Love Canal at 50

Janet Lenichek, Chair, Sierra Club Niagara Group

If you’re as old as I am, you probably recall reading about Love Canal in the newspapers. I was working as a biologist with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Chicago at the time. It was my first full-time job after graduating college and I was glad to be working for a young agency of the US Government. (EPA was created in 1972 under the Nixon administration.)

Flash forward 50 years to 2026 and the horrors of Love Canal have arisen from the dead like vampires on Halloween! Thanks to excellent reporting in the Buffalo News and other local news outlets, we now know that there are residential properties near Love Canal that were never fully decontaminated.

The McKiernan family lives 300 feet from Love Canal and this past summer they discovered buried toxic waste in areas of their yard where their children played and where they had hoped to install a swimming pool. Along with numerous organizations and individuals, the McKiernan family is demanding that the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and Department of Health (DOH) reopen the question of whether families are living amid inadequately investigated toxic contamination in and around the Love Canal Emergency Declaration Areas (EDA). (There are seven EDA areas https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/items/show/16702).

The McKiernan family may only be the “tip of the iceberg” in this situation. All residents living near or in the EDAs deserve an honest report of any toxic substances their properties may contain. The Sierra Club Niagara Group wants to see thorough investigations and detailed reports on all EDA areas. And before any decontamination efforts begin, residents need to be relocated with financial assistance from NYS and/or the EPA, so further toxic exposures can be minimized. We have signed a petition to demand that the DEC and DOH address this issue immediately, and provide environmental justice for all residents living in or adjacent to Love Canal Emergency Declaration Areas.

To keep up to date on this and other Sierra Club stories, check out our website (sierraclub.org/atlantic/niagara) or our Facebook page @Sierra Cub Niagara Group. If you’d like to join in our activism, email us at niagarasierra@gmail.com.