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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. So I'm Josh, and

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Speaker 2: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff

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Speaker 2: you should know. The I can't believe this happened, but

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Speaker 2: I can totally believe it.

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Speaker 1: Addition, Oh, I thought it was the Romantic Cruise in

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Speaker 1: the Gondola edition.

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Speaker 2: I know you'd think so. By the name of it,

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Speaker 2: Love Canal.

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Speaker 1: Love Canal sounds so wonderful.

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Speaker 2: For sure, it does. The love can No love canal

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Speaker 2: we're talking about today is not wonderful or nice at all.

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Speaker 2: Even before it was filled with toxic waste, it was

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Speaker 2: not so great to begin with.

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Speaker 1: Spoiler, Yeah, love.

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Speaker 2: Canals filled in toxic waste. As we'll see, Love Canal

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Speaker 2: was an incident in American history where America came to

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Speaker 2: grips with the idea that all the toxic waste it

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Speaker 2: had been burying for the last century, essentially, yeah, was

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Speaker 2: starting to intrude into the ground, and that there was

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Speaker 2: way more than just water pollution or air pollution. There

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Speaker 2: was such a thing as ground pollution, and all of

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Speaker 2: a sudden, all the toxic waste sites around the United

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Speaker 2: States suddenly seemed like ticking time bombs thanks to one

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Speaker 2: that actually went off.

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Speaker 1: That's right, and supplementary material are do we do one

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Speaker 1: in super funds? I know we did one on brownfield remediation.

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Speaker 2: That's the closest I think we came.

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Speaker 1: Okay, that was an old one though, But you know,

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Speaker 1: if you're into that kind of thing, or maybe landfills too.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're a remediation fan, check it out.

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Speaker 1: But for this one, we should go back in time, correct, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: let's go.

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Speaker 2: Back all the way back to the eighteen nineties. We're

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Speaker 2: gonna head on up north to Niagara Falls, New York.

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Speaker 2: Not just the falls, but the city. There's a city

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Speaker 2: called Niagara Falls, and it is where where you would

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Speaker 2: stay if you were honeymooning in Niagara Falls, which is

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Speaker 2: something that people did for a very long time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we also did one on going over Niagara Falls

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Speaker 1: and a barrel.

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Speaker 2: Totally did that. Feels like you're a fan of barrels,

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Speaker 2: check it out.

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Speaker 1: That feels like one of those that had to be

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Speaker 1: like an early fifteen minute episode.

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Speaker 2: Oh I really think it was like on par with

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Speaker 2: more like five.

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Speaker 1: Okay, it was a long long time ago. Yeah, So

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Speaker 1: eighteen nineties. We are in Niagara. We look to our

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Speaker 1: right and we see a gentleman named William T. Love.

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Speaker 1: He says hello, he says hi. There. He's very excited

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Speaker 1: because he said, I've got an idea for you guys.

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Speaker 1: Niagara Falls is doing pretty great. Here's powering a bunch

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Speaker 1: of there's a bunch of industrial mills around. But I

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Speaker 1: have a vision that we can make this better. We

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Speaker 1: can build a model city if we just divert part

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Speaker 1: of this Niagara River over there on Lewiston Ridge. And

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Speaker 1: then he pointed that away whichever way that was sure,

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Speaker 1: and he said, we can double our hydro electric output

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Speaker 1: if we do that. It's just four miles down river,

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Speaker 1: and we can build this amazing neighborhood that has electricity

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Speaker 1: and telephone lines and anything you would want. And like

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Speaker 1: I said, we'll call it model city. And all you

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Speaker 1: got to do is let me build Love Canal. You

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Speaker 1: don't have to name it dat, right, but it'll be

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Speaker 1: seven miles long, eighty feet wide, and fifteen feet deep

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Speaker 1: and that's all we need to do.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So he wanted to set up a new fall.

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Speaker 2: He wanted to create a man made or human made

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Speaker 2: waterfall to generate hydro electric power which would power this

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Speaker 2: amazing town that he was building. I mean, because that

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Speaker 2: was quite a draw electricity, telephones, gas lines, sewer lines

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Speaker 2: in the eighteen nineties, like he would have gotten free takers,

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Speaker 2: and he got some investors for sure. And also, in

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Speaker 2: what would become a long standing tradition, the city of

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Speaker 2: Niagara Falls gave this random person carte Blanc to exercise

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Speaker 2: eminent domain and take people's land to carve a canal

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Speaker 2: from the Niagara River to a different part, to divert

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Speaker 2: some of it, to just do some really serious stuff.

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Speaker 2: And he's he got a lot of people interested. But

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Speaker 2: two things happened that killed the model city plan of

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Speaker 2: William T. Love. First, the Panic of eighteen ninety three.

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Speaker 2: It was a huge economic meltdown in the eighteen nineties,

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Speaker 2: scared a lot of investors. They wanted sure things from

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Speaker 2: that point on. And then the second thing was Nikola

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Speaker 2: Tesla's He came up with the method of long distance

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Speaker 2: electrical transmission. The whole reason William T. Love wanted to

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Speaker 2: build this electro hydroelectro plant is because you needed close

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Speaker 2: by electrical generation to power stuff. Tesla said, you don't

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Speaker 2: need that anymore. So at that point, William T. Love

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Speaker 2: just threw up his hands and moved to I think,

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Speaker 2: on some rural part of Ontario.

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Speaker 1: He went north. Yeah, very interesting. Seems like he goes

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Speaker 1: south after that.

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Speaker 2: You would think so, but he didn't. He went north

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Speaker 2: and it was like, I can't remember. It was like

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Speaker 2: the name of the town was rats something. It was

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Speaker 2: not a pleasant place to be. But he left behind

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Speaker 2: a legacy of sorts, didn't he he did.

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Speaker 1: He left behind you know, they got started on the

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Speaker 1: dam or I'm sorry, on the canal because I think

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Speaker 1: damn when I think hydro electricity. Look at me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: not seven miles, but one mile of this thing had

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Speaker 1: been dug and so it's there. It's you know, I

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Speaker 1: don't know if it was the full eighty feet wide

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Speaker 1: and fifteen feet deep and a mile long, but it

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Speaker 1: was a huge, dug up swath of earth. And so

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Speaker 1: the city is like, all right, well, now we got

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Speaker 1: this here, I guess. You know, kids are swimming in

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Speaker 1: it in the summer and they're skating on it in

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Speaker 1: the other ten months out of the year. And in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties a company came along the Hooker Electrochemical Company,

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Speaker 1: which made industrial chemicals and plastics and pesticides and all

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Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. And they said, I would like to

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Speaker 1: buy that land because we would like to or we

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Speaker 1: would like to buy that land because we would like

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Speaker 1: to do what everyone else does when they have toxic waste,

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Speaker 1: and that's bury it and steal drums. And that's a

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Speaker 1: You've already dug the hole for us, so exactly, you

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Speaker 1: did a lot of the work up front, and we'd

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Speaker 1: like to buy it so we can stick our drums

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Speaker 1: in there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, William T. Love inadvertently dug out a trash pit. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: that the Hooker Company was like, heck, yeah, I looked

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Speaker 2: up the dimensions. I think it was something like three

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Speaker 2: thousand feet by ten feet deep by I think twenty

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Speaker 2: or something feet across, so it covered like sixteen acres essentially,

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Speaker 2: and that's a lot. You can fit a lot of

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Speaker 2: waste in a ten foot deep pit. Yeah, that's sixteen

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Speaker 2: acres total surface area. And they did. They ended up

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Speaker 2: so because they the Hooker Company, didn't make the products

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Speaker 2: that kill us. They made the ingredients that people put

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Speaker 2: into the products that kill us. So like they actually

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Speaker 2: created the dioxins and the PCBs and stuff that plastic

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Speaker 2: manufacturers and pesticide makers used in their products. So the

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Speaker 2: stuff they were throwing away as waste was as deadly

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Speaker 2: as it gets, essentially like just the most toxic of

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Speaker 2: toxic waste. But at the time people didn't realize that.

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Speaker 2: They knew you didn't want to be around it or

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Speaker 2: get it on your skin or breathe it in, but

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Speaker 2: they did not realize the extent of toxicity of some

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Speaker 2: of these things.

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Speaker 1: No, not at all. And they ended up over a

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Speaker 1: nine year period bearing close to twenty two thousand tons

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Speaker 1: of this stuff in the Love canal, and like you said,

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Speaker 1: every toxic compound and dioxin and carcinogen you can think

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Speaker 1: of practically as in there. And like you were mentioning,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't you know, it wasn't like it is today. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: first of all, the fact that you could do that

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Speaker 1: at all, but the way they did it, you know,

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Speaker 1: if the lid popped off after it was in there,

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Speaker 1: they didn't send someone down there to seal that lid.

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Speaker 1: If one of the drums got cracked or something, they

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Speaker 1: didn't say, oh, well, let's get down there and get

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Speaker 1: that drum out of here and repair it or put

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Speaker 1: the waist in a new drum. They were just like,

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Speaker 1: it's probably fine. They're hosing their hands and clothes off

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Speaker 1: with the hoses of nearby neighbors, and all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: you know, problems start happening kind of right away. You know,

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Speaker 1: groundwater is rising, some of these drums are rusting, and

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Speaker 1: stuff starts leaching pretty quickly. So they said, all right,

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Speaker 1: we've filled this thing about as full as we can

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Speaker 1: full it. Not just them, but I think like all

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Speaker 1: like local the City of Niagara was dumping stuff in there,

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Speaker 1: and like all kinds of people were dumping stuff, right.

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Speaker 2: The Army dumped a bunch of stuff as well. It

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Speaker 2: was not just hooker, but they were far and away

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Speaker 2: the largest contributor to the toxic weights pit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So this thing gets full, they said,

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Speaker 1: all right, we got a sixteen acre landfill. Basically, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna cap it with some clay shovel about a foot

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Speaker 1: and a half atop soil on it and call it

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Speaker 1: a day. And here's what we'll do, City of Niagara.

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Speaker 1: We would like to sell it back to you just

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Speaker 1: for a dollar.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the City of Niagara Falls, like Hookers is the

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Speaker 2: biggest employer there, right, So this seemed like a real,

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Speaker 2: like a benefactor type situation, like this company that that

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Speaker 2: was like caring for the community by employing all these people,

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Speaker 2: was also showing it cared for the community by basically

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Speaker 2: donating a decent sized chunk of land for the town

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Speaker 2: to build a new elementary school. And that's what the

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Speaker 2: town did with it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it is in.

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Speaker 2: A certain ghoulish way, for sure. It's a laugh of irony,

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Speaker 2: not right exactly, So that's exactly what they did. The

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Speaker 2: City of Niagara Falls paid one dollar to Hooker, a

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Speaker 2: chemical company, and it took possession of this the swath

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Speaker 2: of land that contained this toxic waste pit, and gave

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Speaker 2: it to the Board of Education and said build a school.

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Speaker 2: And you might think that that is madness and that's nuts,

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Speaker 2: and that probably the Hooker company was trying to keep

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Speaker 2: all this underwrap, and apparently that is not the case. Hooker.

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Speaker 2: Even in the deed you can read the deed where

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Speaker 2: they transferred ownership of land to the city, it says like, hey,

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Speaker 2: there's waist down there and you don't want to touch it,

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Speaker 2: but you guys are taking possession of this stuff and

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Speaker 2: it's now your responsibility. So they weren't like trying to

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Speaker 2: pass off something that they knew was like a ticking

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Speaker 2: time bomb from everything I can tell. Instead, they were like,

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Speaker 2: we can't use this anymore. You guys should use it.

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Speaker 2: Just don't build anything with a basement nearby.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they did say we're not liable for

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Speaker 1: anything like that was definitely in the agreement. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: they also like they literally brought members of the school

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Speaker 1: board out there and they dug holes, I think like

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Speaker 1: eight holes in the ground and said, look, this stuff

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Speaker 1: is four feet down. You can see these these barrels,

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Speaker 1: no basements, Like, don't do any underground piping, don't subdivide

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Speaker 1: it for homes, like you should not do that stuff.

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Speaker 1: But apparently the school board was broke they did it anyway,

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Speaker 1: So you know, the blood is on the hands of

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Speaker 1: the school board as well as the city and the

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Speaker 1: Hooker Chemical Company.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those things where like when

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Speaker 2: you read the histories of it in retrospect, like there's

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Speaker 2: clear heroes, there's clear villains, there is clear you know,

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Speaker 2: indifference that's just criminal, and all of that is true.

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Speaker 2: It does exist, but it's definitely more nuanced than that.

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Speaker 2: It's not nearly as clear cut as you know you

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Speaker 2: might read in a single article about Love Canal. And

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Speaker 2: that's part of it. Hooker takes a lot of the blame,

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Speaker 2: and part of it is definitely fairly, and part of

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Speaker 2: it is not at all fairly, for sure. But the

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Speaker 2: one group that seems to have really been just basically

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Speaker 2: the pits from any angle I can find is the

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Speaker 2: city of Niagara Falls. The managers who the mayor, the

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Speaker 2: city council. They just were not good. They were not

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Speaker 2: in any kind of position to take on what was

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Speaker 2: about to happen in the neighborhood that was now called

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Speaker 2: Love Canal that had build up around the school.

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Speaker 1: I think that's a good spot for a break, Sure

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Speaker 1: it is. I mean it's kind of early, but I

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Speaker 1: mean that's as good as a Niagara Falls style cliffhangers

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Speaker 1: you can get. Right, people are hanging off of Lewiston Ridge.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, their barrels are just dangling from their toes.

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Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back then and tell you

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Speaker 1: what started happening pretty quickly after this. All right, So

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Speaker 1: we mentioned elementary school. What better to do on a

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Speaker 1: chemical waste stump there in Springfield than to build the

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Speaker 1: ninety ninth Street school. The school, if you look at

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Speaker 1: a map, was built right in the center of where

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Speaker 1: this landfill was.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, even just taking the toxic waste out of account,

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Speaker 2: the stability of the ground, it's like scary just looking

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Speaker 2: at like a hokey map of it.

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Speaker 1: No, totally, I didn't even think about that, like foundationally,

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Speaker 1: it probably wasn't that you know, firm, you know.

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Speaker 2: No.

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Speaker 1: So they completed the school in nineteen fifty five. Even

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Speaker 1: though they said, hey, don't subdivide this for homes, They're like,

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Speaker 1: are you kidding me? People want to live near the school.

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Speaker 1: So the neighborhood that was known as Love Canal had

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Speaker 1: about eight hundred houses and about two hundred and forty apartments,

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Speaker 1: and right away I think this was all completed. The

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Speaker 1: school in fifty five. It's starting and like two or

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Speaker 1: three years later problems started happening. People were coming down

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Speaker 1: with physical symptoms that were horror.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I think nineteen fifty eight some kids were taken

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Speaker 2: to the hospital for treatment of chemical burns. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 2: just a few years of the school opening. The following year,

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Speaker 2: a family called the Vorhis found that there was black

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Speaker 2: sludge seeping through their basement walls.

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Speaker 1: Took a horror movie.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's literally part of Amityville

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Speaker 2: Horror at the end, isn't there like black seeping through

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Speaker 2: the walls?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think there's more than one movie

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Speaker 1: that does the old black sledge trick.

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Speaker 2: Well, this is where they got it was from the

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Speaker 2: families of Love Canal in the late fifties. There's another

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Speaker 2: thing I turned up. There were the kids in the

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Speaker 2: area loved to play with fire rocks that they found.

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Speaker 2: There was a kind of rock they found that if

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Speaker 2: you threw it in another rock or threw it at

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Speaker 2: a hard surface, sometimes they would explode catch fire. One

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Speaker 2: kid puts some of these fire rocks in his pockets

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Speaker 2: and ran home, and the friction caused the fire rocks

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Speaker 2: to catch fire and burn the kid quite badly, And

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Speaker 2: so of course people started to investigating. They're like those

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Speaker 2: chunks of white phosphorus and it should probably stop playing

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Speaker 2: with that.

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Speaker 1: It was like that, Yeah, yeah, totally. The fire chief sent,

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Speaker 1: I believe, a report to the city manager of what

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Speaker 1: he said were obnoxious odors. Of course, we can apply

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Speaker 1: the sick rit scriptum because he meant noxious.

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Speaker 2: Sure, he also said it was irritating to the lungs

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Speaker 2: and we should probably do something about this. And that

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Speaker 2: was sixty four.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and then all of a sudden, babies start being

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Speaker 1: born that have disfigurements, that have disabilities, deafness. This one

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Speaker 1: baby in the Schroeder family was born with a second

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Speaker 1: row of teeth, among other things. Really alarming stuff. So

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Speaker 1: flash forward, that's nineteen sixty eight. By the nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: people are just living there. It looks like a regular suburban,

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Speaker 1: you know, northeastern suburban neighborhood. Some of the residents may

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Speaker 1: have known about this that were in the know, but

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Speaker 1: probably not many of them. There was a lot of

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Speaker 1: series of winters in a row with like tons of rainfall,

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Speaker 1: tons of snow, tons of lakes freezing, and this all

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Speaker 1: just melts into that groundwater system and carries the stuff

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Speaker 1: even further through the groundwater system, and the canal itself

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Speaker 1: became so saturated that like these some of these barrels

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Speaker 1: started like rising up through the surface of the earth.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and all the ones that were already open and

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Speaker 2: had been leaking over the years were now really spilling

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Speaker 2: their contents, and that stuff was being pushed up and

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Speaker 2: out of the relative safety of the canal the pit.

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Speaker 2: You know, now it wasn't even being held by the

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Speaker 2: canal any longer. It was like in the ground. This

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Speaker 2: was in people's backyards. There was a there was a

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Speaker 2: ball field nearby that I saw that. It swelled and

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Speaker 2: contracted like a bowl of gelatine whenever, whenever heavy equipment

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Speaker 2: drove a because it was so saturated and just ready

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Speaker 2: to pop. This is a baseball field. A pool popped

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Speaker 2: out of the ground and was floating on toxic chemicals.

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Speaker 2: Like pools of toxic sludge were starting to appear in

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Speaker 2: people's backyards because the ground was so saturated and there

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Speaker 2: was some really toxic stuff in the ground. So you

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Speaker 2: put those things together. All of a sudden, people's backyards

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Speaker 2: are toxic waste sites. And some, like you said, some

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Speaker 2: had no idea that that was there.

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Speaker 1: By the seventies, yeah, absolutely, you know, all men are

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Speaker 1: Wildlife of course is dying. Trees are dying, landscaping is dying.

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Speaker 1: Back people are losing their hair, pets are losing their hair.

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Speaker 1: All of a sudden, there's you know, breathing problems, there's numbing,

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Speaker 1: there's fatigue, there's blood in people's stools, and eventually, in

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, Niagara Gazette publishes the very first article

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Speaker 1: that says, Hey, this nightmare that's happening all around us,

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Speaker 1: by the way, has a reason behind it. And it's

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Speaker 1: because the love canal and Hooker chemical got together and

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Speaker 1: it's a toxic waste dump basically. Yeah, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of these residents are like for the very first time,

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Speaker 1: learning what's going on and probably going, oh, my god,

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Speaker 1: you know, so much of my life makes sense now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, those fifty five gallon drums that were popping out

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Speaker 2: of the creek beds makes sense now. I understand it now.

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Speaker 2: But I mean it was so I think even the

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Speaker 2: people who were used to had grown up throwing fire

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Speaker 2: rocks at one another, and we're like used to the

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Speaker 2: idea that there's some weird stuff around. Maybe even knew

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Speaker 2: there was a dump site nearby. Yeah, this was now

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Speaker 2: in their backyard thanks to the blizzard of seventy seven

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Speaker 2: that dumped so much snow on that eventually trickled in

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Speaker 2: and then saturated the ground. It brought it into the sunlight,

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Speaker 2: and now there was just no denying it whatsoever. And

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Speaker 2: then the Niagara Gazette, like you said, brought it further

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Speaker 2: into the sunlight. So it was such an obvious problem

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Speaker 2: out of the gate that the City of Niagara hired

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Speaker 2: the Cowspan Corporation. They do all sorts of like freelance

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Speaker 2: testing and stuff, and they investigated. They went to some

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Speaker 2: of the basements that were emitting black sludge and checked

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Speaker 2: the sump pumps, and they did some air testing, and

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Speaker 2: they checked the sewer lines. And as the data started

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Speaker 2: to roll in while they were doing this testing, there

356
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Speaker 2: was a really dramatic moment where all of the Cowspan

357
00:19:29,440 --> 00:19:31,720
Speaker 2: people got in their cars and sped away as fast

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Speaker 2: as they could.

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Speaker 1: In the movie, that's exactly what would happen. And then

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Speaker 1: they just like they throw a file out the window

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Speaker 1: and it slides to the feet of the mayor, and

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Speaker 1: in that file is the data which basically says Displace

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Speaker 1: is a disaster. The levels of toxic compounds is truly horrifying.

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Speaker 1: We're out of here. But nothing happened. They didn't disclose

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Speaker 1: the report, the findings from that report. The City of

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Speaker 1: Nagar didn't, so the drumbeat keeps happening from the Nagregazette

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Speaker 1: over the course of seventy seven seventy eight, they're still

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Speaker 1: doing these reports. No one is still doing anything because,

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Speaker 1: like you mentioned at the beginning, Hooker Chemical is still there.

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Speaker 1: There's still a huge employer for that town, and it's

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Speaker 1: a huge expense to clean this stuff up. So they

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Speaker 1: weren't eager to bring this like fully into the light

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Speaker 1: and say, all right, we got to do something about it.

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Speaker 2: No, So the city had I saw what was described

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Speaker 2: as an incestuous relationship with Hooker Chemical. There was a

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Speaker 2: time where Hooker was suspected of leaking waste elsewhere in

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Speaker 2: the city, and so they hired Hooker Chemical to go

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Speaker 2: take samples and analyze it to find out if they

379
00:20:48,040 --> 00:20:53,040
Speaker 2: were that kind of stuff. In addition to not wanting

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Speaker 2: to tick off Hooker, they were also really worried about

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Speaker 2: tourism because, like I said, like this is a time

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Speaker 2: where if you honeymooned, and you you know, were working

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00:21:03,600 --> 00:21:07,720
Speaker 2: class or middle class, you would you there's a good

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Speaker 2: chance you would travel to Niagara Falls and honeymoon there.

385
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Speaker 2: So tourism was a big part of their economy. We

386
00:21:13,640 --> 00:21:16,119
Speaker 2: didn't want to be like, come to Niagara Falls. We

387
00:21:16,160 --> 00:21:19,760
Speaker 2: got the falls and a toxic waste dump too. So

388
00:21:19,800 --> 00:21:21,560
Speaker 2: people are like, we need to keep this quiet. That

389
00:21:21,680 --> 00:21:23,719
Speaker 2: was the city's position. We need to keep this quiet,

390
00:21:23,840 --> 00:21:26,800
Speaker 2: we need to deny, we need to obfuskate. That was

391
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Speaker 2: the whole thing that they tried to do, and it

392
00:21:30,200 --> 00:21:35,520
Speaker 2: got as word got out, people started kind of castigating

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Speaker 2: the mayor in the city council. I saw that I

394
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Speaker 2: couldn't find the actual video, but I saw reference to

395
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Speaker 2: an episode of The Donahue Show, Phil Donahue, and he

396
00:21:45,440 --> 00:21:49,959
Speaker 2: had the mayor on Michael O'Laughlin and apparently Donahue compared

397
00:21:50,040 --> 00:21:52,800
Speaker 2: him to the mayor from Jaws only cared about keeping

398
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Speaker 2: the beaches open, which I thought was kind of apt.

399
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Speaker 1: I can hear and visualize Donahue doing that with his

400
00:22:01,160 --> 00:22:02,159
Speaker 1: righteous indignation.

401
00:22:02,480 --> 00:22:05,520
Speaker 2: I can imagine Phil Hartman doing Phil Donahue doing.

402
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Speaker 1: Man, God, what a loss. I think about Phil Hartman

403
00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:10,360
Speaker 1: about once a month.

404
00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:13,000
Speaker 2: I feel like, well, there you go, there's your monthly reminder.

405
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so sad, we should do a show on him

406
00:22:16,359 --> 00:22:16,800
Speaker 1: at some point.

407
00:22:17,040 --> 00:22:17,800
Speaker 2: It's a good idea.

408
00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:20,760
Speaker 1: That'd be kind of awesome. So they got a health

409
00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:24,640
Speaker 1: commissioner doctor Francis Clifford, and he came along and he said,

410
00:22:24,680 --> 00:22:29,000
Speaker 1: you're all hypochondriacs. This is just an odoriferous nuisance. Really,

411
00:22:29,560 --> 00:22:31,800
Speaker 1: it's like you're just smoking a few cigarettes or something.

412
00:22:32,080 --> 00:22:35,000
Speaker 1: It's really no big deal here. If you have a basement,

413
00:22:35,040 --> 00:22:41,120
Speaker 1: you've got sludge and stuff. Here's a window fan on us. Yeah,

414
00:22:41,160 --> 00:22:44,119
Speaker 1: and that that should take care of it than us later.

415
00:22:44,680 --> 00:22:47,600
Speaker 1: And all of this is happening and being buried. And

416
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Speaker 1: we mentioned promise of a hero, and in steps a

417
00:22:52,840 --> 00:22:57,080
Speaker 1: remarkable human being named Lois Gibbs who lived in the area,

418
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Speaker 1: who had a no for other than a high school education.

419
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Speaker 1: Was it stay at home mom? But she knew what

420
00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:07,360
Speaker 1: was The writing was on her wall in black sludge,

421
00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:09,679
Speaker 1: and she knew what was happening and went to the

422
00:23:09,680 --> 00:23:11,400
Speaker 1: school board and was like, I don't want my son

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Speaker 1: going to the school. Yeah, I want to pull him

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00:23:13,680 --> 00:23:16,160
Speaker 1: out of school. And they said no, no, no, no, no,

425
00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:19,320
Speaker 1: we can't do that because the word will get out,

426
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Speaker 1: everyone will freak and there won't be a school anymore.

427
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:26,960
Speaker 1: And she said, well, I am, I'm a mad mom

428
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Speaker 1: and I'm not going to take it. So even though

429
00:23:29,280 --> 00:23:33,360
Speaker 1: I have no history of activism or organizing or anything.

430
00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:35,399
Speaker 1: I'm going to start. I'm going to get some other

431
00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:38,200
Speaker 1: parents together. I'm going to start the Love Canal Parents Movement,

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Speaker 1: which would become the Love Canal Homeowners Association, and we're

433
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Speaker 1: going to wreak havoc on your head through the breast.

434
00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:48,240
Speaker 2: She said, close the beaches.

435
00:23:48,800 --> 00:23:50,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

436
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I think Lois kids. I want to say, like,

437
00:23:53,400 --> 00:23:56,520
Speaker 2: she's an example of what a person can do when

438
00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:01,120
Speaker 2: they're left without choices and being ignored by the people

439
00:24:01,119 --> 00:24:03,439
Speaker 2: who are supposed to be helping them. But there's a

440
00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:05,880
Speaker 2: lot of people who would have just probably given up.

441
00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:10,720
Speaker 2: So she is remarkable in that sense for sure. So

442
00:24:10,760 --> 00:24:14,520
Speaker 2: she headed the Love Canal Homeowners' Association for a couple

443
00:24:14,560 --> 00:24:17,600
Speaker 2: of years. This thing went on for so the Blizzard

444
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:21,159
Speaker 2: of seventy seven happened at the beginning of nineteen seventy seven.

445
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 2: Things really started to just kind of creep out in

446
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:29,679
Speaker 2: seventy six. This went on until nineteen eighty and the

447
00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:33,800
Speaker 2: homeowners Association had to fight every day, tooth and nail

448
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:37,479
Speaker 2: to get somebody to do something about this. And what

449
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:40,840
Speaker 2: they had to do first was to show that these

450
00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:49,280
Speaker 2: complaints of congenital disorders of weird cancers, rectal bleeding apparently

451
00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 2: more than one person had rectal bleeding. There, liver problems,

452
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:58,360
Speaker 2: kidney problems. That this wasn't just like some random assemblage

453
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:01,959
Speaker 2: of defective people want them put it like. This was

454
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:07,760
Speaker 2: they were being poisoned by the toxic materials that were

455
00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 2: flowing into their neighborhood from this overflowing toxic dump and

456
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:15,960
Speaker 2: the bureaucracy, the city government did everything it could to

457
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 2: say no, your hypochondriacs, just sit down and shut up.

458
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:24,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, until they couldn't it. Finally, because of the newspaper,

459
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:29,119
Speaker 1: because of Lois Gibbs and the homeowners Association raised so

460
00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 1: much hay, they finally said, all right, the state steps in.

461
00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:36,080
Speaker 1: The New York State Health Department launched an investigation in

462
00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:37,120
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight.

463
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:39,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, they stepped in and they said, City of Niagrit,

464
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:40,760
Speaker 2: we got this and winked at them.

465
00:25:40,880 --> 00:25:43,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So they did all kinds of testing to

466
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:47,160
Speaker 1: the soil, to the air, did health histories and blood

467
00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:50,800
Speaker 1: tests and stuff of the residents, and you know, the

468
00:25:50,840 --> 00:25:53,160
Speaker 1: results were what you were kind of talking about, these

469
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:58,400
Speaker 1: birth defects, the liver problems. I think the thirty five

470
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 1: percent of women had miscarriages, which is, you know, higher

471
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: than average. They say, you know, ten to twenty percent.

472
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:10,359
Speaker 1: Some say up to twenty five to thirty percent of

473
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:15,040
Speaker 1: pregnancies into miscarriages, but nothing goes as high as thirty five.

474
00:26:15,119 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 1: So that was a high number. And then finally, in

475
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:22,119
Speaker 1: August of seventy eight, the state Health Commissioner Robert Whalen.

476
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:23,960
Speaker 2: Robert Big Bob Whalen.

477
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:28,920
Speaker 1: Said, a health emergency is being declared. If you are pregnant,

478
00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 1: if you have kids under two, you should leave the area.

479
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 1: And this wasn't some you know, super upper class affluent area.

480
00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 1: They couldn't just pack up and leave. So they were mad.

481
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:43,840
Speaker 1: They were like, what do you expect us to do?

482
00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:44,159
Speaker 2: What?

483
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:45,040
Speaker 1: We live here?

484
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:47,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, these were people who were tied to this area

485
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:50,800
Speaker 2: by their mortgages. I saw the average income was between

486
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 2: ten and twenty five thousand dollars, which at the time

487
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 2: is like forty seven to one hundred and eighteen thousand today.

488
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 2: So it's like pretty squarely middle class, but not the

489
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:04,720
Speaker 2: kind they can just be like, Okay, I'm walking away

490
00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:07,240
Speaker 2: from my mortgage right, here's my house bank. I'm just

491
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:09,640
Speaker 2: going to go start life elsewhere. They couldn't do that.

492
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:13,199
Speaker 2: They were stuck there with these houses that it was

493
00:27:13,240 --> 00:27:17,480
Speaker 2: becoming increasingly clear no one would want, which was a

494
00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:20,560
Speaker 2: huge problem. They were facing a catch twenty two. Nobody

495
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:23,560
Speaker 2: was going to help them unless they got national attention

496
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 2: for this. But the more attention they got for it,

497
00:27:26,359 --> 00:27:29,359
Speaker 2: the more it was, the more they were sticking themselves

498
00:27:29,359 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 2: in this place until they got the help they needed,

499
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:34,120
Speaker 2: because no one was going to come along and buy

500
00:27:34,160 --> 00:27:37,359
Speaker 2: your house after a very short time when worried about

501
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:38,400
Speaker 2: Love Canal got out.

502
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:42,760
Speaker 1: That's right, But guess who did buy their house, Jimmy Carter.

503
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 1: It finally does become national news. The national TV networks

504
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 1: were all over it. They were doing reports from there.

505
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:55,000
Speaker 1: With all these protests happening, Jimmy Carter steps in. He

506
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: declares a federal state of emergency and said, here's ten

507
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,719
Speaker 1: million dollars we can relocate. We're going to buy up

508
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: your houses if you live within the first like the

509
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 1: first zone basically like that's closest to the canal.

510
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:13,240
Speaker 2: Chuck, I'm sorry, and I'm sorry, I'm behalf of everyone listening.

511
00:28:13,560 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 2: You're really not gonna do a Jimmy Carter impression offering

512
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 2: to buy these people's houses.

513
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:21,520
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I don't know if I've ever done Jimmy Carter,

514
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 1: I did. I was doing it when I was a kid.

515
00:28:24,080 --> 00:28:29,200
Speaker 2: You have I've heard you have. I.

516
00:28:29,240 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 1: Oh. Now I'm on the spot and I'm missing a tooth.

517
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:35,119
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, maybe he can come in later.

518
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: This will be the first time. Now it's that good stuff.

519
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:44,120
Speaker 1: It was the first time that federal emergency funds were

520
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 1: used in the United States and their history or our

521
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:51,560
Speaker 1: history for something other than a natural disaster. So it

522
00:28:51,600 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 1: was a big, big deal that they stepped in then,

523
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: along with the help of New York State, when Governor

524
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:00,760
Speaker 1: Carrey said, we're going to buy up two hundred and

525
00:29:00,800 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 1: thirty nine of these homes in the first couple of

526
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:05,760
Speaker 1: rings around this landfill. We're going to close that school.

527
00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 1: And also maybe don't eat those veggies or the herbs

528
00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: you've been growing in your backyard.

529
00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:13,480
Speaker 2: That was part of it. And also don't spend unnecessary

530
00:29:13,520 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 2: time in your basement. That was the other thing they said.

531
00:29:16,080 --> 00:29:19,400
Speaker 1: So all the teenage boys were just like, oh man, so.

532
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 2: That's that's pretty cool. First, the first two rings, so

533
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:29,120
Speaker 2: people whose backyards were on top of essentially the waist

534
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:32,840
Speaker 2: pit and then the people like maybe across the street

535
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 2: from them, like all the way around the Love Canal.

536
00:29:37,320 --> 00:29:39,400
Speaker 2: The US governor is like, we're going to buy your houses.

537
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 2: You can move now, you're fine. We're going to pay

538
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:43,280
Speaker 2: you fair market value for them. And the two hundred

539
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:45,400
Speaker 2: and thirty nine people were like yeah, okay, or two

540
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:47,000
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty nine families.

541
00:29:46,840 --> 00:29:50,560
Speaker 1: But still it was awful. I mean imagine being like, well,

542
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 1: all I got to leave my home now, Like sure,

543
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:55,840
Speaker 1: someone's buying my house, but I didn't want to leave. No,

544
00:29:56,120 --> 00:29:56,720
Speaker 1: I work here.

545
00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 2: That's definitely part of it. For sure, there had to

546
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 2: be like a pretty decent sense of relief though at

547
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:05,680
Speaker 2: least that was they weren't stuck anymore. But yeah, I'm

548
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:08,520
Speaker 2: sure they didn't want to leave their community, or at

549
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:11,480
Speaker 2: least some of them. But the problem was this. You

550
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:14,360
Speaker 2: said that there was about eight hundred houses and a

551
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 2: whole apartment building that was in this Love Canal neighborhood,

552
00:30:18,880 --> 00:30:22,239
Speaker 2: and the people who are there were like, Okay, you

553
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:25,959
Speaker 2: can't forget about us. We need help too. Like in

554
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:30,600
Speaker 2: addition to like no one wanting to buy our houses

555
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 2: because we're so close to the Love Canal dump, we're

556
00:30:34,520 --> 00:30:38,000
Speaker 2: still suffering all sorts of health maladies as well, and

557
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 2: so the city goes back to their playbook and they're like,

558
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:44,800
Speaker 2: there's no way you guys are actually suffering health maladies.

559
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 2: You're beyond the second ring of houses. You guys are fine,

560
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:52,080
Speaker 2: You're just hypochondriacs. And the whole thing started all over again.

561
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 2: And I think, luckily for all the people who lived

562
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 2: in Love Canal that were left out of the eight hundred,

563
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:02,880
Speaker 2: the fact that Lois Gibbs was among them, yeah, definitely

564
00:31:02,920 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 2: something mark in their favor for sure, because she was unstoppable.

565
00:31:07,720 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, she lived in that second zone, so she was

566
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 1: still there.

567
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:11,640
Speaker 2: So I say we take a break and then we

568
00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:13,960
Speaker 2: come back and talk a little more about what Lois did,

569
00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:17,440
Speaker 2: Lois Gibbs did, and who she got some help from.

570
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:19,840
Speaker 1: Hint, hint, she didn't quit.

571
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:52,000
Speaker 2: So chuck. Now we reached the point where Love Canal

572
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:57,560
Speaker 2: starts to really become national news because the federal government,

573
00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:00,200
Speaker 2: the state government, the local government, they're like, yeah, yeah,

574
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:02,480
Speaker 2: problem solved. We moved the people who needed to, we

575
00:32:02,960 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 2: demolished their homes. It's all good, essentially, and this whole

576
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 2: group that was left behind that still needed help, we're like, no,

577
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:14,720
Speaker 2: we're we're going to get louder than ever, essentially, and

578
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 2: a division grew in the community where in Love Canal

579
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:22,360
Speaker 2: they were viewed outside of the neighborhood and the rest

580
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 2: of the city as basically labmounts, rebbel rousers, people who

581
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:28,160
Speaker 2: were just out for like easy money from the federal

582
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 2: government and we're making up all these maladies at the

583
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:35,280
Speaker 2: expense of the tourism industry and ticking off hooker. They

584
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 2: threatened the well being of the rest of the town

585
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 2: just by you know, being labmouths. And it was a

586
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:44,480
Speaker 2: really seems like it would have been a really terrible

587
00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 2: time to live in Niagara Falls.

588
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:48,960
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure. And Lowe S. Gibbs is like, you

589
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 1: know what, I just bought one hundred bullhorns, that's right,

590
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:55,080
Speaker 1: And they went no, no, no, no.

591
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:57,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, And she was like, and I'm saving up for

592
00:32:57,680 --> 00:32:58,280
Speaker 2: the batteries.

593
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:06,760
Speaker 1: So the LHCA, headed by Lois Gibbs, brought in doctor

594
00:33:06,760 --> 00:33:10,440
Speaker 1: Beverly Pagan, scientists with the Health Department of New York.

595
00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:15,960
Speaker 1: They did their own door to door detailed questionnaire about

596
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 1: people's health. They analyzed the data, they found a lot

597
00:33:20,360 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 1: of the same problems, but what they really zeroed in

598
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 1: on were the fact that if you lived in what

599
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:26,880
Speaker 1: they called a wet home, which was if you lived

600
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:29,720
Speaker 1: near a creek or a swale or something, versus a

601
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 1: dry home that wasn't near a creek, then you were

602
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: much worse off. Twenty percent of the children born in

603
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:39,600
Speaker 1: wet homes had birth defects compared to six point eight

604
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:42,520
Speaker 1: percent in dry homes. The asthma rate was three and

605
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 1: a half times higher in wet homes. Suicide attempts were

606
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:49,880
Speaker 1: higher in wet zones. And this is when they were dismissed.

607
00:33:50,720 --> 00:33:53,240
Speaker 1: I believe some of the authorities said it was useless

608
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:58,840
Speaker 1: housewife data, which is a real bum in the eye

609
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:02,360
Speaker 1: of Lois Gibb in the LHCA and doctor Pagan.

610
00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:07,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, just two things. So for reference, twenty percent of

611
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:10,480
Speaker 2: children born in that area and the wet homes that

612
00:34:10,640 --> 00:34:15,879
Speaker 2: had congenital disorders compared to six point eight percent. Both

613
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:18,840
Speaker 2: of those were way above the national average for nineteen

614
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 2: seventy eight of two point eight percent, so almost a lot.

615
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:26,160
Speaker 2: That was a lot more. I was going to do

616
00:34:26,200 --> 00:34:27,759
Speaker 2: some math and I was like, don't do the math,

617
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:30,880
Speaker 2: so I stopped. But the other the other thing I

618
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 2: wanted to just call out, was doctor Pagan. She was

619
00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:38,120
Speaker 2: doing this on her own time as a volunteer. She

620
00:34:38,160 --> 00:34:42,160
Speaker 2: was volunteering her expertise as a cancer researcher to come

621
00:34:42,239 --> 00:34:44,480
Speaker 2: up with the survey to figure out like the actual

622
00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:46,880
Speaker 2: data to basically show that you didn't have to be

623
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:50,239
Speaker 2: living right on top of the dump to still be

624
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 2: suffering health effects. And she very cleverly figured out that

625
00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:57,759
Speaker 2: when they built the homes for the Love Canal neighborhood,

626
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 2: they covered up all sorts of old cre beds, old

627
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:05,520
Speaker 2: swales that were now underground, but with the ground being saturated,

628
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 2: they were providing their old historic functions of moving water

629
00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:13,399
Speaker 2: through the neighborhood. So a plume of toxicity formed that

630
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:17,799
Speaker 2: wasn't necessarily at the dump site any longer, it was

631
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:20,799
Speaker 2: moving out into these areas that came to be known

632
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:25,360
Speaker 2: as wet homes. And so she showed, now, these people

633
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:28,319
Speaker 2: are really suffering as many effects as some of the

634
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:31,040
Speaker 2: people whose houses were on top of the dump, and

635
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:34,279
Speaker 2: they still need help. And she risked her career doing

636
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 2: that because she was a New York State Health inspector

637
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 2: and her organization had already basically closed the book on it.

638
00:35:42,680 --> 00:35:44,319
Speaker 2: And she was saying, we need to open this back

639
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:47,320
Speaker 2: up because we were wrong, Like it's worse than we thought.

640
00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:53,000
Speaker 1: Right. So after two more years they finally get the

641
00:35:53,040 --> 00:35:56,279
Speaker 1: EPA down there, and this is, you know, two full

642
00:35:56,360 --> 00:36:01,360
Speaker 1: years of continued protesting. EPA comes in, They visit Love Canal,

643
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:04,719
Speaker 1: they do their own blood test and chromosome test and

644
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:07,520
Speaker 1: things like that, and it showed that there was you know,

645
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: what everyone else had shown. Basically, it wasn't useless housewife

646
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:14,920
Speaker 1: data or hypochondria. And they got mad. They got so

647
00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:19,640
Speaker 1: mad that they took a couple of EPA officials hostage.

648
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:22,759
Speaker 1: They said they're not going to release them until we're relocated.

649
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: Cooler heads prevailed. It only lasted about five hours. They

650
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 1: didn't arrest anybody, but it was it was a big deal,

651
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 1: brought a lot more attention to it. And in October

652
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:36,399
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty, just a few days after this hostage thing,

653
00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:40,359
Speaker 1: President Carter steps in again. It says, all right, here's

654
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 1: another twenty million dollars. New York is also going to

655
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 1: throw in twenty million dollars, and we're going to relocate everybody,

656
00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 1: seven hundred remaining homes, everyone but two families. There's always

657
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 1: a couple that are like now not leaving. They stayed there,

658
00:36:56,800 --> 00:37:01,279
Speaker 1: but everyone else was relocated. In Congress passed the Comprehensive

659
00:37:01,400 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 1: Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act CIRCLA terrible, right, not great? Yeah,

660
00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:11,880
Speaker 1: that was in nineteen eighty They call it the Super

661
00:37:11,920 --> 00:37:14,560
Speaker 1: Fun Law, and that established a trust fund with the

662
00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: EPA to clean up waste sites in the future and

663
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: establish a national priorities list, a superfund list in nineteen

664
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:23,640
Speaker 1: eighty three that Love Canal was put squarely on.

665
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:26,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then a decade or so later was used

666
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 2: to clean up David Hans's mom's potting shed.

667
00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:30,719
Speaker 1: Yeah.

668
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 2: So that Super Fun Law. It came out days after,

669
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:41,160
Speaker 2: no months after the hostage standoff, right, And I was like, okay,

670
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:44,680
Speaker 2: that's pretty quick that, you know, there's surely this thing

671
00:37:44,719 --> 00:37:46,759
Speaker 2: had been kicking around Congress for a while and now

672
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:49,120
Speaker 2: there was just an opportunity to push it through. Apparently

673
00:37:49,120 --> 00:37:52,960
Speaker 2: that's not true. That law that created the superfund was

674
00:37:53,160 --> 00:37:56,799
Speaker 2: essentially created in response to Love Canal and the protests

675
00:37:56,840 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 2: that the Love Canal Homeowners Association were staging. They created

676
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:05,560
Speaker 2: this super fund. It like people didn't understand that toxic

677
00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 2: waste could pollute the ground before this, and now all

678
00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:12,080
Speaker 2: of a sudden, the federal government has a comprehensive response

679
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:16,799
Speaker 2: plan designed within months. Essentially that gives the EPA a

680
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:20,880
Speaker 2: right to basically tax petroleum makers and plastic makers and

681
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 2: all that and put it into this trust fund to

682
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:25,840
Speaker 2: help clean up sits in the future.

683
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:28,160
Speaker 1: Amazing, It is amazing.

684
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:32,040
Speaker 2: It's you know, federal government at its finest. It's not

685
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:35,000
Speaker 2: always great. I will be the well, probably not the

686
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:37,279
Speaker 2: first to say it, but I will say it, but

687
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:39,239
Speaker 2: this is an example of it doing right.

688
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:43,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. So. The remediation took a long time. It

689
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:45,719
Speaker 1: took a couple of decades, cost about three hundred and

690
00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 1: fifty million bucks. They flattened all those homes, of course,

691
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:53,319
Speaker 1: they did it. They sealed the landfill of the correct way,

692
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:57,160
Speaker 1: which is with a three foot cap of clay water,

693
00:38:57,320 --> 00:39:02,239
Speaker 1: impermeable plastic, more top soil. They started diverting the groundwater

694
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:07,160
Speaker 1: to a facility that treats it. They treat about five

695
00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:09,319
Speaker 1: million gallons of water a year. And they have about

696
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:13,000
Speaker 1: one hundred monitoring wells all over the site that collect data,

697
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:17,600
Speaker 1: you know, at all times to detect any chemical leakage

698
00:39:17,640 --> 00:39:20,480
Speaker 1: that might be happening if you're wondering about hook or

699
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:23,319
Speaker 1: chemical if they were on the hook for any of this. Yes,

700
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 1: they eventually were. They were sued by the EPA themselves

701
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:30,560
Speaker 1: in seventy nine. They settled in the nineteen nineties and

702
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:34,040
Speaker 1: ended up between the federal government and New York State

703
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 1: repaying them about two hundred and twenty seven million dollars. Yeah,

704
00:39:38,560 --> 00:39:42,400
Speaker 1: which is kind of did not have to admit fault, No.

705
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:44,920
Speaker 2: No way, And you can make a kind of a

706
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:49,520
Speaker 2: case that they didn't need to admit fault. You know, well,

707
00:39:49,560 --> 00:39:50,640
Speaker 2: I think enough about it.

708
00:39:50,920 --> 00:39:53,960
Speaker 1: I think that means that insulates them from more lawsuits.

709
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:55,839
Speaker 2: Sure, no, absolutely, I don't think it was just based

710
00:39:55,880 --> 00:39:58,640
Speaker 2: on principles or anything like that. Yeah, but that's kind

711
00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:00,920
Speaker 2: of par for the course with super fun stuff where

712
00:40:01,640 --> 00:40:05,000
Speaker 2: the government says, Okay, we're going to pay for cleanup,

713
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:07,799
Speaker 2: and then they go after the people who were responsible

714
00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:09,760
Speaker 2: for the waste in the first place and then sue

715
00:40:09,760 --> 00:40:11,919
Speaker 2: them and then over the course of a decade or two,

716
00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:14,960
Speaker 2: finally get some fraction of the amount of the cleanup costs.

717
00:40:15,320 --> 00:40:17,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, they fret the cost essentially.

718
00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:22,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, So love Canal neighborhoods still around today they call

719
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:27,440
Speaker 2: it Black Creek. And you said the houses and Rings

720
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:31,320
Speaker 2: one and two were demolished, they were actually pushed into

721
00:40:31,480 --> 00:40:36,040
Speaker 2: the pit or the waste was and then covered over.

722
00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 2: So the houses are down there, the parts of them,

723
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:43,280
Speaker 2: and they rehabbed and updated the houses that were left over,

724
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:46,680
Speaker 2: and after the EPA said Okay, we've cleaned this place

725
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:51,239
Speaker 2: up enough, you guys can move back in, the neighborhood

726
00:40:51,320 --> 00:40:54,640
Speaker 2: just got life breathed back into it again. And weirdly,

727
00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:58,279
Speaker 2: just like with as new people moved in and the

728
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:00,840
Speaker 2: Love Canal neighborhood starting in the fifth ties and sixties,

729
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:04,439
Speaker 2: not all of them were told that they were living

730
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:07,799
Speaker 2: on a toxic waste stump and that a lot of

731
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 2: the information was lost for people. The same thing happened

732
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:12,880
Speaker 2: the second go around. There was a New York Times

733
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:15,120
Speaker 2: article that found like, there's people living there that have

734
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:17,439
Speaker 2: no idea the history of this place, and that there's

735
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:19,919
Speaker 2: still a toxic waste dump down there. Because that's something

736
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:22,880
Speaker 2: worth pointing out, Chuck. They didn't remove the toxic waste,

737
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:25,080
Speaker 2: They just covered it up better, oh yeah than it

738
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:26,120
Speaker 2: was covered up before.

739
00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:29,480
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there have been lawsuits, There have been people

740
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:33,279
Speaker 1: that still complain that moved back into Black Creek of

741
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:35,439
Speaker 1: you know, some of the same issues there. I think

742
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:40,720
Speaker 1: twenty lawsuits with seven hundred plaintiffs kind of in recent years,

743
00:41:41,200 --> 00:41:43,399
Speaker 1: and just last year in twenty twenty three, a state

744
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 1: judge dismissed a couple of the really big, high profile

745
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:50,560
Speaker 1: cases for lack of evidence, which you know doesn't bode

746
00:41:50,560 --> 00:41:55,719
Speaker 1: well for lawsuits to follow. Obviously, as far as you know,

747
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 1: testing goes and whether or not there are really like

748
00:41:59,239 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 1: is still a real problem there. It's sort of conflicting

749
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:08,560
Speaker 1: evidence inconclusive. I guess mortality rate is slightly elevated, but

750
00:42:08,640 --> 00:42:12,479
Speaker 1: within the normal range. Cancer rates are actually lower six

751
00:42:12,520 --> 00:42:16,879
Speaker 1: percent lower, but birth defects are twice as high as

752
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:18,440
Speaker 1: other communities nearby.

753
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:21,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that sounds really weird, Like why would cancer

754
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:25,360
Speaker 2: rates be lower? Apparently they're like the sample size of

755
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:29,200
Speaker 2: this study is not huge, so we're not crazy about

756
00:42:29,200 --> 00:42:33,799
Speaker 2: the results essentially. But yeah, I guess it didn't turn

757
00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:37,479
Speaker 2: out quite as bad as people had thought, which is good.

758
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:40,200
Speaker 2: But I mean tell that to the families who had

759
00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:45,120
Speaker 2: babies born with you know, congenital disorders and or died young.

760
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 2: You know, I mean, there's there was a lot of

761
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:50,600
Speaker 2: damage done to people living there unfairly, and that's ultimately

762
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:54,160
Speaker 2: the saddest legacy of it. There's a triumphant legacy to it.

763
00:42:54,680 --> 00:42:55,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's that.

764
00:42:56,080 --> 00:42:58,959
Speaker 2: Will never, that will never put a clay cap over

765
00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:01,040
Speaker 2: the tragedy that I happened there too.

766
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:03,880
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I hope there's a statue of Lois Gibbs somewhere.

767
00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 2: I don't know that there is. But she went on

768
00:43:07,040 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 2: to found the Center for Health, Environment.

769
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:12,160
Speaker 1: And Justice, which is amazing.

770
00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:15,800
Speaker 2: She got so many letters from her you know, national

771
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:18,640
Speaker 2: high profile as a result of this, that she went

772
00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:21,680
Speaker 2: and was like, Okay, I'm going to start an organization

773
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:24,919
Speaker 2: that helps small towns deal with this on their own

774
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 2: without her help. I'm Lois Gibbs.

775
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:29,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, She's like, I can make some real money off

776
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:29,840
Speaker 1: of this.

777
00:43:32,080 --> 00:43:35,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's so loaded. She wears floor length mink coats

778
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:38,879
Speaker 2: and shows up in gold plated roles to all these

779
00:43:39,239 --> 00:43:40,600
Speaker 2: these neighborhood meetings.

780
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:43,759
Speaker 1: No, not my lowest Gibbs. I'm looking at pictures over now,

781
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 1: out there shouting in front of a building. I love it. Yep.

782
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:50,279
Speaker 2: If you want to know more about Love Canal or

783
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 2: Lois Gibbs or Beverly pagan or anything like that. You

784
00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:56,880
Speaker 2: can look all over the internet. There's a bunch of

785
00:43:57,080 --> 00:44:00,600
Speaker 2: great stuff to read. And since I said it's time

786
00:44:00,640 --> 00:44:01,759
Speaker 2: for listener mail.

787
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:06,399
Speaker 1: I actually got one more thing, so pre listener mail.

788
00:44:06,440 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: Oh boy, okay, it felt like the perfect episode to

789
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:15,319
Speaker 1: plug a friends project. One of my oldest friends, Dave Barnhardt,

790
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:20,400
Speaker 1: is a documentary filmmaker who takes on projects that you

791
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:23,919
Speaker 1: know need attention, like gun violence and things like that.

792
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:27,960
Speaker 1: And he did a documentary called Flint, the Poisoning of

793
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:31,440
Speaker 1: an American city of Flint, Michigan, of course, and you

794
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:33,920
Speaker 1: should check it out. It's you go to Flint Poisoning

795
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:38,080
Speaker 1: dot com is the website for the documentary. And David's great.

796
00:44:38,160 --> 00:44:40,919
Speaker 1: He's doing he's doing good work and he's a good guy.

797
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 1: So check out the trailer and see where you can

798
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:44,319
Speaker 1: watch it.

799
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:48,440
Speaker 2: Great shout out man, I'm glad you did that. Yeah,

800
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:51,440
Speaker 2: I think Flint deserves its own Episodeah for sure.

801
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:52,800
Speaker 1: Yeah we should follow up on that.

802
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:56,120
Speaker 2: Uh if you already already said that, is it time

803
00:44:56,160 --> 00:44:56,959
Speaker 2: for listener mail?

804
00:44:57,280 --> 00:44:59,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I just I just thwarted.

805
00:44:59,280 --> 00:45:00,799
Speaker 2: Well, Jerry just put the chime.

806
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:06,440
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I want to let you know how much

807
00:45:06,560 --> 00:45:08,760
Speaker 1: my family loves stuff. As you know, my boys Evan

808
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:11,160
Speaker 1: and Alex and my wife Rachel listen to you every

809
00:45:11,239 --> 00:45:13,440
Speaker 1: chance we get. It's the first thing we do in

810
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 1: the morning on the way to school. The kids want

811
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:17,080
Speaker 1: to see if there's a new episode, and they think

812
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:19,799
Speaker 1: you're the smartest people in the world. So imagine how

813
00:45:19,840 --> 00:45:22,920
Speaker 1: they are impressed when I their lowly dad found a mistake.

814
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:27,320
Speaker 1: In your snake oil podcast, nice, you guys mentioned that

815
00:45:27,360 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 1: patent medicines or medicines protected by patents, which gives a

816
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 1: manufacturer exclusive right without having to disclose what's in it.

817
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:37,920
Speaker 1: That's actually the opposite. Pattent's grant a limited right to

818
00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 1: exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling

819
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:44,920
Speaker 1: the invention or importing it. But in exchange, you have

820
00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:48,720
Speaker 1: to disclose the invention in a way that would enable

821
00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:51,800
Speaker 1: one skilled in the art to make or use the invention.

822
00:45:52,600 --> 00:45:55,160
Speaker 1: In other words, if a medicine is patented, you'd have

823
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:57,719
Speaker 1: to say exactly what's in it and how you made it,

824
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:00,279
Speaker 1: otherwise you wouldn't get a patent. And you guys know

825
00:46:00,320 --> 00:46:03,319
Speaker 1: this because you actually said that in your how Ip

826
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:07,520
Speaker 1: Works episode, right, Yeah, And that is from David. And

827
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:09,680
Speaker 1: you know what, David, I looked into that more and

828
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:14,400
Speaker 1: you're right. But I also found out that ninety percent

829
00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:17,200
Speaker 1: of these patent medicines didn't even have patents. They were

830
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:21,080
Speaker 1: just called patent medicines, all right. So that's from David Greenfield.

831
00:46:22,200 --> 00:46:25,200
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, David, much appreciated. If you want to

832
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:27,759
Speaker 2: get in terms of this, like David did, you can

833
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 2: just send an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

834
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:38,279
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

835
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

836
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:44,520
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,