The Neighborhood off Fear

Carter orders a further evacuation from polluted Love Canal

Robert Kott loved the small, neat home overlooking Black Creek in the southeastern corner of Niagara Falls, N.Y., a grimy industrial town near the Canadian border. In the 14 years since he acquired it the muscular chemical worker has spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours painting, insulating and otherwise caring for his precious property. But last week Kott called it quits, shuttering up the house and fleeing with his wife Joann and their five children, ages seven to 15. Said he: "I don't mind telling you we've been scared for a long time, scared for our lives."

So, too, were many of the Kotts' neighbors. Over 700 families in all, they live around Love Canal, the notorious, stinking chemical sewer that has become a symbol of the country's growing toxic waste problem. For the past two years, one report after another has told harrowing tales of noxious odors leaking into homes, of sinister-colored sludge seeping into basements, of children playing in potholes of pollutants and, worst of all, of abnormally high rates of miscarriages and birth defects, of nerve, respiratory, liver and kidney disorders and of assorted cancers among people of Love Canal.

When the nature of this toxic time bomb finally became fully understood in 1978, New York State relocated 239 families whose homes were closest to the dump (cost: $37 million).

But many homeowners who were left behind in the surrounding streets remained convinced that the malignancy of Love Canal had spread beyond what the state called this "first circle" of contamination. And they have been clamoring ever since for help -- from the local government, the state, Washington, anyone.

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.

Inside nearby houses, thick, gummy substances began oozing through cellar walls and clogging sump pumps. Some houses were pervaded by strange smells that occupants said gave them headaches. Most puzzling, the incidence of serious illness, including cancer, was much higher in this neighborhood than in other areas of Niagara Falls. Miscarriages seemed to occur frequently; and so many children were born with birth defects that street signs were posted warning motorists of deaf youngsters. Two of Alice Kline's children are troubled; one is hyperactive, another developed an ulcer-like stomach condition at age seven. In an interview with TIME Correspondent Peter Stoler last week, she admitted: "I used to think that our house was cursed by a devil."

By 1978 the people of Love Canal got vivid proof that their devil was manmade. Heavy rains turned the former canal into a quagmire of mud, puddled here and there by iridescent pools that fumed and bubbled. The landfill's topsoil began to wash away, revealing Hooker's metal casks, some of them badly corroded and leaking their caustic contents. Says one state environmental official: "It was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting; it really looked like hell."

Analysis revealed that the dump contained more than 80 different chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBS), hexachlorocyclopentadiene (or C56 for short), benzene, toluene, tetrachloroethylene and other polysyllabic byproducts of pesticide production. Some, like the powerful solvent dioxin, are suspected carcinogens. Still others cause anemia, loss of hair, seizures and skin rashes.

Following the flight of the first group of families, the state began constructing a drainage system aimed at preventing the chemicals stored in the corroding barrels from seeping into any more homes. But it got scant help from Hooker, which is now the target of a barrage of lawsuits totaling several billion dollars by the U.S. Justice Department, New York State and various residents. The company has consistently reminded critics that at the time it was done the dumping was legal and that it had waived all responsibility for the property when it was turned over to the school board. Hooker also insists there is no positive proof that its chemicals are to blame for the variety of illnesses.

True enough, but the circumstantial case seems to be getting stronger. Last December Mrs. Gibbs, in her own informal survey, found that only two of the eight women in the Love Canal area who gave birth in 1978 and 1979 had delivered normal babies. In March, Cancer Researcher Beverly Paigen of the Roswell Park Memorial Institute in nearby Buffalo told congressional investigators that the miscarriage rate among women in the contaminated sector was a startling 25.2% compared with 8.5% before they moved into the neighborhood. But what triggered the latest crisis was a study showing an unusually high incidence of serious genetic damage among people living in the area. Conducted for the EPA by a small Houston-based research lab, Biogenics Corp., the study showed abnormalities in the chromosomes of eleven of the 36 area residents who were tested.

Federal officials had hoped to review and double-check the findings, which quickly came under attack, before releasing them. But the report was leaked to some residents as well as the press. So, with little forewarning, a team of EPA officials rushed to Niagara Falls, borrowed the Homeowners Association building and called in the study participants one by one to tell them the test results.

For the eleven the news was devastating. "It was just the last straw," says Phyllis Whitenight. Both she and her husband Leonard, a printer, had chromosome abnormalities. In 1975 she lost a breast to cancer. Their son, Kevin, 10, has had unexplained stomach problems. Their daughter, Debbie, 26, was plagued as a child by rashes on her legs and throat infections; three years ago she miscarried. Said Whitenight: "We've lived in fear for a long time. Now we'll wonder what we've passed on to the children."

Barbara Quimby, 29, shares those fears. Her daughter, Brandy, 8, is mentally retarded. Another daughter, Courtney, 3, suffers severe breathing problems. Now Quimby has been told by a doctor that her own chromosome abnormalities increase her chances of developing cancer as well as raising the risk of birth defects in any more children she might bear. Says she, fighting back the tears: "It gets to you, it really does." qed

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