Epa Declares Love Canal Clean

Its discovery 25 years ago led to the creation of the EPA Superfund Program for the cleanup of toxic waste sites. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency says cleanup work is finished at the infamous Love Canal dumpsite in Niagara Falls, New York. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bud Lowell has more:

Transcript

Its discovery 25 years ago led to the creation of the EPA Superfund Program for the cleanup of
toxic waste sites. Now the Environmental Protection Agency says cleanup work is finished at the
infamous Love Canal dumpsite in Niagara Falls, New York. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Bud Lowell has more:


The Love Canal neighborhood became a national symbol for the problems of toxic waste in 1978.
Nine hundred families were evacuated. An elementary school and two streets of homes were
bulldozed. The remaining landfill was sealed off.


Today, EPA says the 70-acre site can come off the Superfund List but Mike Schade with a
Buffalo-based group called the Citizens Environmental Coalition isn’t so sure. He says about 22-
thousand tons of World War II era chemical byproducts remain buried at the Love Canal site.


“Now, while the EPA and Occidental are monitoring the landfill, time will prove that landfill will
eventually leak. It’s really, inevitable.”


Schade believes the EPA announcement seeks to defuse criticism of a recent U.S. Senate vote.
That vote blocked reauthorizing a law taxing oil and chemical companies to support the
Superfund program.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bud Lowell.

Related Links

Cleanup of Toxic Sites in Limbo

Monsanto has agreed to clean up one contaminated site of hundreds that need to be cleaned up. The toxic site cleanups have been in limbo because of a recent bankruptcy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Weber explains:

Transcript

Monsanto has agreed to clean up one contaminated site of hundreds that need to be cleaned up.
The toxic site cleanups have been in limbo because of a recent bankruptcy. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Tom Weber reports:


Monsanto contaminated this one site in southern Illinois with dioxins, PCB’s and other toxic
chemicals for 40 years.


Legal questions arose because Monsanto created a company called Solutia in 1997. Solutia took
responsibility for Monsanto’s chemical clean ups. But Solutia went bankrupt last year. And it
refused to clean any of the 300 sites across the country while in bankruptcy.


Glenn Ruskin is a Solutia spokesman. He says Solutia can’t clean up the site, but Monsanto’s
decision to do so offers hope for people who live at the other sites.


“It just indicates that there are parties out there who are still in existence that are willing and able
to do that clean up.”


The matter is even more complex because much of Monsanto was bought by Pharmacia. Pfizer
then bought Pharmacia.


A bankruptcy judge will ultimately decide who has to clean which sites.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tom Weber.

Related Links