Love Canal is an aborted canal project branching off of the Niagara River about
four miles south of Niagara Falls. It is also the name of a fifteen-acre, working
class neighborhood of around 800 single-family homes built directly adjacent
to the canal. From 1942 to 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, with government
sanction, began using the partially dug canal as a chemical waste dump. At the end
of this period, the contents of the canal consisted of around 21,000 tons of toxic
chemicals, including at least twelve that are known carcinogens (halogenated
organics, chlorobenzenes, and dioxin among them).
