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Last week President Carter finally responded to their pleas. Following the disclosure of still another study reinforcing the residents' worst fears — that the chemical wastes may be causing genetic damage — Carter declared a state of emergency in the area, and empowered New York State and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to undertake the temporary relocation of 710 families. Among them: the Kotts, three of whose children show a frightening tendency toward convulsions. At costs that may run in excess of $30 million, the evacuees will be placed with relatives or friends, in motels and hotels and in a nearby Army barracks for up to a year, while further tests are made to see if they can ever go back home, assuming they would want to. Even so, the anguished people of Love Canal, who would like Washington to buy them out, were not entirely satisfied. Before the President's action, they held two EPA officials hostage for nearly six hours inside the abandoned house they use as headquarters. They also staged a sit-in in the county legislative chamber. Said Mrs. Lois Gibbs, 29, president of the Love Canal Homeowners Association: "It's not what we want, and it's not what we intend to get. But at least it guarantees us clean, safe places to sleep while the Government makes up its mind about its next step." So anxious were residents to seek sanctuary outside what New York's Governor Hugh Carey called this "neighborhood of fear" that some quickly started loading up their cars and departing within hours of the Washington announcement. Explained Walter Mikula, 55, a construction worker who suffers from a neurological disorder: "You try to forget what's in the ground, in the air, in your home. But you can't. You can't put it out of your mind for a minute." "Nobody should," interjected Mrs. Gibbs. "It's an awful story."
The story began in the late 19th century when a flamboyant entrepreneur named William T. Love started building the canal as part of a scheme to industrialize Niagara Falls. But no more than a trench about a mile long and 15 yds. wide was ever dug. In the late 1940s and early '50s, the abandoned canal's new owner, Hooker Chemical & Plastics Corp., used it as a convenient dump for the myriad toxic byproducts of its wares, including the residues of various powerful pesticides. In all, Hooker deposited some 20,000 tons of chemical wastes into the old waterway—mostly contained in 55-gal. steel drums—before finally covering it up with dirt. In 1953 Hooker deeded the newly filled land to the Niagara Falls Board of Education for $1 as the site of a new school. And soon modest one-family homes began sprouting above the chemical graveyard.
From the start, many residents were uneasy. Children who went swimming in a pond on the canal site developed painful skin rashes. Youngsters were burned when they picked up "fire rocks," chunks of phosphorus that exploded when tossed against the school's brick walls. Residents also noticed an eerie luminescence over the dump site on damp summer nights.