Love Canal Tragedy

Abstract

The purpose of this environmental failure case study paper is to provide educational materials for environmental engineering courses dealing with design and operation of landfills for hazardous waste. In 1978, it was discovered that hazardous waste had contaminated homes and schools in the Love Canal area, a former chemical landfill which became a 15 acre neighborhood of the City of Niagara Falls, New York. On August 7, 1978, the United States President Jimmy Carter declared a federal emergency at the Love Canal. The Love Canal became the first man-made disaster to receive such a designation based on a variety of environmental and health related studies. Background, causes and effects of environmental failure, and remediation actions of the Love Canal superfund site are described in this paper. Lessons learned from this case study show the importance of identification of hazardous waste and the proper disposal of hazardous waste for the protection of the public health and the environment.