Environmental Monitoring At Love Canal

The toxic legacy of Love Canal vividly brought the crisis in industrial waste disposal to public awareness across the United States and led to the passage of the Superfund legislation in 1980. To discover why disasters like Love Canal have occurred and whether they could have been averted with knowledge available to waste managers of the time, this book examines industrial waste disposal before the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. Colten and Skinner build their study around three key questions. First, what was known before 1970 about the hazards of certain industrial wastes and their potential for causing public health problems? Second, what were the technical capabilities for treating or containing wastes during that time? And third, what factors other than technical knowledge guided the actions of waste managers before the enactment of explicit federal laws? The authors find that significant information about the hazards of industrial wastes existed before 1970. Their explanations of why this knowledge did not prevent the toxic legacy now facing us will be essential reading for environmental historians and lawyers, public health personnel, and concerned citizens.

Tracing the history of environmental policy and politics from the seminal moments of 1978 at Love Canal to current environmental justice disputes, this in-depth study offers a cross-border analysis of the modern environmental movement that should be of interest to students and practitioners, academics and activists. Though no explicit environmental justice movement has developed in Canada, questions of fairness and equity in issues like the recent Toronto garbage crisis are central to many of the country's environmental conflicts. The location of Love Canal and other hazardous waste facilities on the New York-Ontario border allows for striking national comparisons without sacrificing attention to local and regional detail. Just as the issues surrounding Love Canal have shaped environmental management many years after the event, so too the environmental justice movement is making its mark on contemporary policy and politics in ways that we are likely to recognize many years from now.