in the canal are benzene and chloroform and carbon tetrachloride. I'm happy to say, however, that based on what we have seen and evaluated, there is no evidence of benzene toxicity.
Stephen Lester, Toxicologist: The state was constantly repeating and trying to reassure the residents and the public that they had things under control and that, you know, there's no cause for alarm.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Health Official: We are coming across some abnormalities in the liver function studies that were performed. This is to be expected in any population as you know there are a variety of things that can cause liver disease besides toxic chemicals.Â
Stephen Lester, Toxicologist: They would explain that, you know, with something like a benzene, you would know that it affects the blood, it affects the central nervous system, causes liver damage. But because you're exposed to only seven parts per million, which is in your house here, that doesn't mean you'll get those. It means you're at a risk of that. That, of course, doesn't mean anything to people.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Official: There are upwards of 200 different chemicals that have been identified. Reporter: Here's what the residents did learn. Tests do show that some children in the area have liver abnormalities. They don't know whether toxic chemicals are responsible. But these residents were not satisfied with the answers and the questions poured out from the angry crowd. Resident: I have an eight and a half year-old asthmatic. I have been told by my doctors to get her out of this area. Do I have to stay in that house until there is worse?
Richard Newman, Historian: The folks in the New York State Health Department had their work cut out for them. Scientists work in labs, they have protocols. Those protocols are objective and disinterested. And any time you talk about anger, feelings, emotions, subjectivity, the things that Love Canal residents are talking about, you compromise the process.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Resident: The people are scared. I worked for Stauffer chemical for 23 years. I’ve seen men die, from fumes.Â
Richard Newman, Historian: So when health officials show up on the ground and they start talking to residents, the first thing they realize is they don't even know how to talk to them.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Resident: They did not say one thing, they went around in circles all night long, all night. This gentleman right here couldn't even answer a question.
Amy Hay, Historian: Many of the residents did not have degrees beyond high school. And so there was embedded class and gender tensions that are really exposed.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: We asked the state to have the state scientist down here who could answer the residents questions. They didn't do it…
Patti Grenzy, Resident: We were more or less self-educating ourselves with the help of some other people. The more you learn, the more frightening it was, the more determined that we were to succeed at this.
Stephen Lester, Toxicologist: I was just overwhelmed with how hard they worked to learn, and Lois at one point asked me for my toxicology texts from when I was in school and I gave it to her. So they were devouring this stuff and they very quickly became very versed. And they were highly motivated because they weren't getting answers from the health department, and so where could they turn to get answers?
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Dr. Beverly Paigen: In other fields of science, we sometimes talk about gaps in our knowledge. Here it's almost our knowledge is a little gap in our ignorance. We really know very little about exposure to these chemicals.
Keith O'Brien, Author: Beverly Paigen had done groundbreaking research about environmental hazards. She had written papers suggesting that air quality might contribute to lung disease, that smog might contribute to asthma.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: I met Beverly Paigen through my brother-in-law, and he introduced her as a scientist, a health scientist, who could be helpful. And she came by to the first meeting. She goes, I know everybody is really upset about the chemical exposure and I don't know what that means yet, but I'd like to help you figure that out.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Dr. Beverly Paigen: …to test for liver function, there will be counts done on your blood cells…
Amy Hay, Historian: She approaches the residents in a very different manner than the Department of Health. She had expertise, but she did not walk in as the authority.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Dr. Beverly Paigen: Any other questions?Â
Amy Hay, Historian: She listens to them. She takes it as legitimate their concerns that there are illnesses in that broader, expanded outer ring area.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Dr. Beverly Paigen: There may be some problems that will not be solved by the cleanup. Besides the first ring…
Stephen Lester, Toxicologist: The health department constantly said, if you're outside of the fence you're not at risk. But there was no basis for saying that there was no science for saying that. And the fence became a symbol of who was safe and who was not. The residents, of course, looked at that fence and said, what are you talking about? These chemicals are in the air. They're not being stopped by the chain link fence. So it also became a battle line between what the community wanted and what the state was willing to do.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: There was a man on 102nd Street who just came back from Cleveland Clinic, diagnosed an epileptic. He's never had any central nervous system problems of any sort, and all of a sudden, you know, he's got this crazy seizure problem.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: We needed to try and find out what's going on in the outer community. Was it our imagination, this cluster of epileptics? Is it a coincidence that these women are having miscarriages or is it real? And so we just wanted to see what was really going on. We wanted to find out. No one else would tell us, we'll find out for ourselves. And that's when we did the health study.
Keith O'Brien, Author: Lois Gibbs and the other mothers didn't know how to conduct health surveys. Beverly Paigen gives them a way to do that. She tells them what questions to ask, how to ask them. And with her help, they're able to start building their own data.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: We were at my house one night and we're like putting these things on a pin map, you know, and it was like, red is for miscarriages, blue is for cancer, whatever the color code was. And we were realizing that, oh my gosh, some of these things are really clustering, like epilepsy around my house and, you know, birth defects over here.
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: One neighborhood was severe heart and lung problems, and another neighborhood was female cancers, and then in my area there was a lot of miscarriages.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: So we went back and started interviewing people in those areas where there was clustering of diseases, and the old timers would tell us about an old creek that was there. And how it was backfilled with construction waste and then dirt.
Keith O'Brien, Author: Sometime in 1978, the State Department of Health unearthed aerial photographs of the neighborhood from just before Hooker Chemical began using the land as a dump. And in these photographs there was a series of streams, or as they called them swales, that cut through the neighborhood moving in every which direction. When Lois began to connect the dots, finding these clusters around the old swales, and Beverly studied it for herself, she was alarmed.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Dr. Beverly Paigen: Well, this is actually quite interesting. This stream here has very little disease along it, and this stream never intersected Love Canal. There's no disease along here. There are about 40 homes in here and there's about seven or eight dots. There are about 40 homes in here and there's at least 50 dots. These are just half a block away. They're both on a stream, but one stream intersected Love Canal and one didn't. This is some of the strongest evidence I have…
Keith O'Brien, Author: If it was true that human health problems seemed to follow the old swales, then it was true that the human threat was much farther than state and federal officials had originally indicated. Beverly Paigen ultimately flew to a meeting in Albany with these maps and with this data. And she recalled that when she boarded the plane that day with this tube of maps and photographs, that she felt like she was carrying something explosive. She said she felt like she was carrying a bomb.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Dr. Beverly Paigen: So I flew to New York State Health Department and proposed this as a hypothesis to them. Why don't you look at disease in these homes which are along swales compared to the homes which are not to see if there's a difference in disease incidence. And they agreed to do that. What happened though was quite different, I'll never forget it, because I got on the airplane, flew back to Buffalo, picked up the newspaper in the airport, and there was a story on the front page attacking my hypothesis.Â
Keith O'Brien, Author: The same health officials that she had met with in Albany had spoken to the press and they dismissed what she had presented that day.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Marie Rice: The women told us the state office had dismissed their studies as ‘useless housewife data’.
Barbara Quimby, Resident: They thought we were useless housewives.
Patti Grenzy, Resident: We’re just dumb little housewives.Â
Marie Rice, Reporter: I never heard of anything so insulting...
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: ...The useless house housewife data? Yeah, there was hundreds and hundreds of hours put into that paperwork.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: I'm not a scientist. I am a housewife, as I see quoted in the paper many times. My data is not useless. It is not pointless. And it’s not invalid. Every one of these people in this audience plus gave me that data. They don't lie. What you’re doing in the health department is going to take six months, eight months, ten months. And if we sit and wait for six more months we're going to have dead children.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: Government talked down to us all the time. ‘Where did you learn epidemiology? You can't even say it.’ but We weren't intimidated. It was fine. Do whatever you want, but we're going to keep moving.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Dr. Beverly Paigen: Cancer is not the only thing these chemicals cause, these chemicals cause birth defects…
Lois Gibbs, Resident: But I think Beverly doesn't feel the same way. She was a professional, a researcher, and she worked for the New York State Health Department, so the ramifications for her actions was tremendous.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Dr. David Axelrod, New York State Health Commissioner : Dr. Paigen would readily admit the procedures, which she used for the gathering of data are not generally acceptable.
Jennifer Thomson, Historian: From the state's perspective, all the health study did was amass anecdotal data and map it onto one understanding of the neighborhood's environment, which is very complex. You would need to know what chemical was there, how long it had been there, how that interacts with people's individual biological makeup, how much time they actually spend in their house, what do they get exposed to at work? It is virtually impossible to establish causality.Â
Keith O'Brien, Author: And so for David Axelrod, for the EPA, and for other officials in New York and Washington, it was very difficult to know where to draw the line. Who was safe and who wasn't?
Richard Newman, Historian: Over and over again what you see with Love Canal is that it was a first. And they’re trying to clean up a hazardous waste site that sits below an occupied neighborhood– how do you do that? It’s never been done before.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: A lot of these chemicals have a very low igniting point. So if your prober went down and it hit a barrel, that could cause explosion, right? DEC Official: I would say no, because we'll use the metal detection ahead of anything else. We will not be probing any area…
Lois Gibbs, Resident: The work itself was totally terrifying. Nobody knew what was going to happen if there was a spark from the backhoe hitting a barrel or something, the whole thing would blow up.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: We're talking about the possibility of the entire dump exploding. State Official: Well, not the entire dump, but there could be an explosion, there may be exposures of gas or something like that. Those are probably not going to happen, but you can't be sure they're not.
Patti Grenzy, Resident: What are we going to do if this blows up?
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Buses are standing by at a cost of $6,000 a day just in case of an emergency evacuation of workers.
Patti Grenzy, Resident: So they put buses in the neighborhood and they sat there with their engines going all day. The idea was that if there was an emergency, those bus drivers that they hired would sit there and wait for you and your children to run down the street to get on the bus if there was an explosion.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Another precaution was taken for residents still living in the area. They participated in a test bus evacuation from the area Monday with 60 bus drivers involved in the simulated evacuation plan. Transportation Dispatch: All Love Canal charter buses this frequency. Upon arriving at the Love Canal site, please check in.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: We had our papers and our knapsacks ready to grab and run. This is like your mortgage, your health insurance, the stuff you put in a safe case of a fire, right? We're going to have to grab our baby, grab our knapsack, and you know, it was insane. We literally, every single day, had to wake up to the reality that we may have to run for our lives.
Luella Kenny, Resident: I started reading all of these articles around the beginning of August. I was aware of what was happening, that they had been evacuating the whole area. And I'm just thinking, oh, it's a block and a half away and it really doesn't affect me. I was working full time. I would go in at 7:30 in the morning and come home and be able to pick the children up at school. Steven was nine years old and Chris was eleven and Jon was six years old. Jon was such a little imp, you know, and he had this black curly hair and the sweetest smile and there was something special about him, something very special. It's 45 years later now, but I still feel, you know, I still feel it.Â
June of 1978, Jon suddenly, his stomach was distended and he was swelling up, so it looked like he was getting allergies. But the pediatrician took one look at him and she knew exactly what was wrong with him, that he had immune response disease called minimal lesion nephrosis. But they told me it was the best disease a child could have because it's treatable and he'd be over it by the time he's 14.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Physician: Most children with nephrosis do very well. They may have a relapse sometime shortly after the initial episode, but most of them go on to lead perfectly healthy lives with no further recurrences.
Luella Kenny, Resident: Jon was in the hospital for a whole month. The nurses loved him because he was not a difficult patient. He didn't complain. Finally, with treatment, he went into remission and he was sent home again. As soon as he would come home, within a few days, he was no longer in remission. I would take him in the hospital and he'd go into remission. Then I'd take him back home again. Then the remission was gone and it was the same story. So it was very strange. Unfortunately, I didn't know, I mean, he was playing in the backyard, he was a little kid. You know, his favorite pastime would be to play games in the back of the house. We just didn't know what was in the backyard.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Hooker Chemical landfills have been a cause for concern for quite some time in Niagara Falls. For many, that concern has turned to outright fear now that the deadly chemical dioxin has been discovered at Love Canal. Dioxin is a byproduct of a herbicide used widely by the US Army to defoliate dense Vietnamese jungles.
Michael Brown, Reporter: I knew, months before it was considered an emergency, that Hooker had manufactured components of dioxin, at least 200 tons of it. That was as much dioxin as had been spread in Vietnam with all the Agent Orange. That was the amount that you could calculate as being in the Love Canal.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Dr. Beverly Paigen: Well, dioxin is a very toxic chemical, most toxic chemical that’s ever been made by man…Â
Stephen Lester, Toxicologist: Dioxin is a highly potent carcinogen and it causes its effects at the parts per trillion level, which is even hard to comprehend.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Physician: Now, 1/30th of an ounce of this dioxin will kill five million Guinea pigs. Dr.Laverne Campbell, New York State Health Department: We are naturally concerned over finding dioxin, but it does not come as a surprise, nor does it cause us to make any further recommendations at this time. The commissioner said there is no evidence to indicate that the trace amounts of dioxin found in the leachate pose an immediate health hazard to residents of the area. Resident: How does it affect the kidneys, the heart, the eyes or any vital organs? Do you know this? Dr.Laverne Campbell: I don't know the answer Resident: Who does know in the Health Department of New York State? Dr.Laverne Campbell: There are a number, including Dr. Axelrod. Resident: Could this person be brought here to answer these questions? Dr.Laverne Campbell: He was here the other night. Lois Gibbs: I've got a book on it, toxicology book. It'll tell you. Ultimate is death. Dr.Laverne Campbell: That's the answer. Get it out of there.
Luella Kenny, Resident: By the middle of September, Jon was so sick he just spent the whole time laying on the couch. When we took him to the hospital, his stomach was so distended, we had to put suspenders on him. Soon he was in an oxygen tent, couldn't breathe, and he looked scared. And he had those big brown eyes that were staring out at us through there. And we tried to reassure him and tell him he'd be okay and that we were going to be nearby, because they wouldn't let us stay. My mother had packed some eggplant Parmesan sandwiches. We went to the cafeteria to eat and all of a sudden we hear his doctor being paged to the ICU. Norman and I ran out of that room. We threw the sandwiches in the garbage and we went there and I mean, we knew. We just knew. The first thing I blurted out was ‘I want an autopsy’ because, you know, they told me that was the best disease a child could have. You just can't believe it, that he was gone like that. People said, ‘well, yes, Mrs. Kenny, probably your son's death was due to the chemicals’. I kept saying, I said, ‘I don't think so.’ I said, ‘I want to see the evidence first.’ Maybe it's the scientist in me. My husband was also a scientist, so we were trying to be objective. I mean, I'm not going to jump on a bandwagon when I have no proof.
My husband and I went to the medical libraries and we started researching and I found all of these articles that said that nephrosis could be caused by exposure to chemicals. It was one of the worst feelings I've ever had because I did not want it to be that. You just wonder, I mean, how did you miss it? You know, but you did. Later on, they come out and they say, there's dioxin behind where my house was. There's 32 parts per billion in that creek. I mean, Jon was back there all the time. You know, you blame yourself. Why didn't we move? Why did you do this? Why didn't you do that? I mean, you should have been paying attention.
Patti Grenzy, Resident: When Luella lost her son. Once you get past feeling so horrible for them, then somewhere in the back of your mind that little voice is saying, that could be you. That could be your kids.
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: They found it in my backyard too. They found dioxin on the surface soil where my kids crawled on their hands and knees and chewed on the toys and all. So it was getting scarier and scarier.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: The residents want the cleanup operations at the Love Canal to stop, they want families to be evacuated because of high amounts of the toxic chemical dioxin that has been found.
Jannie Grant-Freeney, Resident: We felt that yes, the cleanup was dangerous, and that the people doing it really didn't know what they were doing, it was more like an experiment. If you're disturbing chemicals, then you're releasing them into the air. We were already having problems with them, but to open them up, we didn't know if people were going to be dropping dead or what, but sometimes I sit back and I says, did I live through that?
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: We had the trucks driving through the neighborhood with dirty tires after they had driven on the canal itself and then people would walk down the road and they’d go in their homes and it was just a mess. So we knew that digging was making things worse in the neighborhood. We had to raise holy hell to stop that.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Picket signs are up tonight in the Love Canal area of Niagara Falls, New York as angry residents try to stop excavation work.
TEXT ON SCREEN: DECEMBER 1978
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: It was not a warm welcome for construction workers at the Love Canal this morning. They were greeted by angry canal residents walking a picket line at each gate leading into the area.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: We protested literally every day. Mostly us at either end of the canal, not letting the trucks come in.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: In addition to yelling, picketers also lectured every worker on the hazards of dioxin, a dangerous chemical which was…
Lois Gibbs, Resident: We never were able to actually stop them, but it was more to educate our local leaders and our local community, but also the media to say, look at this is what's happening.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Eight more arrests today at the Love Canal area of Niagara Falls, New York. Police officer: Can you have a seat in the car please?
Keith O'Brien, Author: Initially, politicians weren't afraid of Lois Gibbs or any other mother. But within a couple of months they were. Especially Governor Hugh Carey. He was up for reelection. He was in a dog fight to win. Governor Carey made multiple visits to the Niagara Falls area. He made sure he was photographed with Lois Gibbs.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: I was a political threat to him. I could unseat him. The same was true with President Carter. I was their enemy. I was their worst nightmare. We decided that Governor Carey was the one who could give us what we wanted, and so we just targeted him. Every time he came to anywhere in Western New York, there was a troupe of people who would go and greet him.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Luella Kenny: Well, my seven-year-old son is already dead, Governor Carey. Governor Carey: Now you're not attributing death to what happened. Luella Kenny: Yes, I am and I have plenty of evidence for it. Governor Carey: Let me put it this way. You're aware this state has spent $23 million to help the residents of Love Canal. Luella Kenny: I'm aware they've spent it and they've avoided me for seven months. Resident: We don't want you to just clean it up first, we want to be moved out first before you clean it up. Resident: You wanna tell these kids that get sick all the time? Governor Carey: I think the children might well be exposed to danger by being brought out here and walking around in the rain this way. Residents: Chemicals are more dangerous.
Luella Kenny, Resident: He's looking at us saying, ‘well, if you're so concerned about your children, why don't you take them home? Don't stand here out in the rain’. You know, after a while, you can just take so much.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Luella Kenny: Do I have to lose another child? Governor Carey: Within a day we'll know whether the evaluation– Now, please, I'm not the one who's causing the death of children around here I am the governor who can– Resident: Yes you are because you have the power to relocate us. Governor Carey: We relocated everyone who was affected by the– Resident: We are being affected!
Marie Rice, Reporter: Those women kept that story out there and they quickly learn, especially for us, the television media, we can't tell a story without pictures. So they would come up with all different ways to get our attention, which would get the cameras there.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Reacting to White House refusal to buy their homes, angry residents of chemically polluted Love Canal dragged out dummies in the street and burned the Carter family in effigy.
Patti Grenzy, Resident: My mother used to say, they're just using you, meaning the media. I said, yeah, ma, but we're using them. We kept them busy with stories, and so they kind of, like, scratched our back and we scratched their back.
Ernie Grenzy, Resident: On Saturdays I could go and I could protest and we brought our kids and we would be yelling, ‘we want out, we want out.’ And I remember being home one day and my girls were three and two or less, and I hear from the bathroom, they're in the tub, they're yelling, ‘we want out, we want out.’ It was funny at first, but then after it settled in, you're wondering, really, how does it affect them? ‘Cause we don't know.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: The boarded up houses are the visible evidence of fear, but the experts say that the problems here go far beyond what you can see. Love Canal has been called a mental health disaster. Resident: My marriage is broken up right now…
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: Just our block alone, I was flabbergasted to see how many people divorced. People were riled up and angry and there was no place to take that anger to, so then the wives and the husbands were fighting. My husband couldn't understand why I had to keep going. I tried to explain to him that these people helped you get out, and if it wasn't for those people, we'd be still stuck in Love Canal. I had two fights going on. It was not a good time.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: What do you suppose you're going to do about moving costs? And I don't care where they're from in this area. These people can't afford to move out and come up with this front money. It's just not there. Judith Smith, Federal Emergency Management Agency: I said I didn't have any easy answers for you. We've just come up today and we've begun to work with the state of New York.
Ernie Grenzy, Resident: The state held most of their meetings and their press releases and all that stuff while I was at work and left the wives to fight. And the state made a big mistake by doing that because the women fought more than any man could. Hell hath no fury like a woman guarding her children.Â
TEXT ON SCREEN: In February 1979, three months after Dr. Beverly Paigen presented the residents’ swale theory, the New York State Health Department completed its own study. Health Commissioner Dr. David Axelrod visited Love Canal to announce the state’s findings on miscarriage and birth defect rates.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Marie Rice: This was the first time the Health Department had given serious consideration to research gathered by the Homeowners Association. Dr. David Axelrod : When we examined all of the data, we found that there was indeed an increase in risk for the fetus of approximately two-fold in congenital malformations, in spontaneous abortions…
Amy Hay, Historian: The Department of Health analyzed the reported miscarriages and they realize that it is higher, much higher than it should be. There is some evidence later on that the chemicals might have actually been distributed via the storm sewers. But the miscarriage data absolutely lends credence to the idea that there are other ways the chemicals have been dispersed from the canal site.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Dr. David Axelrod: …pregnant women living in the canal area extending from 97th to 103rd street, should be removed from the area…
Richard Newman, Historian: This is the first time Griffon Manor residents are included in an official declaration by the state.
Carol Jones, Resident: The fact that it was being recognized was huge. But my mother might have felt that it was a bit too late.There are just so many things that you can't change from the past, and I know she wished that they had heard her from the beginning.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Dr. David Axelrod: We have also brought to the governor our recommendation that children under two years of age be removed from the canal until such time as they are older than two, or until such time as extensive environmental data…
Lois Gibbs, Resident: They agreed to move pregnant women and children under two temporarily in the outer community. Meaning when your child reaches the age of two, you must come back to that home. Or if your pregnancy terminated early, you had to move back to that home. You can imagine having a miscarriage and moving back to the home that caused you to have a miscarriage? It was just insane.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Patti Grenzy: You don't think I'm as concerned about my three-year-old as I am of this baby I'm carrying? Official: I'm sorry. Can he answer the question please? Resident: We want out of here. We're not going to play by your rules anymore. Resident: We want out. We want out now. And do something.
Michael Tolli, Resident: You would hear all the mothers, you know, worried and concerned with their kids growing up. So I heard that many times.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Michael Tolli: …ask Dr. Axelrod a question
Michael Tolli, Resident: That night, I didn't really have any plan for a question, but then it just came out.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Michael Tolli: I’m Michael Tolli and I want to know if I can go home and live with my mother and father again. I had to go to my grandmother's house. I want to know if I’ll be able to grow up to be a normal man.
Keith O'Brien, Author: I began to think of David Axelrod as living inside of a political vise. On the one hand, he had Governor Hugh Carey, who didn't want to spend any more money in Niagara Falls and didn't want to evacuate anyone else. And on the other hand, he had these 700 families who were desperate to escape their homes. And David Axelrod was stuck right in the middle trying to find a way out. And there simply wasn't a clear path.
Bonnie Casper, Congressional Aide: It was very difficult to not have a ready solution. Even with hurricanes and natural disasters, it was temporary relocation. Putting people in temporary homes until the waters receded, they cleaned up the muck and mire from the homes from a flood and people stabilized their homes or did whatever they did. But it was not permanent relocation. We had to really think outside the box.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: There are 32,000 known chemical waste dumps in the United States. More than 800 now considered dangerous to public health.
Bonnie Casper, Congressional Aide: We needed legislation that said, if you pollute, you are going to pay for the damage to the environment that you have caused. But EPA people said to me, it would be helpful, politically, if this were not just a Western New York problem.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Shakopee, Minnesota, outside Minneapolis, a spectacular fire burns 4,000 waste drums sending noxious clouds of smoke and some of the barrels into the sky.
Bonnie Casper, Congressional Aide: Once people saw that it was across the country, then they were going to be in the same situation. And it would mean that you could bring more members of Congress to bear on the problem and get action.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: EPA has prepared legislation to establish a half billion dollar Superfund to help pay for emergency cleanup and damages resulting from spills and abandoned waste.
John LaFalce, U.S. Representative: It had to be a big bill. And that's how it came to be known as the Superfund, meaning there's a lot of money there. And of course, we had a big issue as well, how do you fund Superfund? And I assure you that the companies who had to put up a portion of the money for the fund did not come along willingly.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Hooker Chemical tonight is saying, don't blame us for the chemical catastrophe. Bruce Davis: We have alerted everybody to the nature of those chemicals in the past, but we had no control over that landfill site for a 25-year period.
Keith O'Brien, Author: The sale of the land for a dollar in 1953 came with a very important caveat. Should there be any future problems at the site involving environmental hazards, it would be the city's problem.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Bruce Davis: Hooker Chemical has denied all along that it has any legal liability associated with the Love Canal situation.Â
Bonnie Casper, Congressional Aide: That tells you right there, they knew, they knew that there was a problem. Now, the school board, I can't get in their heads, but I don't know if they didn't want to know or they just actually were naive enough to think that Hooker was just giving it to them because they were good corporate citizens.
Keith O'Brien, Author: Ultimately, the people at the Board of Education were not scientists. City officials were not scientists or chemical experts. The only people who were, were at Hooker Chemical. And they knew how that land was going to be used. And they sold it anyway.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Today it emerged that in 1958, children playing near the school were burned by chemicals. The company and the school board knew, but neither warned the neighborhood. Jerome Wilkenfeld, who was then a Hooker Chemical company safety official, was questioned. Al Gore: You had evidence available to you that children were using it as a playground and had been burned probably by the chemicals there, and yet you were reluctant to tell them that there was a hazard and tell them what the chemicals were because you were afraid that you would expose the school board to some legal liability? Jerome Wilkenfeld: Yes Reporter: Recently, Hooker has been peppering local newspapers with full page advertisements hoping to spruce up its public image in the wake of Love Canal.
Keith O'Brien, Author: Hooker goes on a sort of PR offensive and begins to take out advertisements in all the local media, reminding people of the jobs they provided, reminding people of all the money they injected back into the city.
Richard Newman, Historian: When that doesn't work and the complaints don't go away, Hooker officials, when they testify before Congress say, look, you all should know that we produce really toxic stuff. But we also produce miracles in American life. Everything that American industry and consumer life is based on depends on chemicals, and sometimes we have to recognize that chemicals are made from hazardous material.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Narrator: His electric light bulb contains argon, a gas that keeps it burning. His shower curtain is decorative waterproof plastic. His suit contains chemical fibers that keep it looking better longer.Â
Jennifer Thomson, Historian: It's oftentimes argued that we have to expect some negative effects from the conveniences of modern life. We all bear some burden for the presence of toxic substances in our environment. But I would argue that only some people have choices about what gets produced. Only some people have choices about what gets regulated and for the most part, the remainder of society, and in particular, its poorest members, are oftentimes the Guineapigs for these substances.
TEXT ON SCREEN: AUGUST 1979. One year after the State's emergency declaration
Richard Newman, Historian: Summer of 1979 is a real tipping point for the Love Canal crisis. In the last year, there have been two state health declarations and one federal emergency declaration. But the majority of families are still living in Love Canal. And with remediation and the summer dust and the summer heat, the smells are worse than ever.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: We still have people very sick, some of them hospitalized and contaminated homes and nobody doing anything.
Keith O'Brien, Author: Residents reported that it was hard to even go outside. And Lois Gibbs used this as leverage. She argued that people couldn't live like this. And ultimately, state officials agreed to a short term fix. Governor Carey still remained opposed to any more evacuations, but anyone still trapped inside their homes, both homeowners and the residents of Griffon Manor, were given the opportunity to stay in local hotels.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Hotel manager: So you need accommodations for your family.Â
Keith O'Brien, Author: And suddenly across Niagara Falls, people were living almost like refugees in their own city.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Resident: Well we still have our neighbors. Resident: That's right.
Grace McCoulf, Resident: Basically that whole floor was Love Canal people.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Resident: That's your new house.Â
Grace McCoulf, Resident: We would get the kids to go to bed and then at eight o'clock we would sit in the hallway and talk. That was like our living room.
Keith O'Brien, Author: This was summer in Niagara Falls, which was still a very popular vacation destination. Hotel managers didn't want a bunch of Love Canal families in their hotel rooms, in their hallways, children everywhere. They became known at this point as the ‘Love Canal people’.
Barbara Quimby, Resident: One time a waitress comes to take our order and she said, ‘are you Love Canal or are you normal?’ And I just looked at her and said, ‘well, I'm both.'
Keith O'Brien, Author: The state was spending about $7500 a day to put up people in hotels in Niagara Falls for more than two months. At that rate, they could have bought a home in the neighborhood about every three days.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: As a result at the end of the year, I don't feel we're that much better off than we were at the beginning. We're still here. We still have people…
Keith O'Brien, Author: The residents at that point had been fighting for a year. At the time, if you would've asked them if they were winning, the answer would've been no. Many of them were still trapped in their homes. But effectively they were winning because with every single passing day they were keeping this story in the news. They were refusing to back down. They were fighting again and again. They kept showing up to meetings. The Love Canal mothers wouldn't go away.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: John LaFalce: I wonder if we could have your attention please.Â
TEXT ON SCREEN: MAY 1980. Nearly two years after the State’s emergency declaration
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: John LaFalce: Could we have your attention and your quiet. Reporter: For the more than 700 families left behind here at Love Canal, the nightmare took on new dimensions last Friday when the Environmental Protection Agency released a preliminary health study done on 36 residents.
Keith O'Brien, Author: The EPA commissions a new study to examine about three dozen residents of the neighborhood, and they want to study these people for chromosomal damage.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Charles Warren, EPA Official: Where the testing was undertaken as part of the process to gather evidence for the EPA and Department of Justice lawsuit against Hooker Chemical.
Charles Warren, Regional Administrator, EPA: EPA was going to sue Hooker. So the chromosome study was trying to get evidence. I was upset when I saw the results and then they said, well, you have to go up there and talk to them about this. And I did, but I knew it was very bad news and it was going to cause a panic.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Charles Warren: Dr. Picciano concluded that 11 of the 36 individuals examined exhibited significant chromosomal aberrations, which can be an early warning of future health problems, including cancer, birth defects, spontaneous abortions and other reproductive problems. However, I think we want to stress that the results need further confirmation and the data is now under intensive review. Resident: You could have had us out of there two years ago. The federal government has finally, after two years, come up to the high level thinking of housewives that they have constantly put down. We know what's going on. We did research too, and we want out of there. We want our kids out, today. Reporter: The study adds to fears that toxic chemicals, which surfaced at Love Canal three years ago, may be connected to a high number of miscarriages, birth defects and cancer. Barbara Quimby is one of those affected. Barbara Quimby: The people are just at their wits end. They just can't handle any more mentally, not when it comes down to your children. That's the worst. I think we can just about take anything ourselves, but when it's affecting your children, it's very hard to cope with. Reporter: Eight-year-old Brandy Quimby has several birth defects and she's mentally retarded, so her parents were not at all surprised to hear that each of them might well have chromosome damage.
Barbara Quimby, Resident: In a way, it was an answer because my husband and I didn't know what was wrong. But it was hard, ‘cause again, it's like, damn, you Hooker, did this to my child. I was only just 26. Hooker decided I'm not having any more children. They made the decision for me.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Resident: Well, we have got abnormalities in our chromosomes…
Richard Newman, Historian: The chromosome study is very controversial. Soon after it was released, the study was flagged and defined as flawed.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: On Thursday, State Health Commissioner David Axelrod said the EPA’s action in releasing it was irresponsible.
Stephen Lester, Toxicologist: It was just a pilot study to see if in fact, there was evidence. So that was criticized for not being a full fledged study. But in research the first thing to do is a pilot study. You don’t devote the resources to do a full fledged study without knowing what you have.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Officials keep stressing that the study was designed for evidence, not scientific results.
Barbara Davis Blum, Deputy Administrator, EPA: There was no control group. They took people who already had problems as part of the study.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Resident: My husband has two, they have a count of two and mine's five. So they said his is normal and mine isn’t.
Barbara Davis Blum, Deputy Administrator, EPA: So, it was certainly a flawed study, but there was no comforting anyone. It was the hardest thing that I did the entire time that I was EPA. God, I really felt for those people.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: Before this, were you planning to have more children? Resident: We were talking about it. Reporter: And now? Resident: I'd be afraid to bring another child into the world.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: People lost it around the chromosome study. That was a straw that broke the camel's back.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Residents: We want out, we want out, we want out, we want out…
Lois Gibbs, Resident: Suddenly, there were hundreds of people at the office outside. And they are angry. I mean, to the bone, angry.
Keith O'Brien, Author: Politicians and health officials have to scramble to handle this, and they send multiple people to Niagara Falls, including two EPA officials.
Marie Rice, Reporter: So the two EPA officials came there that day and they were going to speak to the residents who were gathering outside. But the crowd started getting a little bit bigger and it got a little bit hectic out there.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: Pass the word around. Nobody, we're not going to do anything violent. We're just going to keep 'em in the house. Nothing more than that. Body barricade the doors. Ok? And don't let 'em out. Residents: Good enough. No one else. No one’s coming out. Come on, guys! Sit! Lois Gibbs: If I was to let the two EPA representatives come out this door, does anybody know what would happen to ‘em?
Charles Warren, Regional Administrator, EPA: I talked to Lois Gibbs a number of times. She was saying, listen, there's an angry mob here. We think we should keep him here and protect ‘em. I said, okay, but let's not make it where it looks like a hostage situation. If you're trying to threaten us in some way, I don't think that's productive.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: And we are holding 'em hostage until the White House responds to the Love Canal situation in relocating these residents who are suffering. Well, John, if I was to send these two individuals out on that front porch, those residents would rip them apart, literally, physically. Reporter: Homeowners Association president Lois Gibbs spoke with Congressman John LaFalce in Washington to try to get some answers. LaFalce is set to meet with President Carter at this hour, at a dinner meeting at the White House. We should have more information tonight after that. Lois Gibbs: We have gotten more attention in half a day than we have in the two years period that we've been fighting to stop the suffering of Love Canal residents. And it's really, really sad when you have to go to this extreme to get any kind of attention from the White House, and that’s…
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: I stood by the back door ‘cause I was the big guy, and there were police everywhere. The crowd was building and they were getting more and more angry and the police were standing with their Billy clubs and with their hands on their guns, and it was a real scary situation.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: The FBI said, okay, Lois, here's the deal. They knew it was gonna blow up any minute and they said, we're going to come in and get them in five minutes.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: We have just talked to the White House.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: So I went out on the front steps and said, look guys, we made our point.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: I have told the White House, and this is upon your approval, that we will allow the two EPA representatives to leave. But if we do not have a disaster declaration Wednesday by noon, then what they have seen here today is just a Sesame Street picnic in comparison to what we will do. Love Canal residents are tired of being sensible, reasonable in dealing with these turkeys because they're not listening to us. We'll let these two representatives go but if we don't get something on Wednesday, White House better watch the hell out.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: So Wednesday at noon was our deadline. We didn't know what was going to happen Wednesday at noon. We had no plan.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Marie Rice: Within seconds, law enforcement officials determinedly pushed their way inside. A few minutes later, the two hostages were let out the side door.
Keith O'Brien, Author: Lois had created this sort of false deadline. She just made it up. And, you know, the White House didn't need to respond to that necessarily. But in internal memos back and forth between Jimmy Carter and his chief of staff, there is a sense that these people have suffered long enough.
TEXT ON SCREEN: WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 1980
Lois Gibbs, Resident: And so Wednesday precisely at noon, I got a chair outside of the Love Canal office ‘cause I knew everybody would be there. And took the rotary dial phone and called the White House, because they had a press release.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Lois Gibbs: You’re going to read it to me. If you can keep it real quiet, I'll be able to repeat it so you can hear it. “An emergency to permit the federal government and the State of New York to undertake…Reporter: Good evening. President Carter today declared an emergency exists in the Love Canal area of Niagara Falls. Reporter: And the Environmental Protection Agency promptly announced that 700 families still living there will be moved out. Reporter: In making the announcement, the EPA’s Barbara Blum said it comes in partly in response to growing pressure from those living in Love Canal. Barbara Blum: It was time to move those people out. The emotional climate up there was quite understandably high. Debbie Curry: Champagne, guys. Debbie Curry: Here’s to the homeowners and all our hard work.
Lois Gibbs, Resident: Essentially everyone who wanted to leave could leave and that was really a huge, huge step. You didn't have to prove you were sick, you didn't have to have a little baby, you didn't have to be pregnant. You know, you didn't have to have chromosome damage. You could just leave.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: One more question. How do you feel? Lois Gibbs: Very, very happy. Very happy. And all those people who've been trying to get out so long can finally get out and it just really makes me happy.
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: People have no idea what us women went through and the work that we did and the blood, sweat, and tears. But one time I was called a hero. I'll never forget that. Called me a hero and I never felt that. But I did what I had to do.
TEXT ON SCREEN: OCTOBER 1980, 26 months after first evacuation
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Jimmy Carter: There must never be in our country another Love Canal. There's really no way to make adequate restitution, but this agreement will at least give the families of the area the financial freedom to pack up and leave if they choose to do so.
Richard Newman, Historian: We don’t know what the impacts would have been if people were forced to stay another year, another five years, another ten years.Â
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Government Official: President Carter asked her to come to the stage– Lois Gibbs, who was responsible.
Richard Newman, Historian: If at any moment those women, anyone in that activist community, the homeowners, the renters, anyone who lived in Love Canal stopped, it would've been a very different and less successful movement. Love Canal changed the way that Americans thought about environmentalism fundamentally and forever. It wasn’t simply about pristine landscapes, about oceans, about forests, it was about our day to day living environment.Â
Bonnie Casper, Congressional Aide: It really opened up people's eyes as to what was going on, the direct impact on people. And what were we going to do as a society to help these people and then prevent this from happening.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: The Superfund bill was signed into law by President Carter today. It is one of the last legislative victories for the Carter administration.
Keith O'Brien, Author: In December 1980, Congress worked together to pass what is, definitively, one of the most sweeping legislative packages that they had ever passed.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Love Canal was the first of more than 1,200 Superfund sites identified by the EPA.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: That measure allots $1.6 billion for cleaning up toxic waste spills and dumps over the next five years.Â
Richard Newman, Historian: Hundreds and hundreds of sites have been identified, cleaned up, taken out of circulation as environmental hazards. And the value of that is immeasurable.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Reporter: But even with an additional $5 million tossed in from the State of New York, Love Canal residents are finding out they are not better off.Â
Richard Newman, Historian: One of the debates was always how much money would be allocated to homeowners and renters. And at the end, renters were still marginalized, and if anything, the last to leave.
Jannie Grant-Freeney, Resident: Later on, they did pay for people to be moved. But the problem was finding somewhere to move to.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Phil Donahue: You rent your home. You're out now, aren't you? Resident: No, I'm not out. Phil Donahue: Why don't you get out? Resident: Where am I going to go Phil? Phil Donahue: When you say renters, what do you mean? Resident: We live right across the fence from the homeowners. We live about 250 feet from them.
Carol Jones, Resident: By the time we moved out, um, I think my mother had pretty much given up. My mom moved us back to the old neighborhood. We went about a mile down the road from Hooker, right back to where we grew up. Right back to the chemicals.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Health studies over the next three decades revealed Love Canal residents had more than double the birth defect rate, but no higher incidence of cancer than elsewhere in the county. In 1983, the EPA repeated the chromosome study and found no higher incidence of damage than elsewhere in Niagara Falls.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Oliver Koppell, New York Attorney General: We found that Hooker Chemical was clearly and specifically negligent. There are a number of proceedings which remain to determine exactly how much Hooker will pay to the state and other injured by the negligent handling of waste and the transfer of property…
TEXT ON SCREEN: Hooker's parent company ultimately paid $250 million to reimburse New York State and the federal government for cleanup and evacuation costs at Love Canal. Nearly $27 million of those funds went directly to the residents of Love Canal.
Debbie Cerrillo Curry, Resident: I got some money. It helped us buy a new home. My children, they each got a sum of money. But that sure don't pay for the pain and suffering I've had through the years. Yeah, sometimes it still hurts. I lost a marriage over it.
Luella Kenny, Resident: I mean, you could give me all the money in the whole world. It's not going to bring Jon back to me. That's all I would care about.
Jannie Grant-Freeney, Resident: Who can compensate you for your child dying, your mother dying, your dad dying, your sister, your brother?
Barbara Quimby, Resident: I don't think we got full justice, no. I'd want them to stand right there and say ‘we're guilty’. That's what I would've liked to have seen.
Luella Kenny, Resident: Hooker still will not admit they're wrong. The city of Niagara Falls will still not admit it's wrong. That's not justice. To have justice, the truth should be told.
ARCHIVAL VIDEO: Governor Carey: We begin today, what we might call the next and best chapter of this very sad story, the Saga of Love Canal. The people will see inside the fence where the homes have now been boarded up. Those homes will be removed, the area will be landscaped, contoured to be attractive, to be safe, to be secure. Reporter: Do you think someone would actually want to come back? A new family would want to come into that area? Governor Carey: That's the question, yes. And I do believe that we can make the area attractive again. I'm sure the mayor doesn't want to regard this as an area that's going to stay blighted and stand as a monument to decay. No, it can't be that.
Richard Newman, Historian: If you go to the Love Canal site today, you will not see the words Love Canal anywhere. There's no signage anywhere that says ‘the world's most famous environmental disaster occurred here’. But what you will see is a huge chain link fence. You will see a huge area of land inside the fenced-in zone that is off limits. You might not know there are nearly 22,000 tons of hazardous waste still underneath the ground.
TEXT ON SCREEN: In 1988, New York State determined that homes on the west and north sides of Love Canal were safe to reinhabit and could be put up for sale.
Luella Kenny, Resident: I was just, just mortified. One day I see a pregnant woman with her toddler, two of the most vulnerable people in the world, right next to 20,000 tons of chemicals. Why would the city build a playground right next to a toxic waste dump?
Barbara Quimby, Resident: And I just think, didn't we get the word out enough? What didn't we do that we couldn’t have, you know, prevented that?
TEXT ON SCREEN: Love Canal was removed from the Superfund program’s National Priorities List in 2004, though the EPA continues to monitor the air and water. More than 260 homes in the former Love Canal neighborhood have been re-sold to a new generation of families.
TEXT ON SCREEN: In memory of Barbara Quimby, 1951-2023
