The Niagara Falls, N.Y., site of a famous toxic-homes evacuation during the Carter Administration is once again the scene of a claimed disease cluster involving an assortment of maladies. Lawyers say, perhaps not unhopefully, that as many as 1,100 claims may follow the six already filed.
A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency, while declining to address the lawsuits, called the area “the most sampled piece of property on the planet.”
“The canal has not leaked,” spokesman Mike Basile said. “The monitoring and containment system is as effective today” as when first installed.
[Buffalo News, AP] For some revisionist history on the causes of the 1970s fiasco, see Eric Zuesse’s classic 1981 Reason article (local officials instigated residential development of land they had been warned was unsuitable for such use) and Ronald Bailey’s 2010 update on the disease issue (“Love Canal residents are not especially prone to early mortality, cancer, or birth defects.”)
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