EPA's Barbara Blum Discusses Federal Love Canal Suit Against Hooker
Chemical
https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=52783
General Information
Source:
Creator:
Event Date:
Air/Publish Date:
NBC Today Show
Jane Pauley/Bob
Abernathy
12/21/1979
12/21/1979
Resource Type:
Copyright:
Copyright Date:
Clip Length
Video News Report
NBCUniversal Media,
LLC.
1979
00:05:22
Description
Barbara Blum, Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, discusses the $124 million
lawsuit against the Hooker Chemical Company, who is believed to be responsible for the toxic waste
leaking into the backyards of the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York.
Keywords
Love Canal, Pollution, Environment, Landfill, New York, EPA, Environmental Protection Agency,
Hooker, Chemicals, Company, Niagara Falls, Waste, Toxic, Dumping, Neighborhood, Community,
Residents, Poison, Houses, Miscarriages, Barbara Blum, Deputy Administration, Lawsuit, Corporation,
Hazardous, Liability, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, RCRA, Law, Legislation, Legal, Health
Citation
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Page 1 of 4
MLA
"EPA's Barbara Blum Discusses Federal Love Canal Suit Against Hooker Chemical." Bob Abernathy,
correspondent. NBC Today Show. NBCUniversal Media. 21 Dec. 1979. NBC Learn. Web. 27 March 2015
APA
Abernathy, B. (Reporter), & Pauley, J. (Anchor). 1979, December 21. EPA's Barbara Blum Discusses
Federal Love Canal Suit Against Hooker Chemical. [Television series episode]. NBC Today Show.
Retrieved from https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=52783
CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE
"EPA's Barbara Blum Discusses Federal Love Canal Suit Against Hooker Chemical" NBC Today Show,
New York, NY: NBC Universal, 12/21/1979. Accessed Fri Mar 27 2015 from NBC Learn:
https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=52783
Transcript
EPA's Barbara Blum Discusses Federal Love Canal Suit Against Hooker Chemical
JANE PAULEY, anchor:
An important development in the Love Canal case, Love Canal you remember is the neighborhood in
Niagara Falls, New York that was built on a chemical dumpsite from the World War II era. A place where
nearly 200 families were forced out of their homes a year ago by poisons oozing though the basement
walls and out onto the lawns. Medical experts have told Congress that women who lived in these houses
have had a disproportionately high number of miscarriages. Others have said many women who lived
there have given birth to deformed or handicapped babies. Yesterday the Environmental Protection
Administration asked the courts to order Hooker Chemical corporation, which owns the dumpsites, to
clean up Love Canal and three other dumps nearby. The EPA’s deputy administrator Barbara Blum is in
our Washington studio this morning with Bob Abernathy. And good morning.
BOB ABERNATHY reporting:
Good morning, Jane. And welcome, Ms. Blum.
BARBARA BLUM (Deputy Administrator, EPA): Thank you, Bob.
ABERNATHY: Your suit against Hooker Chemical is the largest ever filed in a chemical dumping case,
124 million. What do you see as the significance of it? Beyond trying to get Hooker to clean up the four
dumpsites in Niagara Falls, what are you trying to prove?
BLUM: Bob, this case is particularly significant because it’s going to be the first time that such a case was
brought against the company, where the company had abandoned the site, pulled out of the site,
transferred the site to someone else. So in addition to being the largest, it’s really going to set the case law
for other companies who had done similar things.
Let me ask you about that particular case with respect to the Love Canal. Hooker Chemp-- Chemical
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Page 2 of 4
company dumped there in the 40s and early 50s and then as you say deeded the site to the city, which built
a school on it and let a couple of hundred houses be built there. Hooker hasn’t owned the property for 26
years, why do you now blame Hooker for what has developed? Was it doing anything in the 1940s that it
was against the law there then?
BLUM: Whenever anyone, and this is-- I’m going to answer this philosophically rather than trying to try
the case here.
ABERNATHY: Fair enough.
BLUM: But philosophically, whenever anyone uses ultra hazardous waste, or generates ultra hazardous
waste, that is their responsibility, continuing responsibility, we feel, for a lifetime.
ABERNATHY: So even if people were not prosecuted at the time they dumped, and that could have been
thirty years ago, and even if they no longer own the dumped property, it’s federal government policy that
they should be held responsible for any problem that is now found to have developed?
BLUM: That’s our feeling because every bit of hazardous that is at that Love Canal site, as far as we can
determine, came from one company, Hooker Chemical company.
ABERNATHY: Even though the city was warned the place was full of chemicals when it took over the
property?
BLUM: There’s some question as to how adequately the city was warned, but regardless of that, yes.
ABERNATHY: How many chemical dumpsites around the country are there that you think might be
dangerous?
BLUM: Bob, we estimate that there are probably 50,000 hazardous waste sites. Of that, we’ve identified
about 3,900 that we think are potentially dangerous.
ABERNATHY: Are you going to sue the owners, or past owners, of all 3,900 of those to get them cleaned
up?
BLUM: On some of these, Bob, we can’t determine liability because, for example, I can think of a place
in New Jersey where a company under a false name and under three or four layers of corporations, took an
old warehouse, put hazardous chemicals in, hundreds of thousands of barrels, and walked away. We
couldn’t find anyone who had liability.
ABERNATHY: And that becomes a state responsibility or federal government’s responsibility?
BLUM: It becomes a state or local responsibility. At the present time, we get in help where we can.
ABERNATHY: There are now approximately 70,000 chemicals and chemical compounds in use, a
thousand new ones, approximately, coming into use every year.
BLUM: That’s right, every year.
ABERNATHY: What confidence do you have that we’re not creating new Love Canals all the time?
BLUM: We have a new act and I think that that’s going to be able to be the thing that makes the
difference. It’s called the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. And it’s going to take chemicals that
are generated and from birth to death follow them through a manifest system, so that if company X
manufactures chemical B, we will know where that chemical is at all time, who has it, where it’s being
transported, and finally where it’s going to be dumped in the end.
ABERNATHY: But you haven’t got the regulations on that yet. You expect to have them, what, this
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Page 3 of 4
coming year?
BLUM: We expect to have them in April, end of April.
ABERNATHY: When can we expect a time a time when there will be no more Love Canals either created
or discovered?
BLUM: Bob, that’s a good question. Our country is so vast that I don’t know when we’ll quit discovering
Love Canals. But I think we will have finished creating them in the next year, and perhaps we already
have.
ABERNATHY: Ms. Blum, many thanks. Back to Jane.
PAULEY: We asked Hooker Chemical company to send a representative to the program today, but they
declined. They sent a statement instead. It expressed indignation that the government suit, claiming that it
is unwarranted, the company promises to vigorously resist the suit. Hooker points out that it issued
warning about the potential danger of the site and that it have-- had embarked on a cleanup program
eighteen months ago. The company maintains that except for an instance in the late 1950s when some
children were slightly burned by chemicals near a road construction site, it has not been proven that
anyone has been injured by the company’s practices.
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Page 4 of 4