Love Falls

On November 10th, News 10 out of Albany posted about a Hoosick Falls plastics company’s announcement.

Manufacturing plant Saint Gobain announced on Tuesday that water samples near its site tested positive for a chemical called PFOA.

And then on December 17th the Times Union reported that:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a statement Thursday warning residents in Hoosick Falls not to drink or cook with village water because of elevated levels of a toxic chemical found in the public water system last year.
~snip~
The chemical was discovered in the village water system last year by a private citizen, Michael Hickey, whose father, John, died of kidney cancer in 2013. PFOA has been linked to kidney and testicular cancer, as well as thyroid diseases and other serious health problems.

This is happening in my picture perfect little Upstate New York town. This is the village that feels like my hometown. My Helen lives there. My grands are growing up there now. It’s a place that draws me like Monet to water lilies, haystacks and Rouen Cathedrals.

My first thought/fear/panic was OH NO, it's Love Canal again!  If you’re of a certain age (*cough* over 50) Love Canal was a horror seen on the nightly news. A 36 square block section of the city of Niagra Falls New York—poisoned along with the residents.

The EPA called it one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in American history. That’s not all—they’ve also said that it cannot be regarded as an isolated event. It could happen again--anywhere in this country--unless we move expeditiously to prevent it.

Love Canal is an aborted canal project branching off of the Niagara River about four miles south of Niagara Falls.  It is also the name of a fifteen-acre, working-class neighborhood of around 800 single-family homes built directly adjacent to the canal.  From 1942 to 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, with government sanction, began using the partially dug canal as a chemical waste dump.  At the end of this period, the contents of the canal consisted of around 21,000 tons of toxic chemicals, including at least twelve that are known carcinogens (halogenated organics, chlorobenzenes, and dioxin among them).  Hooker capped the 16-acre hazardous waste landfill in clay and sold the land to the Niagara Falls School Board, attempting to absolve itself of any future liability by including a warning in the property deed. 

Public awareness of the disaster unfolded in the late 1970s when investigative newspaper coverage and grassroots door-to-door health surveys began to reveal a series of inexplicable illnesses—epilepsy, asthma, migraines, and nephrosis—and abnormally high rates of birth defects and miscarriages in the Love Canal neighborhood. 

 25 years later, in 2003, CBS News reported:

Many locals are dissatisfied with the slow progress. Rev. Darius G. Prigden pointed out how quickly city officials responded to graffiti in North Buffalo, whereas known poisons across the street have remained there for years. Neighborhood children have been found to carry high amounts of lead in their blood, as high as anywhere in New York State, the Buffalo News says.

"We would love to get the attention that vandals got," Prigden said.

35 years later, in 2013, USA Today reports:

New residents, attracted by promises of cleaned-up land and affordable homes, say in lawsuits that they are being sickened by the same buried chemicals from the disaster in the Niagara Falls neighborhood in the 1970s.

"We're stuck here. We want to get out," said 34-year-old Dan Reynolds, adding that he's been plagued by mysterious rashes and other ailments since he moved into the four-bedroom home purchased a decade ago for $39,900.

His wife, Teresa, said she's had two miscarriages and numerous unexplained cysts.

The Republican party has waged war on the EPA and on science itself.

The view just outside my beloved Hoosick Falls

What is abundantly clear is that the party of Ryan, McConnell, Cruz, Bush, Rubio and all the rest, are nothing more than big industry puppets—prostitutes who don’t give a damn about the little people—you, me and our families. The quality of our lives or how painfully we die is unimportant next to the wealth they reap from their sponsors, their johns.

As for Love Canal, if Ford or Reagan had been prez instead of Carter, I’ve no doubt at all that there’d have been no Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). AKA the Superfund Program—put in place to fund the clean up of areas fucked up by toxic waste.

In a December 17th Times Union piece:

Residents in a grassroots group, Healthy Hoosick Water, that formed to draw attention to the issue, are pushing for government agencies to conduct a health survey to determine whether cancer and other illnesses in the village can be attributed to the PFOA pollution. The group also called on the state or EPA to determine the source of the pollution and how far it may have spread. Saint-Gobain tested groundwater at its McCaffrey Street plant last year and found levels of PFOA at 18,000 parts per trillion, well above the 400 ppt advisory level for short-term exposure set by the EPA. But scientific studies funded by DuPont in the Ohio valley, where PFOA pollution has been linked to potentially thousands of cancer cases, indicate the EPA's level may not be safe and that even low levels of PFOA in drinking water can be dangerous.

Hoosick Falls is not another Love Canal but this is still a very big deal. I’m glad that Healthy Hoosick Water is on this and I’m VERY happy that the “right” hasn’t gutted the EP. Not yet anyway.

This next election is too important to sit out because maybe you don’t care for Bernie or for Hillary or because you’re busy on November 8th or because maybe you think your vote doesn’t matter. Hillary or Bernie will be a zillion times better for all of us than any of the opposition party’s corporate shills.

Our lives, our children's lives hang in the balance. VOTE!