Draft
SFAA Project
Case Study One
Townsend
March, 2001
Love Canal Superfund Site, Niagara Falls, New York
The Superfund program
The federal Superfund program is a program is designed to clean up1 the most serious
hazardous waste sites in the United States. These sites include many dumps or landfills, old
industrial plants and refineries, abandoned mines and smelters, and federal military or nuclear
sites. Superfund does not deal with currently operating solid waste landfills or active industries,
but only with closed or abandoned sites. The federal program under the supervision of the
United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) deals only with the most serious of
such sites, though state programs handle many others.
Under the “polluter pays” principle, the government takes legal action to get the former owners
and users of the site to do the cleanup themselves or to pay for it. If the responsible parties
cannot be identified or are now bankrupt, the costs are paid from a “Superfund” created by a
tax on manufacturers of petroleum and chemicals.
The Superfund program was created by the Comprehensive Environmental Response,
Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) PL 96-510. In addition to setting up this
program within the USEPA, the Act established the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry (ATSDR) as part of the Public Health Service to deal with the associated health issues.
The Superfund program requires re-authorization every five years. The most extensive changes
were made in the first such re-authorization, the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization
Acts of 1986 (SARA) PL 99-499. SARA required higher and clearer standards for cleanup and
sought faster cleanup. Most significantly for this project, SARA required the USEPA to seek
increased public information, comment, and participation in decisions at these sites.
When the Superfund program started, no one really knew how many sites might eventually
require this kind of treatment or how much it might cost. Indeed much of the technology needed
for treatment did not exist then and has not even now been developed. Often the best that can be
done is containment and monitoring. The first National Priorities List (NPL) was created in
1983 and contained 406 sites. This list is continuously updated as sites are completed and new
ones are added. There were 1222 sites on the NPL as of November 22, 2000. These represent
only a small fraction of what some estimate may be as many as several hundred thousand sites
that present potential hazards to human health (United States. Congress. Office of Technology
Assessment. 1989:129). The USEPA maintains a database called CERCLIS that lists these
hazardous waste sites by state.2 There have not been complete and systematic searches for such
sites. Much of the dumping involved was surreptitious and illegal, and ordinary citizens have
played an important role in locating and exposing the existence of the toxic wastes in their
neighborhoods.
Sites are selected for the NPL on the basis of a Preliminary Assessment using a formal scoring
system that ranks the amount of hazard presented by the site. The field investigation of sites, like
much of the work of Superfund, is done by private contractors. Sites that receive a score high
enough to be on the NPL will be remediated by the Superfund program and those that get lower
scores will not.3 There is room for a good deal of negotiation between the community, the state,
the responsible parties, and the federal government before this happens. Listing is a regulatory
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process that requires a public comment period before the sites are final-listed in the Federal
Register.
After listing on the NPL, the next steps for a Superfund site are the studies that lead up to a
Baseline Human Health Risk Assessment and a Baseline Ecological Risk Assessment. These
studies indicate the risk of future harm to people and other species because of exposure to the
toxic materials present. If a site is complicated, it may be broken down into two or more
Operable Units that are dealt with separately. Both of the Risk Assessments need to be completed
before the Feasibility Study is prepared. The Feasibility Study proposes a range of possible
remedies, each with their pros and cons and estimated costs. (One of the proposed remedies is
always to do nothing.) One of the alternatives is indicated as the preferred choice, but this may
get changed as a result of public discussion, with some new alternative even emerging from the
discussions. This may be something that the Responsible Party considers can be done with less
expense or some combination of the alternatives that had been suggested.
The selection of a remedy is always a matter requiring public comment, followed by the issuance
of a Record of Decision (ROD) that tells, briefly, what will be done. After this the engineers go to
work on the detailed design and construction contracts are signed. The whole process from site
investigation to the completion of construction is likely to take many years--in the three cases
studied for this project as much as twenty years or more. This does not mean that public health is
under threat all that time, for the USEPA can undertake an emergency removal of hazardous
materials at any time along the way to a more permanent solution.
The involvement of communities of faith at Superfund sites
Why have local congregations become involved with Superfund sites? At the neighborhood level,
a church building (or a mosque, synagogue, or temple) may be located at the Superfund site. Its
members may become concerned that they may be exposed to hazardous waste while in the
building. Or a congregation may have members living in the neighborhood with illnesses or
deaths in their family that they attribute to exposure to hazardous wastes. As part of their
pastoral care, ministers or deacons, become involved in helping individuals attribute meaning to
their suffering. A congregation may become embroiled in conflict over the significance of the
pollution and what should be done about it. Thus religious congregations, like schools,
businesses, and other local institutions, are sometimes part of the community most directly
affected by the presence of hazardous waste.
At the level of the wider community of faith,4 city-wide or regional religious bodies may become
involved with issues of hazardous waste as part of their work toward social justice. Examples of
these organizations are judicatories such as the diocese in the Catholic or Episcopal
denomination, the Methodist Conference, or a Presbytery or Synod. Indeed it is at the regional
level of a county or group of neighboring counties that the engagement of communities of faith in
an organized way is most likely to take place. This fact made it necessary to take something
larger than the neighborhood as the unit of study in this project.
Most cities, counties, or states also have ecumenical or inter-faith organizations that become
involved in issues of social justice. Such councils became engaged in some way at all three of the
Superfund sites studied in this project. In addition, clergy may be involved in ministerial
associations that cross denominational lines. National religious bodies also make statements
about environmental issues and other public policy issues. They may make financial grants to
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grassroots groups engaged at Superfund sites—and they did so in two of the three cases, Love
Canal and Clark Fork (Milltown).
Not all religious groups are equally open to participation at Superfund sites. In the case studies
and annotated bibliography developed for this project it will be obvious that the Catholic
church, the mainline Protestant denominations, and the historically black denominations have
been most involved. Predominantly white churches of evangelical or pentecostal types have been
less engaged. Partly this stems from reasons of polity (church government) and partly from
political and ideological reasons. For example, a highly influential evangelical financial guru,
Larry Burkett, is a “virulent critic” of the Superfund program (Eskridge 2000). However, as a
biblically-grounded evangelical rationale for environmental stewardship has been developed
during the 1990s,5 there are signs that evangelical churches are becoming more open to these
issues.
Each of the three sites chosen for this project has made a significant contribution to the history
of the religious environmentalism and environmental policy in the United States. Just as Love
Canal was the key site in the passage of Superfund legislation, it was the key site in the religious
communities' recognition that they needed to respond to technological disasters as well as
natural disasters. The Love Canal case study considers the shaping of the institutional structures
for this response that took place during the two decades from 1979 to the present. Similarly, the
North Hollywood case study indicates how the city of Memphis came to be prominently
mentioned in a major document in the history of environmental justice. This was the influential
1987 study by the United Church of Christ Commission of Racial Justice that exposed the racial
and economic inequalities in exposure to toxic wastes throughout the United States. The third
case study, the Clark Fork River in Montana, the largest tributary of the Columbia River, is
connected to a major document of Catholic social teaching on the environment, The Columbia
River Watershed: Caring for Creation and the Common Good. This Pastoral Letter was
circulating in draft form during the project research and has subsequently been revised and
released. In their letter the bishops of the Pacific Northwest, from dioceses in both Canada and
the United States, struggled with the claim of God's creation to be protected for its own sake and
not only for human use. This makes an interesting parallel to the Clark Fork Superfund site,
where the initial steps toward remediation dealt with urgent needs to protect human health but
the current decisions, for remediation of the sediments along the river and behind the dam,
require considering what is best for the health of the whole ecosystem, including fish as well as
humans.
Communities of faith may become involved at any or all of the stages of response at a Superfund
site. As the case studies for this project indicate, a religious group that becomes involved at an
early stage may drop out and leave the field of community response to other players, perhaps reengaging in a different way at a later stage. This project was mandated to look at the
involvement of religious groups and inter-faith coalitions in site identification, the assessment
and communication of risk, and remediation. In the case of Love Canal, a fairly stable organized
coalition of religious groups stayed with the Superfund site over a long period of time. In the
case of the Hollywood Dump in Memphis, religious groups were involved in site identification
and the early stages of risk assessment but did not attempt to organize a lasting coalition to stay
with the Superfund process. And at the Clark Fork sites in Montana, secular environmental
groups fostered intense public participation. That participation took forms that were quite
different from the other two case studies, including heavy use of the EPA's TAG grants to hire
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technical experts and much more citizen input into the whole planning process. Coalitions at the
Clark Fork sites are only beginning to engage religious groups quite late in the remediation
process.
Why this project?
As indicated earlier, the USEPA is mandated to involve the public in decisions made at
Superfund sites. This is done in a formal way by making public announcements that documents
are available for public inspection at libraries near the site. Public meetings are called at key
points in the process, minimally when the proposed plan for remediation is selected, before the
Record of Decision (ROD) is issued and design and construction begin. A Community Advisory
Committee may be formed to enable informed public input over a longer span of project history.6
Desirable as these formal opportunities for public participation may be, probably no one
regards them as adequate. The issues involved at Superfund sites are complex enough that few
people are likely to be able to understand the reports well enough to participate effectively
without a great deal of time, study, and assistance. This biases public participation toward
persons with more education and income. By the time the required public meeting is held, rather
late in the Superfund process, the community may already be highly polarized. Deep divisions
may have opened up between environmentalists and businesspeople or between persons who
believe than the toxic materials at the site have damaged their family’s health and those who
believe such claims are exaggerated. It can only be helpful to broaden the avenues for public
participation by engaging organizations that already exist in the community, especially ones that
may help to bridge some of the divisions in order to reach consensus on how to solve the
problem for the common good.
Churches and other religious organizations have been involved at Superfund sites from the very
beginning of the program. When President Carter signed CERCLA in December 1980, a nun had
been directing a broadly based ecumenical organization at Love Canal for a year and a half, a
Baptist minister was chairing the Memphis Environmental Task Force as it addressed the
hazards at the North Hollywood Dump, and an Episcopalian rector was deeply involved in
community struggles with toxics in the well water of Woburn, Massachusetts. Yet these efforts
have generally had a low profile in media coverage and social science research. This project
was devised to help to fill that gap. Its intent is primarily descriptive, to indicate when and how
religious groups have been involved and to what effect.
The project is one part of a larger five-year collaborative agreement between the USEPA and
the Society for Applied Anthropology. The project design, with its centerpiece of three case
studies, was specified in the contract. The researcher was allowed to choose the three Superfund
sites. The three case study sites selected for this project were Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New
York, the North Hollywood Dump in Memphis, Tennessee, and the Clark Fork complex of sites in
western Montana.
A case study approach has often been used by the USEPA and by the Congressional Office of
Technology Assessment in examining the Superfund program (United States. Congress. Office of
Technology Assessment. 1988) (United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
1989) (United States. Environmental Protection Agency. Office of Emergency and Remedial
Response. Community Involvement and Outreach Center. 1996). Sociologists have used a similar
approach in studying environmental justice issues at Superfund sites (Bullard 2000)
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(Environmental Justice Resource Center 1997). The case study method used in such policy
studies involves using a predetermined formal template to examine a fairly narrow set of
questions. They typically use a larger set of five or ten case studies, enabling somewhat
conclusive comparisons.
In contrast, anthropologists usually favor doing a single in-depth case study. Anthropologists put
a program into context by studying the larger community. As they approach their ethnographic
fieldwork they are open to following out threads of investigation that arise during the course of
research rather than adhering to a template determined beforehand. They generate new
hypotheses and insights as they go.
This project represents a compromise between the two conceptions of case study, ordering the
material on three sites in such a way as to facilitate comparison, yet approaching each field site
with the flexibility and openness to context that characterize anthropology.
Methods of the study
The traditional ethnographic field methods of anthropology dictate immersion in the life of a
community as a participant observer for months or years. This was not practical under the time
constraints of this project, which funded a total of three months of full-time work divided
between three communities and an additional six months of part-time work. This schedule
included literature review and writing, and no research assistance or clerical help was provided.
Despite these limitations, it was possible to do some of the field work in this classic manner, by
observing naturally occurring events—
•
worshipping with two very different Memphis congregations at 8 A.M. and 11 A.M. services
one Sunday morning,
•
taking the scheduled group tour of the Milltown Superfund site,
•
marching with environmental justice protestors in Memphis,
•
eating at a church potluck supper with former Love Canal activists who are now deeply
engaged in criminal justice issues.
The main method used was the open-ended interview with key informants. The persons
interviewed were selected initially from among persons mentioned in news coverage of the site
or mentioned by others as knowledgeable of the site. These persons were asked for additional
suggestions, from which those who were mentioned more than once were contacted. Where full
interviews were not practical, phone interviews were conducted. Additional contacts were made
directly with some ministers of churches adjacent to sites, whether they were involved or not.
The questions asked were different for each person and were designed to explore further the
issues and events raised in the site literature. An informed consent form was used that allowed
the respondent to choose between remaining anonymous or being acknowledged in the report.
Because most persons were interviewed in some public role in which true anonymity would not
be possible, almost all of those who gave full interviews are identified. The persons interviewed
were true collaborators in this research, and the report relies heavily on their insights.
Archival research was as important as fieldwork in all three cases. This included reading
newspaper accounts on microfilm (and for recent years, on-line). Another major archival source
was the EPA site documents and administrative record available at EPA offices and public
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libraries near each site. These were in all cases too voluminous to read in detail, but large parts
of them were skimmed. Special attention was directed to the materials indicating public
responsiveness, particularly the transcripts of public meetings associated with the Record of
Decision for sites. These transcripts are a valuable source of data on community involvement in
the past.
Another helpful resource for understanding these communities was the few social science
masters’ theses and doctoral dissertations available for these communities. Precisely because
they are unpublished student works rather than tightly written and polished for publication they
often include a great deal of detail that is helpful for understanding the community, sometimes
including direct quotes from anonymous individuals easily recognized as people interviewed
years later for this project.
It is important to note that this project did not involve research concerned with the USEPA or
the state environmental and health agencies. Officials of these agencies were not systematically
interviewed and their programs were not evaluated.7 This was a research project concerning
religious organizations in the communities surrounding Superfund sites. To research Superfund
itself would be another whole project (and a very useful one).
The Significance of the Love Canal Superfund site
More than any other site, the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls has come to epitomize
the issue of hazardous wastes and the Superfund program. In one week in October 2000, for
example,
•
A public lecture at the University at Buffalo on environmental problems in South Buffalo
was advertised with the title “Not Love Canal.” 8
•
Presidential candidate Gore continued to be haunted by a verbal slip overstating his role at
Love Canal as a Congressman.
•
A major issue in the Canadian federal election was the incumbent Liberal government’s
failure to clean up the Sydney Tar Ponds in Nova Scotia, repeatedly described as “North
America’s largest toxic waste site” “containing more than 35 times the amount of toxic
sludge found in New York’s infamous Love Canal.”
•
A reference appeared to a children’s book on Love Canal to be published soon in a series on
disasters in American history—adding to the already massive literature on Love Canal, most
of it written by sociologists and journalists.
Twenty years after President Jimmy Carter signed the Superfund legislation into law, Love Canal
is still the icon of hazardous waste, despite the fact that it is by no means the largest, most toxic,
or most expensive of Superfund sites.9 Most people would be surprised to learn that Love Canal
was not the top-ranked Superfund site for New York State when the first National Priority List
was created in 1983.10 Nor was Love Canal even the biggest of Hooker Chemical’s own waste
dumps that became Superfund sites. Hooker dumped larger amounts of toxic wastes at three sites
in Niagara County—south of Love Canal at the 102nd Street Dump, on the north side of the city
at Hyde Park, and behind the Hooker plant in the S-area, adjacent to the city’s water treatment
plant.11
The significance of Love Canal lies in its being the first place where a neighborhood citizens’
organization drew attention to toxic wastes in a residential neighborhood and made effective use
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of media and politics to gain redress. Testimony from Love Canal played a significant role in the
passage of the Superfund legislation in 1980, though it was not the only site involved in such
testimony. Of all the environmental events and conflicts in the 1970s, it was the media coverage
of Love Canal that was the "breakthrough to issue formation" (Szasz 1994). Studies of
environmental history invariably refer to Love Canal as the “watershed event” (Colten and
Skinner 1996:1) (Thornton 2000: 277) or “landmark” (Hoffman 1997:163), after which
corporations had to become more proactive in environmental matters. The time was right for a
Love Canal to serve as a catalyst to change both government and corporate policies.
This case study will not attempt to reassess the place of Love Canal in history. The aim here is
narrower—to assess the place of churches and inter-faith coalitions in the events of Love Canal
and the consequences of that involvement. This is a facet of the Love Canal story that has rarely
been heard, whether from reticence on the part of participants or from bias on the part of media
and social scientists. For example, a book by Allan Mazur, a researcher who has followed Love
Canal journalism closely for twenty years, tells the story of Love Canal from several different
perspectives, including those of several community organizations. Mazur acknowledges his use
of the archives of the Ecumenical Task Force on Love Canal (ETF) as a source of data, but he
never even considers that the perspective of the ETF itself or the communities of faith that
comprised it might have been worth examining (Mazur 1998).
The farther from the Niagara Falls that a person lived during the crisis at Love Canal, the more
likely one was to have heard only the voices of Lois Gibbs, representing the homeowners’
organization, rather than multiple voices from the community. The Ecumenical Task Force was
frequently mentioned in newspaper accounts of Love Canal in the Niagara Gazette, much less
often in the Buffalo News, and not at all in the New York Times, according to a sociologist’s
careful tabulation of coverage in the main local, regional, and national papers (Ploughman 1984).
The place
The city of Niagara Falls is located on the Niagara River, the straits that connects Lake Erie with
Lake Ontario and forms the boundary of the United States with Canada. The massive and
beautiful Falls are not only a popular tourist destination but also a major source of hydroelectric
power for local industry and the power grid of both nations.
The economy of Niagara Falls combines the unlikely partners of a tourist industry and a
chemical industry. The whiff of chemicals is always in the air. The city’s nine chemical
companies employ a large share of the work force--in the 1970s, when the city's population was
85,000, there were 6000 chemical industry jobs (Mazur 1998, p.9).
Niagara Falls was once considered the honeymoon capital of the United States and remains a
significant tourist destination. The number of visits to the American side of the Falls is still high,
though the visits tend to be brief. The way that roads, parking, and buildings were developed
virtually assures that after tourists take a quick look from the American side, they head across
one of the three bridges to Canada. They spend most of their time—and money—at the casino
and other tourist attractions across the border in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Some of the tourist
attractions on the New York side that have fallen into bankruptcy or disrepair and closed in the
past few years include the waterslide, the Turtle Museum (operated by the Tuscarora Indians,
whose reservation is located in Niagara County), and the downtown Rainbow Mall.
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Niagara Falls has been steadily losing population for several decades, a decline that owes
nothing to the events at Love Canal and more to the decline of its industrial economy and the
poor use of its tourist assets. The city of Niagara Falls now has a population of 61,840 (2000
Census.), down from 85,000 in the 1970s. Niagara County is the northernmost of the eight
counties of the Western New York region. The regional population of a million and a half is
centered on the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area.
The neighborhood surrounding the Love Canal site is the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls at the
southeastern edge of the city, bounded by the Niagara River and the town of Wheatfield. There
are some older homes that date from LaSalle’s earlier years as a village, prior to its annexation
by the city of Niagara Falls in 1927. Most of the single-family houses that were vacated and in
the Emergency Declaration Area were newer—modest two or three bedroom bungalows built in
the 1950s soon after the 99th Street School opened. For the women from white, blue-collar
families with young children who became the core activists at Love Canal these were “starter
homes.” It was a pleasant neighborhood of 1400 well-maintained and landscaped homes with
about 7400 residents.
The LaSalle neighborhood, like the rest of Niagara County, had only a small minority
population. A public housing project, Griffon Manor, had been built a block west of Love Canal
in the 1940s. Many of its residents were black families who had moved into its spacious,
attractive apartments from downtown Niagara Falls. In addition to the 250-unit public housing
project the neighborhood contained a 63-unit senior citizen project, two churches, two
elementary schools, a fire hall and a recreation area.
The environmental issues
In the 1890s entrepreneur William T. Love began to build a canal and a model industrial city
near Niagara Falls to take advantage of hydroelectric power. Love’s project was soon abandoned
due to economic problems and the invention of alternating current, which could be carried over
long distances, thus eliminating the need to locate factories next to the Falls.
Hooker Chemical (later purchased by Occidental Chemical, now called OxyChem) purchased the
site of the abandoned canal in the 1940s and used it for disposal of chemical wastes from 1942 to
1953. Because the short uncompleted canal was lined with seemingly impervious clay, it seemed
to them to be an appropriate disposal site, especially under the urgency to increase industrial
production of chlorinated hydrocarbons during World War II. It turned out in later years that
heavy rainfall would carry the wastes over the top of the filled-in canal and into sandy surface
soils, groundwater, sewers and creeks. The first lesson of Love Canal, someone said, is that
things don’t stay where you put them.
Hooker Chemical transferred the Canal site to the Board of Education so that they could build an
elementary school. The transfer of deed to the land was made for $1, with a statement added to
the deed that chemical wastes were buried there and Hooker should bear no liability for them.
Very little additional information about the nature of the wastes was made known. When the 99th
Street School was built in 1954, it was not located directly over the buried wastes but on the
northern part of the site, leaving the area with buried wastes as playing fields.
After the school was built, the school board transferred the unneeded part of the site to the city of
Niagara Falls. Additional streets, sewers, and utility lines were put in, cutting into the dirt cover
and compromising the site. Building the LaSalle Expressway at the south end of the site in the
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9
1960s altered patterns of drainage into the Niagara River. Modest single-family houses were
built that backed up directly on the former canal and extended into the low-lying areas to the east
and north of it.
About 21,000 tons of chemicals, in drums or liquid form, had been deposited at the Love Canal
site. The chemicals present at the site included waste products from the production of the
insecticide lindane, a wide variety of chlorinated solvents, benzenes, toluenes, pesticides, and
dioxin. Dioxin became the main concern as events unfolded at the site, and much of the
controversy over the health effects of Love Canal is a controversy specifically over dioxin.12 The
importance of the site does not rest on dioxin alone, however. The very complexity of its mixture
of chemicals whose interactions were not known offered a major challenge to health researchers
(Silkworth 1994).
As later sections of this report will indicate, most key decisions at Love Canal were made in the
absence of clear knowledge of what the impact on the health of residents had been from the
chemical wastes at Love Canal. At the time of these urgent decisions, the health information
available was fragmentary and controversial. The homeowners organization had surveyed the
neighborhood and recorded many illnesses and reproductive problems, but comprehensive health
studies were not undertaken until much later. A large study was proposed by the medical school
at the State University of New York at Buffalo to continue work started by the Centers for
Disease Control in 1980, but federal funds earmarked for the study were never released.
Although there was a major effort on the part of the New York State Department of Health to
collect human health data in the neighborhood early in the controversy, most of the samples were
not analyzed. Results were not made available either to residents or in scientific publications. In
1997 the Department received an $8 million grant from the Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry (ATSDR) and finally began a study that will continue until 2002. They have
contacted some 5000 former residents and will look at some of the long-term health effects.
Pending any results from this study, what is now known about the health consequences to
residents of Love Canal?
The first indicator of an impact on human health of residents’ exposure to the Love Canal
chemicals to be adequately documented was the decline of birth weight of infants born to
families resident at Love Canal. Research by Paigen and her colleagues demonstrated low birth
weights and retarded growth in children of Love Canal (Paigen and Goldman 1987; Paigen,
Goldman et al. 1987). Another study of birth weights of infants born to Love Canal residents
found that the percentage of low birth weight infants was significantly elevated, compared to the
rest of upstate New York, during the period of active dumping between 1940 and 1953 (Vianna
and Polan 1984).
Birth weights and rates of miscarriage reflect the vulnerability of the fetus to chemical insults. A
more dramatic consequence of such insults is birth defects, though smaller number of infants
affected makes it more difficult to establish statistical significance in a single neighborhood. As
data accumulate from many sites it will be easier to see significant patterns.
What are the likely consequences of the toxic chemicals that are known to be present at Love
Canal? While a few cases cannot establish cause and effect, considering such cases is useful for
understanding how families at Love Canal perceived these consequences. Lynne is one of the
children who received a monetary award for medical damages from the class action suit against
Occidental that was settled in 1984. Lynne was born in 1976, having spent time during the first
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10
trimester of her mother’s pregnancy in her grandparents’ home at Love Canal. She was born fullterm but low birth weight, with multiple congenital defects that included microcephalus, a
missing kidney, and defects of the face, palate, ears, and toes. When examined by a school
psychologist at nearly nine years old she showed average intelligence but with a specific pattern
of learning disabilities (Rahill 1989). Lynne’s developmental problems are consistent with what
is known about the effects of dioxin from research on laboratory animals.
In a study contracted by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Fowlkes and Miller
found that residents’ beliefs (in 1981) about the risk posed by toxic wastes at Love Canal were
related to the presence or absence of dependent children in the household (Fowlkes, Miller et al.
1982). Residents were divided in beliefs about health risks. Those who believed that chemical
contamination was widespread had more health problems which traditional medicine has
relatively little ability to name, categorize, control, or treat—problems such as recurring
headaches, nosebleeds, rashes, reproductive, respiratory and gastrointestinal disorders. Residents
who did not believe that chemical migration was widespread were those who had fewer such
health problems. This study is consistent with what we know about activism at Love Canal, too.
Leadership came from mothers who themselves had young children with health problems or
were aware of miscarriages and birth defects in their neighborhood.
The Superfund site chronology
Two years of high rainfall, 1976 and 1977, resulted in chemicals seeping from the dump into the
back yards, basements, and sump pumps of the homes backing up against the Love Canal site.
Residents of 99th Street whose homes abutted the canal site were the first to take action on their
concerns. Karen Schroeder and Tom Heisner took the lead. The Schroeder and Heisner families,
living next door to each other, both had children with congenital defects. In 1977 they began
complaining to the city about the visible chemical problems in their back yards. Niagara Gazette
reporter Michael Brown started writing about their plight in May 1978.
The New York State Department of Health and Environmental Conservation began site
investigations in early spring 1978. On August 2, 1978, in response to preliminary results from
these studies and community and media pressure, the New York State Department of Health
declared a health emergency. They recommended that pregnant women and children under the
age of two should leave the area directly adjacent to the canal site (Ring I). This area of 237
homes included the Schroeder and Heisner homes. On August 7, President Carter declared a
federal disaster and promised financial assistance for the relocation.
The first report of health studies by the New York State Department of Health was the
unfortunately-titled September, 1978, report, “Love Canal: Public Health Time Bomb,” with its
incendiary red-lettered cover (New York (State). Office of Public Health. and Nailor 1978 ). The
text of the report justified the sudden and expensive actions that Governor Carey had already
taken in August, when he ordered the resettlement of families from the inner two rings of homes.
It presented data on four children with congenital malformations from Love Canal. Statistical
tables indicated a possibly elevated risk for miscarriage that was apparent at least on the southern
part of 99th Street, adjacent to the old canal. The report also included data on indoor air pollution,
giving readings on five organic pollutants measured in the basements of homes in the inner two
rings. In 1979, as a result of further testing, the Department of Health included an additional 100
families in the evacuation.
Love Canal
11
The City of Niagara Falls and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
(DEC) began construction activities at the central part of the site in 1978. An 8-foot-high chainlink fence was installed around the 65-acre site. A 40-acre clay cap covered the chemically
contaminated area to keep rainwater from intruding. A system of barrier drains was installed that
would collect leachate for treatment. Because the toxins were left in place, it would be necessary
to monitor and treat the water leaching from this area perpetually—wells, pumps, treatment
filters and monitoring equipment were installed (McPherson, Rider et al. 1994).
These construction activities drew demonstrations from the neighbors, raising questions about
the potential for health damage to nearby residents and to workers that might result from the
construction work. Those residents of the outer rings of homes who had statements from their
physicians won temporary relocation in motels at state expense, while the Homeowner’s
Association continued to work throughout 1979 for full relocation with a buyout of the lost
equity in homes. LCHA president Lois Gibbs travelled back and forth between Niagara Falls,
Albany, and Washington, enlisting the support of the area's Congressional Representative John
LaFalce. She was able to make effective use of the political dimensions of the controversy for
Love Canal was deemed important to the re-election hopes of Governor Hugh Carey in 1978 and
President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Just as the state’s preliminary health research leading up to the “Time Bomb” health report
precipitated the first resettlement crisis in August 1978, the release of another health report
precipitated the crisis of May 1980. This time it was the federal government that was at the
center of the health controversy. The federal government had commissioned a small
chromosome study without a control group to use in its suit against Hooker. Preliminary results
of tests for chromosome breakage were released on May 17. Subsequently discounted, the study
appeared to show that residents had elevated levels of such damage. The frightening release of
this report led to the Love Canal Homeowners Association detaining EPA officials for five hours
as “hostages.” The resolution to this crisis was to declare a federal emergency, making the area
eligible for disaster assistance.
The May 1980 Presidential Emergency Declaration permitted the relocation of a further 710
families, though it would be months before the federal and state governments would work out the
funding arrangements for purchase of these outer ring homes by the Love Canal Area
Revitalization Agency (LCARA), the state agency formed to buy the homes, renovate them, and
revitalize the area after remediation. Residents were not required to leave, and about 70 families
chose to remain, many of them older residents.
The residents of the public housing complex found it difficult to rent acceptable housing, and
many of them remained in the Love Canal neighborhood, too. By September 1981, 189 of the
250 family units and 29 or the 54 senior citizen units were vacant and boarded up. Some
residents still remained in the complex in 1988 when the Niagara Falls Public Housing
authorities decided to demolish the buildings, on economic rather than environmental grounds;
the units had been allowed to deteriorate so badly that it would have cost more than $35,000 per
unit to renovate them.
In 1982 the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) delared the outer rings of singlefamily homes in the Emergency Declaration Area habitable. In the meantime, the EPA had
carried out a massive program of sampling and testing soils and groundwater. It was a more
extensive environmental assessment than had ever been undertaken at a single site. They found
Love Canal
12
no evidence that chemicals had migrated in groundwater past the first ring of homes, which were
now within the containment system (Deegan Jr. 1987). Since nothing had been done to remediate
the outer area beyond the first ring of homes, the clear implication was that there had never been
a scientific basis for vacating the outer rings.
In response to the request of New York Senators Moynihan and D’Amato, the Congressional
Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) reviewed the 1982 habitability decision. In its review,
the OTA decided that “with available information it is not possible to conclude either that unsafe
levels of toxic contamination exist or that they do not exist in the EDA.” (United States
Congress. Office of Technology Assessment. 1983) In other words, the DHHS did not have
enough information to conclude that the homes were safe in 1982 any more than President Carter
had enough information in 1980 to conclude that they were unsafe (New York (State). Dept. of
Health. and Axelrod 1988). The plan to reoccupy the neighborhood was delayed for further
study.
Although they found the groundwater in the outer rings was not contaminated, the EPA sampling
program did indicate that there was chemical contamination in the sediments in the sewers and
creeks that flowed from the site (United States. Environmental Protection Agency. Office of
Research and Development. 1982). These dioxin-contaminated sediments formed the next
operable unit of the Love Canal site to be remediated, after the canal site itself. The Record of
Decision, issued in 1987, called for using a mobile incinerator on the site to treat the sediments
that were to be vacuumed out of the sewers and dug from Bergholtz and Black Creek.
The public support for the decision to incinerate these toxic sediments on site was cited in
government publications as a sterling example of good public acceptance of the scientifically and
technologically preferred option (United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
1988, p. 5-6). Ironically, this very decision would be reversed almost immediately at Occidental's
request. In 1989, Occidental was granted permission to truck the double-lined plastic bags of
sediments to its plant site on Buffalo Avenue in Niagara Falls for storage. The 15,496 bags, each
containing nearly 3 tons of waste, were expected to remain there briefly, only until Occidental
could get its own permanent incinerator for disposing of wastes from its several Superfund sites.
A decade later, in 1998, Oxy was given permission to raise the cutoff point, with the less
contaminated materials to be sent to a landfill in Utah (USEPA, Explanation of Significant
Differences III, Love Canal Superfund Site, December 1998). Finally, in 1999, the materials
were shipped out of Niagara Falls to four western states with waste facilities affiliated with
Occidental.13 Some material was trucked to a landfill in Colorado. The most toxic bags were
incinerated at Deer Park, Texas, and Argonite, Utah. The largest amount went by rail directly to
the Grassy Mountain Landfill in Toole County, Utah.
A lengthy process of re-evaluation led to those homes located north of Colvin being refurbished
and offered for sale in 1990. By now, the necessity to take community views into account had
been well established in the Superfund process, thanks in part to community involvement in
Western New York. An eleven-member Love Canal Land Use Advisory Panel had been formed
to study the data from the site, hold public hearings, and make a recommendation for use of the
land. The President of Niagara University, Rev. Donald J. Harrington, chaired the panel. In a 9 to
2 split decision in July 1989 the panel recommended partial resettlement of the Love Canal
Emergency Declaration Area, with the area west and north of the containment area made
available for residential use. Two members of the panel issued a minority opinion opposing all
Love Canal
13
resettlement. These two were Barbara Hanna of the Ecumenical Task Force and a representative
from the county health department.
Few of the refurbished homes sold at first, until HUD began offering mortgage insurance in
1994. By 1996 the area, now called Black Rock Village, was again a functioning neighborhood.
The rest of the Emergency Declaration area was deemed unsuitable for residential use and the
unoccupied homes were demolished. In 1999 a new low- to moderate-income senior apartment
complex was opened on part of the site of the demolished former public housing project.
The low-lying area to the east of the canal site (including Lois Gibbs' house) became a
brownfields area suitable for light industry. Most of the houses in this area were bulldozed into
their own basements, awaiting an archaeologist of the future. The area was largely vacant, but a
few houses remained standing, occupied by their aging owners. In February 2001, a newly
formed not-for-profit agency, Love Canal 2000, unveiled a feasibility study and archtitect's
conceptual plan for a $6 million education-interpretation center to be built on the southern part of
the brownfields site. The agency plans to seek historic landmark designation because of Love
Canal's contribution to environmental history. The idea that had been suggested by the
Ecumenical Task Force and others as early as 198414 moved toward realization as part of a vision
to enhance the eco-tourism and heritage tourism potential of the region.
The last operable unit at Love Canal to be remediated was the site of the 93rd Street School, a
mile north of the Love Canal disposal site. A Record of Decision was issued in 1993 for the
school site. This school had been built in 1950, but in 1954 soil was brought over from the
construction site of the new 99th Street School. In 1980, the 93rd Street school was closed
because of concerns about possible contamination in the fill material in its yard. Contaminated
soils were identified and removed and the site was back-filled with clean soil. Controversy
continued about what to do with the school building itself; it was finally torn down in 2000 and
the lot acquired by a youth athletic league for use as baseball fields (Buffalo News, January 10,
2001).
Much of the cost to the taxpayers was eventually recouped by settlement of the government’s
lawsuits against Occidental Chemical Company in 1995, 1996, and 1999. Because the
settlements did not include punitive damages, Occidental was able to recover much of the cost of
cleanup from its insurance companies (Chemical Market Reporter, July 1, 1996). The DEC
transferred the operation and maintenance of the pumps and treatment equipment in containment
area behind its chain link fence to Occidental in 1995 under the Consent Judgment that settled
New York State's case against the company. Subsequently, in 1998, Occidental assigned
operational responsibility to its subsidiaries Miller Springs Remediation Management, Inc., and
Glenn Springs Holdings, Inc. (documents in EPA files, Niagara Falls).
Love Canal
14
A brief chronology (events specific to ETF in italics)
1890s William T. Love starts building canal, then abandons project
1942-1953 Hooker dumps industrial wastes in Love Canal
1953 Niagara Falls school board purchases property
1954 99th Street School built
1978 Emergency declarations by NYS DOH and President Carter, relocation of inner ring
families
1979 Ecumenical Task Force formed; temporary relocation of additional families to motels and
Stella Niagara; NYSDEC constructs clay cap over waste
1980 Chromosome study results announced; President Carter issues second emergency
declaration; CERCLA (federal Superfund law) enacted
1982 Unoccupied Ring I and II homes demolished
1984? Class action lawsuit of 1328 residents against Occidental settled
1985 Blueprint for Action conference organized by ETF
1988 Sister Margeen Hoffmann leaves ETF; Habitability study released
1989 Occidental signs consent decree for cleanup of Love Canal
1990 First homes in Black Creek Village sold by Love Canal Revitalization Agency
1992 HUD provides mortgage insurance
1994 Occidental and state government settle out of court for $98 million cleanup costs
1995 Occidental and U. S. government settle out of court for $129 million cleanup costs
1999 93rd St School demolished
2001 Love Canal 2000 releases feasibility study for education/interpretation center
Love Canal
15
The community dynamics
Until Michael Brown’s articles in the Niagara Gazette appeared in May 1978, many residents of
the neighborhood whose homes did not abut directly on the filled-in canal did not even know of
the wastes buried there. When she learned about them, Lois Gibbs believed she had found the
explanation for her young son’s health problems—asthma and seizures that began after he started
attending kindergarten at the 99th Street School. She began organizing her neighbors and became
leader of the Love Canal Homeowners Association, which was formed in August 1978 after the
declaration of a health emergency.
The Love Canal Homeowner’s Association (LCHA) was the largest and most influential of the
citizen’s organizations at Love Canal. Its story has been told by many authors (Gibbs and Levine
1982; Levine 1982; Masters 1986; Gibbs 1998) and was the subject of documentaries and a
feature film. In short, Lois Gibbs’ view of the events became the canonical account of Love
Canal (Mazur 1998). Other neighborhood organizations also formed among those who did not
perceive the LCHA as fully speaking for their points of view. These included the Concerned
Area Residents Group (CAR), the LaSalle Development Renters Association, and the 99th Street
Group (Shaw and Milbrath 1983:16-17). Many of the residents of the area did not become
activists in these organizations. The non-activists were a diverse lot but were more likely to be
renters and to be lower in income and education or to be older and long resident (Stone and
Levine 1985).
The LCHA core leadership group of Lois Gibbs and a half dozen other neighborhood
housewives worked hard from 1978 through 1980 to win relocation for the remaining families
that had not been covered by the August 1978 emergency declaration. For their group the
adversary to be defeated was the New York State Department of Health, not the corporate
polluters. The Love Canal Homeowners Association based their case for permanent relocation of
the nearly 700 families from the outer rings of Love Canal on their own health studies, which
showed that various health problems were correlated with residence in historically wet areas
(“swales”) within the neighborhood. A volunteer, Dr. Beverly Paigen of Roswell Park Cancer
Institute in Buffalo provided technical assistance with these studies.15 This form of popular
epidemiology, in which local residents collect health histories from their neighbors in
consultation with scientists, became common practice at other hazardous waste sites (Brown
1993).
A small group of social justice activists from Buffalo and its suburbs walked the picket lines with
Love Canal residents who felt little sympathy from their immediate Niagara Falls neighbors.
Lois Gibbs indicates that her brother-in-law Wayne introduced her to long-haired, unkempt
activists from his university contacts who could teach her about picketing (Gibbs and Levine
1982). Joann Hale of the Love Canal Homeowners Organization credits members of RiversideSalem United Church of Christ on Grand Island and others in the university community with
promoting activist tactics such as picketing. These tactics would not have occurred to young
working class ("middle class," as she initially termed them) homeowners on their own. The
homeowners were really “quite conservative” at the outset, she says (interview, October 17,
2000).
Newspaper accounts from December 1978, when residents were arrested for picketing the
remedial construction, identify the spokesman of supporters from outside the neighborhood as
Ken Sherman, the director of NYPIRG (Buffalo News, December 12, 1978). Today Sherman
Love Canal
16
indicates that NYPIRG (the New York Public Interest Research Group) had a grant for energy
conservation at the time that funded him to do organizing among low-income residents of
Niagara Falls. Under this rubric he did some organizing work with the public housing tenants at
Love Canal. He was a member of Riverside-Salem UCC, a church that met in a cottage on Grand
Island (Ken Sherman, phone interview, November, 2000). Of the small band of Riverside-Salem
activists who picketed with Sherman, it was Roger Cook who would become the layman
representing the UCC when the ETF was formed a few months later. He remained active with
the organization through its whole history, longer than any other board member. Other members
of that tiny congregation also recall their Love Canal picketing days. They especially worked to
assure that black public housing residents would be heard and arranged for a lawyer to meet with
them (Riverside-Salem church meeting, October, 2000, and June License, telephone
conversation, November, 2000).
The role of religious groups
Although religion has a much lower profile in the culture of Western New York than that of
Memphis, religious adherence in Western New York is possibly the highest of the three case
studies in this project. An estimated 66.2 per cent of Niagara County residents are claimed as
adherents (however nominal) by some denomination. The largest denomination by far are the
Roman Catholics, claiming 42.5 per cent of the total population (that is, nearly two-thirds of all
religious adherents). The others are scattered among at least 32 other denominations, of which
the largest are Lutheran (Missouri Synod) with 5.5 percent and United Methodist with 4.1 of the
county’s population as adherents.16
Neighboring Erie County (Buffalo and suburbs) shows even higher religious adherence,
estimated at 79.4 percent of the total population, with 59.1 of the total population Catholic. In
other words, three-quarters of all religious adherents are Catholics. In Erie County, unlike
Niagara, the Protestant minority is spread fairly equally among nearly a dozen major
denominations, each claiming about two per cent of the population. Erie County also has a
significant Jewish population (about 2 percent versus 0.2 percent in Niagara county). There are
about 600 churches or congregations in Erie County and about 200 in Niagara County (Bradley
et al. 1992 p. 269, 272).
In the Love Canal neighborhood, before it was dispersed, Catholics were possibly in the majority
but not noticeably so to those who knew the neighborhood well (Hale, Hanna, interviews). The
two church buildings directly on the Superfund site were the Wesley United Methodist Church
and the Church of God. Catholic churches are located several blocks away.
Wesley United Methodist was the congregation most deeply affected by the Love Canal crisis. In
the 1950s a small Methodist congregation met in a house on 99th Street next to the canal. As the
neighborhood grew, the Wesley United Methodist Church was organized and in 1961 moved into
a new church building on Colvin Avenue at the north end of the Canal. Former members
describe the church, prior to the crisis, as a friendly congregation big on pot-luck dinners and not
strongly intent on mission or social justice concerns. The congregation was dissolved in June
1981, but not before it had played an important role in Love Canal events, by offering a place for
the often unruly meetings of the Love Canal Homeowner's Association, the renters' organization,
and even the state agencies. The church provided rent-free office space for the Ecumenical Task
Force from June to November 1979.
Love Canal
17
At the height of the neighborhood controversy, Wesley Methodist's own members were divided
on the meaning of Love Canal, some denying that chemical contamination was a serious health
issue, others refusing to bring their children or grandchildren from outside the neighborhood to
Sunday School and expose them to chemical danger. Membership, which stood at around 300 in
1978, rapidly dropped. Despite financial help from the conference and UMCOR (United
Methodist Committee on Relief), it became difficult for the congregation to carry on. Two
decades later the building still stands, purchased from the Methodist Conference by the state and
boarded up, waiting for a buyer who will take on the asbestos-removal that needs to be done
before it can be used. The Conference used the funds from the sale of the building to establish an
environmental education committee.
Barbara and Harry Hanna were Wesley United Methodist members who were near the center of
the congregation’s involvement at Love Canal until the church closed in 1981. The wall of their
living room in the adjacent town of Wheatfield still holds a picture of the sanctuary where they
were active members when their children were young and they lived in the neighborhood. They
moved away from the little house in the Love Canal neighborhood where Harry had lived from
the age of 13 to their dream home in suburban Wheatfield in 1976, but they continued attending
Wesley Methodist after the move. Harry was an elected trustee of the congregation in its closing
years.
Knowing that Barbara Hanna had just left her secretarial job, her minister recommended her as
secretary to the newly formed Ecumenical Task Force on Love Canal (ETF) in 1979. She
remained in that position until organizational funding ran low in 1987. After that, she continued
as a volunteer and became a board member, keeping up the chronology of Love Canal events
that had been one of her responsibilities as secretary (Ecumenical Task Force of the Niagara
Frontier. 1989).
The Church of God in the Love Canal neighborhood responded differently from Wesley United
Methodist. "Whatever God wills.." is the passive acceptance they showed, a Methodist neighbor
commented. Later, their minister Rev. Dyer attended Technical Review Committee meetings
regularly throughout 1984, but he did so as a resident concerned about his home. Because the
manse was church property, it had not been included in the purchase of owner-occupied homes
in the Emergency Declaration Area. Like the renters, his family was stuck.
Other Love Canal residents who attended churches outside the neighborhood found their
congregations simply did not understand their situation. Pat Brown indicated that her church was
just “not there” when she became a victim of Love Canal in 1978 “Despite all the publicity,
frantic activity, and neighborhood meetings, what I remember most is: no one was there to
listen” (Brown 1985). Initially this led the neighborhood to turn in on itself—creating a sense of
isolation that was broken for her when the ETF was formed. After relocation she became a
volunteer with the ETF for 3 years and then the paid staff person managing its resource center,
including the file cabinets that she preserved for archiving.17
The Ecumenical Task Force on Love Canal
The immediate catalyst for the formation of the Ecumenical Task Force on Love Canal was a
letter in February 1979 from a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Lewiston, Joann
Breitsman, asking her minister whether the churches should not be involved somehow with the
Love Canal residents. Lewiston is a prosperous village of 3000 people located immediately north
Love Canal
18
of Niagara Falls. The church’s minister Paul Moore and program staff person Donna Ogg wrote
a letter to other churches, judicatories, and councils of churches throughout Erie and Niagara
counties, calling a meeting March 13, 1979, at the Wesley Methodist Church in the Love Canal
neighborhood to discuss the issue. A week later a meeting was held to organize the Task Force
and adopt goals. A month later at a general membership meeting on April 23 an executive board
of nine members was elected.
The newly organized ETF moved quickly to recruit staff. Donna Ogg, already on the Lewiston
church staff, did the initial work, and would remain on ETF’s staff (roughly half-time, as she
continued her church position) for nearly two years. Contacts with the national Presbyterian
Church and Church World Service produced the name of a nun, a Franciscan sister in Rochester,
Minnesota, with a Master's of Social Work degree in community organizing from Boston
College. She had successfully organized the ecumenical response to a flood in Minnesota. Sister
Margeen Hoffman was hired as Executive Director in June 1979. Barbara Hanna was named
secretary initially, then moved to the administrative assistant position, with Pat Brown, a former
volunteer coming onto the staff. These quiet neighborhood women, empathetic listeners from the
start, also grew to be confident spokespersons on environmental issues.
From the beginning, the work of the ETF was considered to have elements of both the prophetic
and the pastoral, that is, of advocacy and direct service. The direct service component became
particularly intense on Labor Day weekend 1979, when the residents who had been temporarily
relocated to motels were asked to vacate motel rooms to make way for tourists and the ETF
undertook to find housing for all of them (Donna Ogg, interview). The longest-serving staff
member, Barbara Hanna, who remained active throughout the history of the ETF, looking back,
viewed their main task to be providing a listening ear for residents’ anger and frustration and
sometimes working toward solutions to needs for financial or other help (Barbara Hanna,
interview).
For a time in 1980-81 the staff also included a social worker, Diane Sheley, and social work
interns from Niagara University, but all the staff gave priority to "active listening" to residents'
concerns (Ogg, Hanna, interviews, and ETF Progress Report, 1981, p. 14). Sheley was on staff
during a time when much of her effort was taken up with advocating for the needs of renters,
who were finding it difficult to locate affordable housing and move from the public housing
development at Love Canal.
Funding for the budget of approximately $50,000 a year came primarily from national and
regional denominational sources, with the largest grants coming from the American Baptists and
Presbyterians and other significant grants from Church Women United, the Disciples of Christ,
Episcopalians, United Methodists, United Church of Christ, Church of the Brethren, Mennonites,
Lutherans (Missouri Synod, American Lutheran Church, and Evangelical Lutheran Church),
Catholic Charities, and the local (Catholic) Campaign for Human Development.
Direct aid to residents included help with food, rent, moving expenses, and medical expenses.
The amounts available for direct grants were never large. The "direct aid" portion of the first
year's expenditures was $8636 out of a total of $41,534 expended (ETF Progress Report, 1980,
p.58). The second year it was $9171 out of a total expenditure of $32,334 (ETF Progress Report,
1981, p.78). The grants represented only part of the impact on residents' welfare because requests
for aid set in motion an attempt to identify the existing agencies that should be responding to
these needs, tapping ETF funds only as a last resort.
Love Canal
19
After the temporary relocation of residents, the ETF moved its offices in November 1979 from
Wesley United Methodist Church to the Madonna building of Niagara Catholic High School,
again using space provided as an in-kind contribution. In August 1983 the offices moved again,
to St. Mary of the Cataract Catholic Rectory in downtown Niagara Falls. After Sister Margeen
left in 1988 and the organization’s activity level was sharply reduced, the office was moved to
Buffalo.
By the time the ETF published its first formal report, in mid 1980, eight denominations, six
agencies, and 33 congregations had become members. The individual congregations were
primarily protestant. The largest categories were 8 Presbyterian and 10 United Methodist
churches, reflecting the networks radiating out from the founders and the neighborhood church,
but they also included two Catholic parishes in Niagara Falls, the Sisters of St. Francis at Stella
Niagara in Lewiston, and a synagogue, Temple Beth Israel of Niagara Falls. At this stage, the
voting membership came from Buffalo and its northern suburbs, Grand Island, as well as Niagara
Falls and Lewiston.
By the time of the second progress report in 1981, membership shifted to include more Niagara
Falls churches while some of the Buffalo churches had dropped away from active participation.
The annual meeting, held in May or June of each year, had voting representatives from each of
the member congregations and judicatories as well as a few at-large members. From among this
larger membership, the Board of Directors was elected.
The Buffalo Council of Churches and the New York State Council of Churches were represented
on the board by Rev. Robert Grimm. Later the Niagara Council of Churches was represented as
well, though they were more constrained in their participation by tension within the city of
Niagara Falls over whether Love Canal residents' claims were exaggerated and by the dominance
of the chemical industry in employment. Those ministers on the board who were from Niagara
Falls churches experienced most directly the division in their congregations between those who
supported their participation and those who were critical of it.18
The Board of Directors was intensely involved in the work of the ETF along with the staff. There
were times when they met weekly, worked in committees outside those meetings, and went with
staff to speak at churches or public hearings and to lobby public officials. Between March 1979,
when the organization formed, and July 1979, when the executive director started work, they
were already welded into a strong group. They never became a mere rubber stamp for the
director's decisions.
At first the board was comprised mostly of clergy, though the balance gradually shifted toward
lay persons.19 For its first ten years the board was chaired by ministers, among them Rev. Paul
Moore (Presbyterian), Rev. Dr. James Brewster (United Methodist), Rev. Dr. Joseph Power
(Catholic), Rev. Dr. Joseph Levesque (Catholic, and Dean of Arts and Sciences at Niagara
University), Rev. Rudolf Gelsey (Unitarian), and Rev. Albert Laese (Lutheran). Two of Niagara
Falls' rabbis also served terms on the board--so that strictly speaking it was an inter-faith
organization rather than "ecumenical" as its name indicated, but then it was not exactly a "task
force" either, with the temporary and limited focus that implies. In the 1990s the organization
was more accurately re-named the Interfaith Center for Environmental Stewardship (ICES), but
the group became dormant soon after it was re-named.
Theologically the ETF was diverse. Joseph Power,20 a priest with a Ph. D. in social ethics, says,
"I was the theoretician of the group. I worked for four or five years with a committee to try to
Love Canal
20
come up with a theological statement that we could all subscribe to. We never did succeed in
that, yet when it came to practical issues we had no trouble in agreeing what needed to be done."
There was a shared ethical grounding for their actions.
John McClester joined the board after he came to Western New York in 1984 as Associate
Executive of the Presbytery of Western New York. He chose to become this active in only one of
the dozens of local organizations that became part of his "portfolio" because they received
Presbyterian mission funding. He had no particular background in environmental issues or Love
Canal at the outset and was not initially as impressed by their stated purpose so much as by the
"avant garde nature of ETF." He was struck by the way the group worked, their passion, the way
they fought. At the 1987 ETF board retreat he described the board as "a small group, gathering
regularly at 7:30 AM, battling the principalities and powers, imbued with a sense of high-minded
purpose, prayerful, and rooted in a holoversal spirituality." He saw it as an example of one of the
new forms the church might take in the 21st century for those who, like him, found the traditional
parish to be "less than inspiring" ("ETF and Me," typescript prepared for ETF board retreat, 10
February 1987).
In his written comment for the same retreat Rudi Gelsey said that as a Unitarian Universalist he
was accustomed to finding himself on the fringes of inter-religious gatherings but here "being
not only received into your ranks but promoted to president blows my mind.” In the ETF
presidency, Gelsey followed Father Levesque, now President of Niagara University, who still
shakes his head in amazement, recalling Rudi opening their meetings by reading from his work
in progress--an environmentally-friendly rewriting of the Bible (interview).
Lay persons were also involved on the Board from the beginning. The first organizational
meeting was not attended by any Roman Catholic clergy, but the two Catholic lay people at that
meeting, John Lynch and Terri Mudd, both became significant players on the board. Lynch,
CSW, director of Catholic Charities in Niagara Falls, served on the Love Canal Area
Revitalization Agency (LCARA). His incapacitating illness in 1985 followed by long-term
disability and death at age 41 were a great loss to the ETF and community (Buffalo News, May
23, 1991).
Terri Mudd, an educator and energetic Catholic laywoman from Lewiston, developed guidelines
for financial assistance to residents, served as ETF treasurer for several years, and used her
Democratic Party connections for lobbying. After Cuomo was elected governor in 1983 she
became a member of the newly-formed New York State Superfund Management Board. She had
contact with Hank Williams, the Cuomo aide who became head of the DEC. Mudd remained on
the Superfund Management Board until 1997, well into Pataki's governorship. Through this
Board, the participation of citizens alongside representatives of industry and government was
ensured in the oversight of the state's Superfund program.
Roger Cook (UCC), Executive Director of the Western New York Council of Occupational
Health, was another founding member of the ETF board and became the first lay board president
in 1989. Barbara Hanna, Patricia Brown, and Joann Hale, all former residents of the
neighborhood, each played multiple roles, serving at different times in volunteer or paid
positions or on the board.
There was, almost inevitably, some tension between the Love Canal Homeowners Association
and the Ecumenical Task Force, though no open conflict surfaced. Each had an outspoken
woman leader facing the TV cameras as public spokesperson, in competition for the right to
Love Canal
21
define the situation. On most issues they stood together, working to advocate for residents. This
was especially apparent in September 1979 when they worked to get medical statements that
would allow all residents to gain temporary relocation. But there were differences in tactics. The
ETF could not support the bolder moves of the LCHA such as the EPA “hostage” taking in May
1980 (Ogg interview).
Gibbs, in turn, was not happy about the relocation of families from motels to Stella Niagara, a
convent in northern Niagara County, in the autumn of 1979. The move reduced the stress on
marriages and families, but it also cut down on the glare of publicity and political pressure that
could be brought to bear to gain permanent relocation (Hanna interview).
Although appreciative of the ETF for drawing additional support and publicity to the residents'
cause, Gibbs feels that permanent relocation might have been attained a year earlier if the ETF
had not taken its own positions on some issues. The Homeowner's Association would have been
able to speak as one voice for residents (telephone interview, January 2001). Gibbs also
disagrees that organizations such as the ETF need to "advocate" on behalf of citizens. Ordinary
citizens can speak for themselves, and her choice is to "empower" them to do so. The appropriate
role for organizations such as the ETF, she says, is to advocate for those who cannot speak for
themselves--for other species and for generations not yet born. It is clear that the ETF provided
residents who wanted resettlement but were dissatisfied with Gibbs' leadership an alternative
venue for their activism. What is not so clear is the extent to which that actually may have
increased Gibbs' effectiveness, by siphoning off dissent within the LCHA.
Some homeowners disaffected with Gibbs’ leadership shifted their allegiance (and volunteer
work) to the ETF, a move that served to reduce conflicts within the LCHA, according to the
account of the sociologist who worked most closely with the LCHA (Levine 1982:202-205). The
ETF, which was not initially (or finally) a grassroots neighborhood organization, came for a time
in 1979-80 to seem to some residents like one of these alternative neighborhood organizations,
including the renters’ association, and the breakaway group. For purposes of her study of media
coverage of Love Canal, Penny Ploughman categorized the ETF as a residents' organization, as
distinguished from government or corporate/business organizations (Ploughman 1984).
In contrast, Shaw and Milbrath, in a report contracted by the USEPA as one of a series of case
studies of citizen participation at toxic waste sites, said that the ETF “is not really a citizen
group” (Shaw and Milbrath 1983). But they also misunderstood the ETF, calling it “an arm of
the Church World Services.” They presumably arrived at this erroneous view because Sister
Margeen was recruited through her earlier work with CWS and maintained a network of contacts
there. In fact the ETF received no formal direction and very little funding from CWS.21 Several
of the mainline Protestant denominations that participate in the National Council of Churches
and CWS did fund the ETF, but so also did other religious bodies that were not affiliated with
CWS. There is really no question that the energy behind the formation of the ETF was local, but
it was regional rather than neighborhood in scope.
In contrast to the cool relationship that prevailed between the LCHA and the ETF, or more
accurately, between their two leaders, there were warmer relationships between the ETF and the
less-well-known citizens’ organizations. The ETF was particularly sensitive to respecting the
autonomy of the renters' organization and the residents of the senior citizens complex, each with
their own distinctive interests but apparently appreciative of an organization with more clout
advocating on their behalf. In October 1980, for example, the residents of the LaSalle
Love Canal
22
Development public housing shared with the ETF their anger at being left out of the state/federal
relocation agreement. The ETF board averted a "riot" by brokering a meeting with Assemblyman
Arthur Eve, who subsequently gained them a $500,000 allocation for moving expenses (Progress
Report Update, 1980-1981, p.46).
As the crisis of relocation wound down by early 1981, when residents of the Emergency
Declaration Area received the cash they needed to relocate, the Love Canal Homeowners
Association wound down, too. Indeed, after Gibbs relocated to Washington DC in March 1981,
the Love Canal Homeowners' Association was "no more than a skeleton" (Stone and Levine
1988). At public meetings as late as 1989 seeking recommendations about what to do with the
houses and land in the Emergency Declaration Area, Joann Hale continued to identify herself as
representing of the LCHA, though she was working closely with Pat Brown at the ETF. She also
worked for many years as a legal assistant to the environmental lawyer working on the Love
Canal cases, and by 1985 she had joined Riverside-Salem UCC and the ETF board—so she
always had multiple roles. Even today the LCHA could be revived quickly if needed, she says,
for many of the people live on Grand Island and see each other regularly (Hale, interview). By
the mid 1980s, the most effective and involved spokespersons for the former Love Canal
homeowners on the local scene were probably Pat Brown, Barbara Hanna, and Joann Hale, and
all of them were working out of the Ecumenical Task Force.
The Ecumenical Task Force of the Niagara Frontier
The relocation of residents led the ETF not to wind down its activity but to redefine and broaden
its mission. Reflecting the new direction, its name was changed from the Ecumenical Task Force
on Love Canal to the Ecumenical Task Force of the Niagara Frontier. There were changes in
staff, too. Donna Ogg left in February 1981 to continue her work at Lewiston Presbyterian
Church, which had continued to pay her full salary during the two years that she was assigned to
half time work on the ETF staff and half in the church in Lewiston.
A major thrust of the ETF was advocacy related to toxic sites throughout Niagara County. “Each
of us (board members) had our own site” Jim Brewster recalls (interview, August 2000). It was
necessary for volunteers to specialize in this way in order to work with residents, speak
effectively at public hearings, and lead the lobbying effort with public officials. Brewster's site,
emerging during his ETF presidency, was Hyde Park, another Hooker Chemical site, located
north of Niagara Falls.
Very quickly ETF became involved in litigation, using the pro bono services of lawyers and
seeking grants to pay for some of this effort. In the first of these cases, Barbara Morrison, ETF
attorney, began working in 1981 to press Hooker Chemical on the cleanup of its Hyde Park
Dump, which was leaking chemicals into the Niagara Gorge and ultimately into Lake Ontario,
pollution that was of equal concern to the United States and Canada.22 The ETF was granted
"friend of the court" status and filed a joint Amici Curiae brief with Pollution Probe of Toronto
and Operation Clean-Niagara, stating that the Hyde Park settlement proposal was defective. The
residents of the small neighborhood most immediately affected were also organized, but clearly
Hyde Park was of concern to society as a whole. The ETF was breaking new ground as a
religious organization making use of litigation to seek environmental justice.
Residents of North Tonawanda, a community in southern Niagara County where Hooker had its
Durez plant, approached ETF in 1982 with concerns about chemical emissions. Dioxin had been
Love Canal
23
reported in storm sewers and chemical odors were sometimes noxious. (The plant's outflow into
the Niagara River threatened the water intake for the inland community of Lockport as well.)
ETF board members and staff supported these residents as they organized DARA (Durez Area
Residents Organization) and helped them to assemble evidence of a history of toxic releases and
meet with state officials. The state Attorney General was ready to press Occidental for
remediation, but the DEC and DOH had both been dragging their feet (Roger Cook, interview
February 9, 2001, and ETF archives, Box 64).
The pattern of the ETF providing resources to resident's groups continued for several years, with
Pat Brown and Joann Hale offering support to the residents of Forest Glen, a mobile home
subdivision in Niagara Falls adjacent to the CECOS landfill. Forest Glen became a federal
Superfund site in 1989, when the ATSDR stated that the site posed a significant threat to public
health because of wastes from the chemical industry that were buried there. The USEPA began
permanently relocating the residents in 1990.
It was not only the inactive sites of past chemical dumping that interested the ETF but also the
active hazardous waste dumps in Niagara County. The ETF joined in a coalition that successfully
opposed the granting of a permit to CECOS for an extension to its landfill in Niagara Falls. The
CECOS facility was an already large hazardous waste landfill that was receiving some of the
wastes from Love Canal as well as downstate and out of state wastes. The CECOS landfill and
another in the northern part of Niagara County were the only two hazardous landfills in New
York State—an unfair burden on a single county. The coalition was granted intervenor status in
the permitting process. The argument that the ETF made was based on the psychological impact
that the expansion of the landfill would have in a community that was already suffering from
stresses of Love Canal and other toxic sites (Edelstein 1989). Psychological stress had never
before been used in legal argument in a permitting decision in this way.
For its policy and advocacy work the ETF built coalitions not only with citizen's groups at these
hazardous waste sites but also with environmental organizations. These partnerships included
Canadian environmental organizations, for Canadians also had a major stake in the toxic
chemicals entering the Niagara River and Lake Ontario. The coalition formed for the CECOS
permitting fight included the ETF and five other organizations: Campaign to Save Niagara, Great
Lakes United, LaSalle and Niagara Demand, Society to Oppose Pollution in Towns, and
Evershed Restoration Association (Edelstein 1989,p.160, n.2).
In order to advocate intelligently at all these sites, the ETF needed to tap technical as well as
legal expertise, in a time when Technical Assistance Grants from the USEPA had not yet become
available to citizen groups. The ETF hired a Jack Kieffer, a Jesuit priest with a science and
engineering background to pull this together and developed a panel of scientist volunteers from
all around the country who could help. Outstandingly effective among these was Roger Cook’s
brother Richard Cook, a chemistry professor at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, who took on
the task of critiquing the habitability studies at Love Canal. Reading the massive studies of the
Love Canal site commissioned by the USEPA he concluded that the science was sound but the
statistical analysis was flawed (Stoline and Cook 1986). The data was there to draw different
conclusions than the slant given in the executive summary by the agency officials, who had been
too eager to declare the entire area habitable. Cook came to speak at public hearings in Niagara
Falls several times between 1983 and 1989.23
Love Canal
24
Another continuing emphasis in ETF advocacy was to try to influence corporate behavior—this
in a period when industry was still defensive or just beginning to recognize that change was
necessary (Hoffman 1999). Occidental was among the slowest companies to acknowledge any
need to change its environmental practices.24 The member of the ETF board who was most
intensively involved in this sphere was Sister Joan Malone, a member of the Sisters of St. Francis
in Buffalo. She was the Western New York representative of the Interfaith Center on Corporate
Responsibility. (The Center is an influential coalition of over 275 Protestant, Jewish, and
Catholic institutional investors who use their collective investments to hold corporations
accountable on social issues. It was formed after the Episcopal Church introduced a resolution in
1971 calling on General Motors to divest its operations in South Africa under apartheid.)
The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility planned to introduce a stockholders' resolution
at the annual meeting of Occidental Chemical based on the small number of shares acquired by
Sister Joan's order, pooled with those of all the other organizations their represented. Prior to
submitting the resolution, Sister Joan, Sister Margeen, Roger Cook, and attorney Barbara
Morrison travelled to New York for a meeting with Oxy's lawyers on a Friday afternoon in
March 1980. By Monday morning when Joan came to work as librarian at Sacred Heart
Academy, the Bishop had gotten to her school principal in an attempt to stop her from going
forward with a resolution on corporate responsibility. So strong was the influence of the
corporation within the church hierarchy that it was possible to achieve this over a weekend.
Nevertheless, her order supported her in the decision to go ahead with the resolution (Joan
Malone, interview of December 27, 2001).
Occidental's annual meeting in Los Angeles on May 21, 1980, was attended by Sister Joan
Malone with Love Canal resident Luella Kenny,25 whose seven year old son Jon had died of
complications of nephrosis in 1978, having lived in a house near the site from birth and playing
in the dioxin-contaminated creek behind the house. Ordering the microphones turned off when
Sister Joan began to speak, Armand Hammar, the chairman of the board, told her, “Go back to
Buffalo” (Mokhiber 1988). In tackling Occidental, the ETF was going where the Homeowner's
Organization had not gone: the LCHA was intent on changing the decisions of government
agencies not corporations.
Sister Margeen (and at least some of the board of ETF) also hoped to increase communication
with industry in a more positive way. To do this they invited industry representatives to a major
conference, co-sponsored by Niagara University. Blueprint for Action: a working conference on
hazardous waste problems was held October 20 to 22, 1985, at the Holiday Inn on Grand Island.
A grant from the Mott Foundation allowed the ETF to bring together representatives of industry,
university, church, government, and victims from communities throughout the United States and
Canada. Sister Margeen worked closely with management at Dupont in arranging the conference.
In her desire to become involved in environmental mediation and problem-solving, she had the
support of the majority of the board, but she met strong resistance from those board members
who felt that there was a danger in being co-opted by industry.
As other communities outside of Western New York faced hazardous waste problems or
technological disasters many of them looked to the ETF for assistance in crafting a response.
ETF records show numerous calls and visits requesting this kind of help. Of the communities
that approached the ETF, the Times Beach, Missouri, ecumenical response is the one most
clearly modeled on the Love Canal ETF (Reko 1984). The community of Times Beach had been
contaminated by the spraying of roads and streets with dioxin-contaminated oil. In March 1983
Love Canal
25
two ETF board members, Terri Mudd and Rev. Norman Timmermann, a Missouri Synod
Lutheran pastor, were invited to Times Beach to speak to clergy there about forming their own
ecumenical response. Then in September two of the ETF staff, Sister Margeen and Barbara
Hanna, visited Times Beach as consultants to the Ecumenical Dioxin Response Task Force that
had been established there (Ecumenical Task Force of the Niagara Frontier. 1984). Ultimately
the whole Times Beach community, 802 families, was evacuated and the homes were
demolished.
In order to help other communities facing hazardous waste disasters, the ETF published
“Earthcare,” a manual that offered guidance in organizing an ecumenical response (Hoffmann
1987) and accompanying workshop materials growing out of increasing experience in
conducting such workshops. The ETF office built up its reference library, clipping file, and
board of scientific advisors. For a while, it appeared the development of this kind of resource
capability might be the future direction of the ETF, moving it from a regional to a national
organization, but the ETF was rebuffed in its application for funds from Church World Service to
develop a hot line.
A large grant application to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development26 for the same
purpose -- titled "a national ecumenical response program in ministry to victims of hazardous
waste" -- was also turned down (January 31, 1983, grant application in ETF archives, Box 87).
"The reason given for not funding us was that our board did not have enough poor people on it.
Poorly-paid ministers didn't count," Terri Mudd ruefully comments (interview, January, 2001).
The Catholic Diocese also persisted in seeing the organization as an "environmental" one, and
Sister Margeen had to argue that it had economic concerns, in those days before the acceptance
of the concepts of environmental justice and eco-justice.
The failure of this approach to develop a national hotline left the field of empowering citizen
groups mostly to Lois Gibbs’ national organization, the Citizen’s Clearing House on Hazardous
Waste. The Superfund program itself was also reoriented in its 1986 re-authorization to offer
more support to communities to meet some of the needs that the ETF had identified, including
TAG grants that community groups could use to hire consultants to interpret and critique
scientific reports from the citizens’ perspective.
Although the ETF did not become a national organization, it did serve as a channel for putting
Love Canal issues on the agenda of national organizations. The regional and national
organizations that were effectively brought into Love Canal were not the national environmental
organizations, who showed little interest in supporting the Love Canal Homeowner's
Association27, but the religious denominations and various church-related organizations such as
Church World Service and the Interfaith Coalition on Corporate Responsibility. By June 1980
many of the major denominations had passed resolutions in support of the Love Canal residents.
These actions were symbolic in suggesting to politicians a wide base of support for not only the
resettlement of additional Love Canal residents but also Superfund legislation to deal more
broadly with hazardous waste sites. This was the result of work by the Ecumenical Task Force.
The ETF kept up strong ties with the national denominations, deriving most of its financial
support from them and keeping issues before them. A good measure of their success in
maintaining these ties was the attendance of denominational officials at the Blueprint for Action
Conference in September 1985. One or more national-level representatives came from the United
Love Canal
26
Methodists, Presbyterians, United Church of Christ, American Baptists, Mennonites, and
Unitarian Universalists, as well as from Church World Service.
If the ETF succeeded in putting toxic waste issues on the agenda of national denominational
bodies, they were much less concerned to do this within the local churches. It is true that the
annual reports and the files reflect occasional talks at churches by staff or board members in
response to invitations, but there is little evidence of priority given to active educational outreach
to the local churches and judicatories. The publication of an ETF newsletter, Common Ground,
which might have served this function, was allowed to lapse after 1981 (Love Canal Archives,
Box 49, Folder 18). The focus of the ETF education committee was on developing a resource
center to which those needing help with issues concerning toxic waste could come rather than on
building an environmentally aware constituency in the churches of the region.
Some of the board members took a stronger role than others in educating their judicatories for
support of relevant legislation. In 1986, for example, when the Superfund was up for reauthorization in Congress, Rev. Albert Laese and Rev. James Brewster gained passage of
resolutions in support of the reauthorization act (SARA) by the Eastern District of the American
Lutheran Church, meeting in Baltimore, and the Western New York Conference of the United
Methodists. Brewster, then chair of the ETF Public Policy response committee, also went to
Washington in July 1986 to lobby the Western New York delegation (Annual Report, ETF,
1985-86, p.28).
Winding down
Tensions with the board over future direction and fund-raising led to Sister Margeen leaving in
September 1988, a departure that was difficult for everyone involved. The stresses related to a
death in her family and job-burnout created strain and noticeably reduced her effectiveness as
spokesperson for the organization. Ironically, her being named as one of the Citizens of the Year
by the Buffalo News in 1986 probably did not help matters. "There was a constant resistance to
success in the ETF," said one board member, "because our success would have somehow been
based on the suffering of so many who had lived at Love Canal."
Financial difficulties were a big element in the organization's collapse--with neither the board or
the director willing to accept sufficient responsibility for fund-raising to ensure its survival. Most
of the denominational funding had come to an abrupt end in 1984. This was not simply because
the Love Canal crisis was over, for that ended in 1980 as far as the media were concerned.
Rather, the ETF apparently fell victim to the 2, 3, or 5-year funding cycles that characterize the
denominations and failed to re-invent itself with persuasive new grant-worthy initiatives. The
1984 denominational funding collapse was temporarily obscured by a few large grants from
foundations. Meanwhile, the ETF had not built up a significant base of small individual donors
or local church donors that might have carried them through.
In 1986, the fiscal year after the big 1985 conference, support and revenues of $21,901 fell far
short of expenses of $61,910, reducing the ETF's fund balance by $40,000. The financial crisis
was not made public until September 1987, at which time individual contributions and interestfree loans rescued the organization but could not bring it back to its previous level. The search
for new local sources of funding contributed to conflict within the board, for approaching people
with money carried with it the risk of being co-opted by industry (McClester interview, October
2000).
Love Canal
27
The Ecumenical Task Force did not die when the Executive Director left—but it was severely
curtailed by lack of funding after 198828. Pat Brown continued in a part-time administrative role.
Denominational funding related to the Love Canal crisis had run out and had not been replaced
by other national sources. The office then moved to Buffalo to space provided by an
environmental attorney. Roger Cook, one of the founding board members, became the first lay
board chair in 1989. The ETF board, represented by Roger Cook, Rudi Gelsey, Joann Hale, and
Patricia Brown, helped to organize demonstrations in Albany and Niagara Falls protesting the
offering for sale of the renovated Love Canal houses in 1989 and 1990.
For a few years (1992-1993) Alex Cukan served as Executive Director, attempting without a
great deal of success to revive the ETF. Re-named the Interfaith Center for Environmental
Stewardship (ICES), it was intended to become an educational and technical resource to
churches and schools, with office space in the Buffalo Council of Churches building. She was a
former Sierra Club regional director and lobbyist without strong church connections to build on.
Today the ETF is described by its former core members as "dormant." Former president Roger
Cook is quick to say (October, 2000, meeting at Riverside-Salem church) that it may need to be
revived if the state does not act more decisively on current toxic problems such as those of the
Hickory Woods neighborhood of south Buffalo.29
Lessons learned
Part of the legacy of Love Canal is the striking number of individuals active at Love Canal who
went on to become directly involved at other Superfund sites, carrying with them the experience
they had gained. Lois Gibbs is the obvious example, active in sites all over the country through
her organization based in Falls Church, Virginia, formerly called the Citizens' Clearing House
for Hazardous Waste and now called the Center for Health and Environmental Justice. Her sister
Kathy Hadley and brother-in-law Wayne Hadley are involved with the Clark Fork Superfund
sites in Montana, another of the case studies for this project. Scientist Beverly Paigen moved
from Roswell Park to California, where she assisted residents at the Stringfellow Acid Pits
Superfund site, and then to Maine, where she became involved with the Union Chemical Plant
Superfund site in Hope, Maine (Lappé 1991:38).
Many of the church members who were active in the ETF response to Love Canal also remained
engaged with these issues, either in other Niagara county Superfund sites, as discussed above, or
on a national stage of some kind.30 Donna Ogg was invited to participate on the PCUSA Task
Force that produced the key Presbyterian document, “Restoring creation for ecology and justice”
that undergirds their work for environmental justice (Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.). Office of
the General Assembly. 1990). Joann Hale and Roger Cook worked together on the Resource Unit
on Technological Disasters of the National Council of Churches/Church World Service
(Ketcham 1999). Jim Brewster, former ETF chairman and United Methodist minister, developed
training materials for the same unit (Brewster 2000).
The EPA itself, in a widely circulated newsletter containing Superfund success stories, credits
the citizens of Love Canal with an impressive legacy -- playing an important role in the assuring
passage of Superfund legislation, leading to changes in the way industry does business, and
“waking up the nation to an era of environmental stewardship” (United States. Environmental
Protection Agency. 1996). It could be argued that if it hadn’t been Love Canal, it might have
been Woburn or Stringfellow Acid Pits or any one of a number of other sites that might have
Love Canal
28
become the icon of hazardous waste. This case study is not the place to argue what were the
decisive factors making Love Canal achieve this distinction.
Because the Love Canal was its most conspicuous Superfund site, the Federal Government has
continually been obliged to take the measure of its own programs at Love Canal. For example,
reviewing the EPA’s habitability decision in 1983, the OTA identified big gaps in knowledge,
many of which still present a problem for hazardous waste decisions. Some of these research
gaps were the EPA sampling strategy and uncertainty about synergistic effects from multiple
toxic chemicals present at low levels (United States Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
1983).
It is not only these gaps in hard-science research that are troublesome but gaps in social
understanding as well. An example is the current concern at many Superfund sites with
institutional controls. When a cleanup plan leaves highly persistent toxic substances in place, as
it has at Love Canal, how likely is it that companies and governments 100 years from now will
still be willing to pay the bill to operate, maintain, and replace the treatment facility? Will a
government in the distant future make the site available to build houses and expose a future
generation to the same chemicals all over again? The few short years in the 1950s that elapsed
between the last dumping by Hooker at Love Canal and the building of a school and residential
neighborhood stand as an indication of the shortness of institutional memory.
Inter-faith coalitions and other voluntary groups may play a significant role in the area of
institutional controls—in the face of powerful forces working toward active forgetting—by
creating memorials, museums, and other symbols that keep memory alive. An example of this
from Love Canal would be the maintenance of the Ecumenical Task Force archives by Patricia
Brown, their placement at the University at Buffalo archives in 1999, and the memorial service
held there in June 2000 that honored her.
The suggestion that an environmental museum or research park would be an appropriate use of
part of the Love Canal site was also put forward repeatedly by ETF board members, and this may
yet happen. The Love Canal 2000 group organized in 1998 and received a grant from the
Niagara County Environmental Fund (of funds from the Hooker settlement). They worked with a
consulting team to develop a concept for an Interpretive/Educational Center on a brownfields site
east of the canal (Allee King Rosen & Fleming and Architects 2001). The feasibility study,
released and discussed at a public meeting in Niagara Falls on February 13, 2001, suggests a
13,500 square-foot "green" building and observation tower that would cost $6.3 million to
develop. It would have interactive displays to educate the public about hazardous wastes and the
importance of the site in the history of the environmental movement. The eco-tourism it would
encourage would be helpful in the economic revitalization of Niagara Falls. The Board of
Trustees and Advisory Task Group do not yet include religious leaders. Nor does it include
relocated residents or activists from Love Canal, but rather those residents who have purchased
the renovated houses (flyer, “Love Canal 2000” and personal communication, Trudy J.
Christman, November 2, 2000).
The aspect of the Love Canal legacy that requires the most attention here is the influence of the
ETF on the response of communities of faith to other Superfund sites. There are three main
dimensions of this that need to be explored here. The first is the definition of these hazardous
waste sites as disaster areas, and the response to them as analogous to the response to a natural
disaster. The second is the ecumenical nature of the response, and the emphasis given to
Love Canal
29
building of coalitions that reach beyond churches to other voluntary associations. The third is the
critical or prophetic dimension, the demand for justice that evolved into the movements that
came to be called “eco-justice” and “environmental justice.”
As the discussion above shows, the ETF response was shaped by the tradition of ecumenical
response to natural disasters.31 Hiring a director who had experience with ecumenical response
to a flood indicates that this definition of the situation was present from the beginning. What was
new in this situation was that the disaster was a technological, human-made disaster rather than
“an act of God.” “What do you do? Hand out quilts?” (Hale, interview) There was a certain
amount of that kind of pastoral care in 1979-80, and there were continuing needs for financial
assistance and crisis counseling. Individual visitors to the ETF as late as 1987, when the agency
was suffering its own financial crisis, were offering contributions to go to a “needy family” at
Love Canal. This was the kind of human need that people could easily respond to and for which
religious and other voluntary agencies already had institutional structures.
What was needed was a way to fine-tune disaster response to prepare churches and other
voluntary agencies to meet the needs of these new situations more appropriately. They need to be
able to sustain long-term involvement in the face of conflict within the community. The
Resource Unit on Technological Disasters of the National Council of Churches (including as two
of its 11 members, former ETF board members Roger Cook and Joann Hale) produced the
resource, The “Silent” Disaster: People of faith respond to technological disasters (Ketcham
1999). This manual for congregations can be seen as an extended and updated parallel to the
book produced by the ETF in 1987 that conveyed what they had learned that could be applied at
other toxic waste sites (Hoffmann 1987). Jim Brewster, former ETF chairman, recently
developed training materials for Church World Service that supplement The “Silent” Disaster
(Brewster 2000). All of this material is intended to improve the response by voluntary agencies
at times of technological disaster.32
The second dimension of the ETF’s legacy was the legacy of coalition building. The ETF was
itself a coalition—at its annual meeting and on its board each of the members represented a
member organization (local churches, synagogues, agencies such as Catholic Charities, councils
of churches, regional judicatories, national denominations). The initial participants were
churches that were already committed to working ecumenically. Beyond this, the ETF engaged
further in successful coalition-building, working on particular issues with other kinds of
organizations such as labor unions, neighborhood organizations, and environmental
organizations. The importance of this vigorous coalition building cannot be sufficiently
emphasized. Coalitions get things done, then by their very nature, dissolve as energies are
redirected inward to their component organizations. The kinds of accomplishments that are
described in this case study cannot be achieved without building effective coalitions. Coalitions
of social justice and environmental organizations are currently significant in other places with
multiple Superfund sites, such as the Bay area in Northern California and western Montana.
A third dimension of the ETF response that was carried on to other Superfund sites was that it
went beyond pastoral care and ecumenical cooperation to take a prophetic role—the role of
advocate for whole communities, lobbyist for government policy change, and pressure group for
corporate responsibility. The main policy impact of the ETF was at state level, where the
influence of the ETF can clearly be traced in the creation of structures for public participation
such as the Superfund Management Board, on which Terri Mudd served. The ETF also
consistently pressed for the recognition of psychological aspects of exposure to hazardous waste.
Love Canal
30
The ETF, while never suggesting that "it's all in their heads," insisted on the role of stress in
disease. Neurological effects from toxic exposure, and not only cancer and birth defects, are
now also increasingly acknowledged as relevant health concerns at toxic sites. The State
Department of Health invited ETF representatives to its first workshop on psychological issues
in hazardous waste (interview, Roger Cook). Eventually, after convening an expert panel for
discussions in 1995, the federal government also began a program on psychological responses to
hazardous substances, directed by a psychiatrist based in the Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry 1999; Tucker 2000).
While the ETF was not as directly concerned with national policy questions, it contributed to
forming a new area of concern in the churches, that of eco-justice. This was a new term for the
intersection of environmental concerns and economic justice issues. The Eco-Justice Working
Group of the National Council of Churches was born out of the formal merger in 1984 of two
existing ecumenical groups. One of the groups was initially concerned with energy conservation
but had gradually broadened its mission. The second had been concerned with acid rain, working
on how to stop pollution without throwing miners of high-sulfur coal out of work. At the time of
the merger they added a new focus on toxic substances. To do this, they invited the participation
of Sister Margeen Hoffmann and Patricia Brown of the ETF and Charles Lee of the UCC
Commission for Racial Justice. Lee’s job title at the time was Director of Special Projects on
Action Against Toxic Pollution in Poor Communities (Cowap 1985).
The NCC Eco-Justice Working Group is still active, having developed a coalition with Catholics,
evangelicals, and Jewish environmental groups in the 1990s. It trains and supports a network of
Environmental Justice Coordinators who serve in a regional body of their denomination or
communion (such as the conference, diocese, synod, or presbytery).
Summing up
The inter-faith response at Love Canal was a pioneering response to an emerging problem in
American society. In the light of this it is not surprising that the religious groups of the Niagara
Frontier were slow to organize their response and played little or no role in the first stage, that of
site identification. At that stage the residents were very much on their own, with some help from
the media and individual volunteers from outside the community. Once the ETF had been
formed, it was actively involved at numerous other sites throughout the area at early stages of
site identification. Some of these became federal Superfund sites and others were remediated at
state level without the need to attain federal Superfund status. The ETF and its coalition partners
also succeeded in stopping the expansion of two active hazardous waste facilities in Niagara
County.
Though they had missed out on the earliest stages of Love Canal, once the religious
organizations did enter the scene, they turned out to have the staying power to stick with the site
and the surrounding community through the entire Superfund process. They were actively
involved in assessing and communicating risk. Much of their energy was focused on standing
with the (former) homeowners in stopping the move to resell the homes in the Emergency
Declaration Area, which they felt exposed future residents to excessive risk. In this goal, they
only partly succeeded. The rehabitation process was delayed for several years and finally
involved only some of the homes, with that part of the brownfields area east of the canal
converted to uses other than residential.
Love Canal
31
The ETF is a remarkable model for informed public participation in a community with multiple
Superfund sites. In an era before the EPA offered TAG grants, it obtained independent technical
evaluations. Committed volunteers became well informed on the technical issues and sustained
their participation with the sites on behalf of the common good and future generations. At the
same time, they supported a small paid staff who brought direct services and caring concern to
hurting individuals and families. While their work to some extent overlapped with that of the
grassroots neighborhood organizations, they extended that work in some different directions,
communicating risk to other sectors of the community that had denied the risks and dismissed
the Love Canal homeowners as merely out for publicity and personal gain.
In the remediation phase, the ETF was a major player, along with a very effective DEC
community relations program, in gaining acceptance for the preferred technical solution, on-site
incineration of the dioxin-laced creek sediments. Ironically, this decision was reversed in favor
of shipping the wastes to out-of-state landfills with only the most contaminated fraction of them
incinerated. Also during this phase, the ETF acted in concert with the former homeowners to
resist and delay resale of the homes in the neighborhood, in the belief that when scientific
uncertainty exists and human health is at risk, decision-makers should err on the side of caution.
While the ETF never was given any notice in the national media, its role was generally known
locally. The ETF usually took the same positions as the Love Canal Homeowners Association
but did so quietly--so quietly that it probably could never have achieved the dramatic results in
relocation that Gibbs and her LCHA accomplished by taking EPA officials hostage. The media
attention that was drawn to Love Canal by the LCHA drama was an important catalyst for the
passage of the Superfund legislation in 1980. In the years after relocation of the outer ring
homeowners, when the LCHA was reduced to a skeleton, the ETF continued to participate
effectively at Love Canal and other hazardous waste sites in Niagara County. The ETF also
contributed to changing state government policy and to generating environmental concerns in
national religious denominations.
Love Canal
32
Resources
The following persons were interviewed or provided other assistance in understanding the Love
Canal situation:
Rev. Dr. James N. Brewster
Trudy Christman
Dr. Richard Cook
Roger Cook
Kathleen DeLaney
Christopher Densmore
Lois Gibbs
Gladys Gifford
Peter Gold
Rev. Robert Grimm
Roberta Grimm
Joann Hale
Barbara Hanna
Harry Hanna
Margeen Hoffmann
Rev. Albert Laese
Rev. Dr. Joseph Levesque
Prof. Adeline Levine
Prof. Murray Levine
June Licence
Paul MacClennan
Rev. John McClester
Joan Malone
Terri Mudd
Donna Ogg
Rev. Dr. Joseph Power
Prof. Lynda Schneekloth
Ken Sherman
Mary Ann Storr
Love Canal
33
Librarians at the State University of New York Lockwood Library and Science and Engineering
Library
Members of Riverside-Salem United Church of Christ, and many others
Web sites
Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), founded in 1981, as the Citizens
Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW), by Lois Gibbs, community leader at Love Canal
http://www.chej.org/
Love Canal Collection at the University Archives, State University of New York at Buffalo,
including the archives of the Ecumenical Task Force of the Niagara Frontier
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/lovecanal/
The web site of the Love Canal Collection includes a searchable index of the archives and also
includes many on-line documents and links to other web sites concerning Love Canal. Of
particular usefulness for this project were the on-line progress or annual reports of the ETF:
Progress Report of the Ecumenical Task Force of the Niagara Frontier, March 20, 1979 - August
1, 1980.
Progress Report II of the Ecumenical Task Force of the Niagara Frontier, August 1, 1980 Sept.15, 1981.
Annual Reports 1985-86, 1986-87, 1987-88
The Eco-Justice Working Group of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
http://www.webofcreation.org/ncc/Workgrp.html
The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility http://www.iccr.org/
The United Church of Christ and Church World Service Resource Unit on Technological
Disasters http://www.ncccusa.org/cws/emre/ucctechunit/index.html
Videos
"May 19, 1980, the Poisoned Dream," 1999. Princeton NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences.
Lois Gibbs, Barbara Quimby, Patti Grenzy, and Dr. Beverly Paigen look back two decades on
their struggle to have the Love Canal community evacuated.
"The Falls," 1992. Primitive Features in association with the National Film Board of Canada and
the Ontario Film Development Corporation. Pat Brown discusses her infant daughter's unusual
tumors developed at Love Canal and birth defects throughout the neighborhood, ironically
juxtaposed with scenes of tourist kitsch and industry. Research on deformed birds and fish
adjacent to the 102nd St. Dump and operations at the CWM landfill are also shown.
Love Canal
34
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38
1
The Superfund process is concerned with remediation, correcting the conditions that pose a threat to public health
and the ecosystem. This does not mean restoring the environment to what it was before the damage occurred,
although natural resources damage suits allow the injured party to make a claim for restoration. 'Cleanup' is a
casually used term, and it will be used occasionally in this report, but it should be kept in mind that it is not entirely
appropriate for Superfund remediation. Superfund remedies often leave the contaminants in place while ensuring
that they do not continue to migrate into groundwater. Most so-called cleanup simply moves toxic substances from
one place to another rather than de-toxifying them.
2
The CERCLIS sites are listed on the internet on the USEPA web site, as are NPL sites, along with a description of
each site at the time it was listed and the Record of Decision for each site and additional information about the
program. <http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/index.htm>
3
The cut-off point of 28.5 was chosen arbitrarily near the beginning of the Superfund program because it was the
number that would produce an initial list of 400 sites to be remediated, from among those that had been examined
and scored.
4
The term "community of faith" appears frequently in these pages as the most inclusive term for local congregations
meeting in churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques, along with larger groupings of such congregations into
denominations and inter-faith councils, and para-church organizations formed for special purposes such as
religiously-based environmental groups. Many people would not think of a local church congregation or parish as a
"religious organization" but would reserve that term for these other organizations. This report is concerned primarily
with organizations, not with individually held religious beliefs and values.
5
The annotated bibliography gives many examples of this rationale. See for example (Granberg-Michaelson 1984;
Ball 1997; Dewitt 1998; Drake 2000)
6
The formation of Community Advisory Groups and provision of Technical Assistance Grants to enable them to get
expert help did not effectively begin until about 1989. In two of the case studies covered by this project, no such
groups were formed. Three of them were formed in the area covered by the Montana case study (one at each of 3 of
the 4 Superfund sites that comprise the Clark Fork complex). The USEPA Community Involvement and Outreach
Center used five case studies to evaluate Community Advisory Groups in a 1996 study (United States.
Environmental Protection Agency. Office of Emergency and Remedial Response. Community Involvement and
Outreach Center. 1996).
7
Indeed it was not possible to visit the headquarters of any of the EPA regions involved in the project -- Region 2 in
New York City, Region 4 in Atlanta, and Region 8 in Denver. However, it was possible to visit USEPA offices and
speak with staff in Helena and Niagara Falls, and to use library resources at the Washington DC and Chicago offices
when travelling for other purposes.
8
The lecturer made the point that the media show little interest in environmental problems unless they have the
potential to be a new Love Canal.
9
Aventis SA, a European chemical company, agreed on October 23, 2000, to a settlement costing close to $1 billion
for long-term treatment of the Iron Mountain mine Superfund site, a copper mine site in northern California which it
had acquired in the purchase of Stauffer Chemical Company (Reuters). The cost of cleanup of the federal facility at
Hanford has been estimated at $50 billion. These amounts dwarf the $250 million or so that Love Canal has cost the
company and taxpayers.
10
The top ranked NPL site for New York State is the Pollution Abatement Services site near Oswego, a bankrupt
liquid waste incineration facility operated from 1970 to 1976 before being shut down by the state.
11
Michael Brown, the journalist at the Niagara Gazette who broke the Love Canal story and later wrote a book on
hazardous waste (Brown 1980), claimed that in his travel to 38 states researching the issue he had found no place
where a company had put such highly toxic wastes in the midst of an existing community (Hartman 1981, p. 41).
12
Twenty years later this does not appear much closer to resolution (Friedman 1999). In 1978, the view of dioxin,
based on animal studies, was that it was the most potent carcinogen known. In September 2000 the EPA released
long-delayed draft recommendations on dioxin that will surely still be controversial. Writers from the political right
continue to regard dioxin as a false scare and remediation of Love Canal as an expensive mistake (Wildavsky 1995,
Love Canal
39
pp.126-152; Milloy 2000). On the opposite side, the CCHW has concentrated much of its work on dioxin (Gibbs and
Citizen's Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes (Arlington Va.) 1995). Many environmental health activists are
working to reduce the amounts of dioxin produced by using chlorine to bleach paper and incinerating plastic medical
wastes.
13
The treatment facilities were owned by Rollins Environmental Services, which merged with Laidlaw
Environmental Services in 1997, and then with Safety-Kleen Corporation in 1998, using the Safety-Kleen
Corporation name.
14
The use of the area as a research or educational center was proposed by Sister Margeen Hoffman and Rev. Dyer
at a meeting of the Technical Review Committee in 1984 as an alternative to rehabitation of the houses in the
Emergency Declaration Area.
14
In November 1988 when the Land Use Advisory committee was beginning its work, the Department of Health
prepared a list of citizens groups that were active at the site, with their officers. They listed four such groups: the
Love Canal Environmental Action Committee, the Love Canal Concerned Area Residents (which now was
identified as former residents of the public housing development), the Ecumenical Task Force, and the Love Canal
Home Owners Association. The Love Canal Environmental Action Committee was the newest one, "formed to
represent the interests and concerns of the remaining residents of the Love Canal Emergency Declaration Area."
(typescript list in files of USEPA, Niagara Falls). This group applied for an early TAG grant from the USEPA but
found it difficult to implement. Its chairman at that time, Sam Giarrizzo, is still outspoken on the issues. He attended
a public meeting on February 13, 2001, to oppose the proposed educational center, which he felt would draw
gawkers to the neighborhood, invading their privacy. At this meeting he also claimed that it was never proved that
anyone died from the chemicals at Love Canal, only from suicides.
15
Paigen had to pay a personal and professional price for her involvement (Paigen 1982).
16
The measure of religious adherence used throughout these case studies is the data reported in Churches and
church membership in the United States, 1990. This standard reference source presents membership figures as
reported by the denominations themselves and compares them with U. S. Census data.
17
The archives of the Ecumenical Task Force which were maintained by Pat Brown are now held at the University
at Buffalo Archives. They include 87 boxes of business correspondence files, minutes, annual reports, grant
applications, clippings, and materials about hazardous waste that formed the organization’s resource library. After
her death, the University Archives also received the six boxes of Pat Brown's personal archives that relate to Love
Canal.
18
These were Protestant ministers. The board never did have a Roman Catholic parish priest from Niagara Falls, a
heavily Catholic community, though women religious, priests in educational roles, and Catholic laypersons were all
very important participants.
19
The clergy dominance also meant that the board was male-dominated. In 1980 there were 11 men and 1 woman (a
nun). This gender balance shifted only very slightly over the decade. The staff members were all female, except for
a priest briefly added as a technical consultant. Gender issues in Love Canal activism have been explored by several
authors, most recently Richard Newman (Newman in press). Another noteworthy feature of the ETF board was that
Catholic participation came from nuns and priests in educational institutions and diocesan roles, not from parish
ministry near the site.
20
Power, incidentally, points out that he was the only board member (at least among those attending the retreat at
which it was discussed) who had grown up in Western New York, though he had only recently returned from
doctoral studies in Toronto. Leadership from people who have moved into the area, or returned to it, as adults is also
characteristic of the environmentalists associated with the Clark Fork site.
21
CWS contributions to the Ecumenical Task Force were $3000 in 1979, $2186 in 1980, and $2000 in 1984 (ETF
Annual Report, 1985-1986, p. 32).
22
Environmentalists have been particularly critical of the Superfund settlement with Occidental at the Hyde Park
site, on the northern side of Niagara Falls (Montague 1990). Extensive documentation of the Hyde Park case and
ETF's involvement in it is available in the Love Canal Collection at the University at Buffalo's Archives.
Love Canal
40
23
Richard Cook's work on Love Canal led to shifting the direction in his own research and serving on two Michigan
State boards related to environmental toxics. Before being diverted into college administration (first as Provost at
Kalamazoo College and now as President of Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania) Cook began to explore
foundation funding to organize and support a panel of scientists to provide the kind of pro bono work he had done at
Love Canal (telephone conversation, March 1, 2001).
24
OxyChem is currently embroiled in yet another controversy damaging to its public image. This time it is conflict
with the U'Wa of Colombia over oil drilling near their reservation. Environmental protestors have taken up their
cause (Norton 2000) and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility introduced a shareholder resolution at the
2000 annual meeting concerning drilling and indigenous lands.
25
Luella Kenny was employed as a cancer research assistant at Roswell Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo (where
Dr. Beverly Paigen was also employed). She has subsequently taken a leading role as chair of the Medical Trust
Fund established for the residents as the outcome of their lawsuit against Hooker/Occidental. She had early
connections with the ETF, attending the 1980 Ecumenical Task Force as a voting member, representing Prince of
Peace, her parish in Niagara Falls (Progress Report 1979-1980, p. xii).
26
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops initiated the Campaign for Human Development in 1969 to fund the
organizing of groups of white and minority poor people "to develop economic and political power in their own
communities." The origins of the program are discussed by Engel , who argues for the importance of the influence
of Saul Alinsky on Cardinal Bernardin in Chicago (Engel 1998). CHD grants have gone to groups in several
communities confronted with environmental disasters like that at Love Canal. Examples included the Centralia,
Pennsylvania, coal fire, the Milltown, Montana, community whose water was contaminated with arsenic from
mining wastes, and another mining Superfund site at Kellogg, Idaho. The CHD grants were not specifically
concerned with environmental issues, however. The US Catholic Conference later offered a separate program of
small grants under its Environmental Justice program, which began in 1993 (http://www.nccbuscc.org/sdwp/ejp/).
27
Gibbs frequently says that "none" of the national organizations were involved at Love Canal, but in fact the
Environmental Defense Fund funded Paigen's research there. The EDF's representative at Love Canal in 1980 was
community organizer Ruffin K. Harris, who also worked with the community living near the North Hollywood
Dump site in Memphis (http://www.edf.org/pubs/newsletter/1980/sep/a%5Fdumpsite.html).
28
Sister Margeen contrasts the fund-raising potential in her subsequent position at a house serving people awaiting
transplants at the Mayo Clinic, where a fifteen minute tour and a promise to pray for someone might result in a
donation of thousands, with the difficulty she faced in raising funds for controversial advocacy work at the ETF
(telephone interview).
29
During the 1990s the city of Buffalo developed subsidized moderate income housing at Hickory Woods on land
adjacent to a state Superfund site in South Buffalo. Ignoring the first developer's warnings of environmental
problems, stemming from the coke ovens of a steel plant, they simply sought another developer. Owners of the new
homes, who discovered chemical contamination and related health problems, were joined by Lois Gibbs in their
protests. The city council agreed to buy back the homes in February 2001, although results of additional testing that
were scheduled for release had been delayed.
30
In a small way, this is even true of the author's involvement at Love Canal. In 1979-80, Townsend chaired the
Church and Society committee of the Presbytery of Western New York, on which Donna Ogg served and to which
she brought requests for wider support from the Presbytery and denomination for the ETF. This involvement with
events at Love Canal ceased when the author left Western New York for a research position in Papua New Guinea
in July 1980.
31
The ETF was not alone in this definition of the situation. The federal government shared this approach, assigning
responsibility to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
32
Within the group of denominations that work together in the National Council of Churches, the denomination that
is taking direct responsibility for maintaining the technological disaster unit is the United Church of Christ, and the
materials are found on this denomination's web site. http://www.ncccusa.org/cws/emre/ucctechunit/index.html