This is Helen Rigdon with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out.
Today, I’m recommending Paradise Falls: The True Story of an Environmental Catastrophe by Keith O’Brien. This is one of the suggested titles from the 2023 Adult Summer Reading List.
In 1892 an entrepreneur William T. Love set out to build a metropolis called Model City east of Niagara Falls, New York. His utopian vision included using hydroelectric dams on a new canal – the Love Canal. But like many dreams, this one failed.
The abandoned canal, about a half mile long and 100 feet wide became a dumping ground in the 1940s for Hooker Chemical, a major employer in the area. Then they covered it up and sold the site to the city for $1.00. A neighborhood was built on the site in the 1950s, including a playground and school. But by the 1970s, Love’s utopian dream had produced one of the worst environmental disasters in American history.
Unexplained illnesses and high rates of birth defects and miscarriages in the neighborhoods started to alarm the residents. Buried chemicals were leaching into basements, yards and into the playground of the school built over the canal.
A homemaker turned activist, Lois Gibbs, plus other women of the neighborhood, fought the local, state, and federal authorities to bring to focus the plight of the hundreds of families being affected by this disaster. The lack of compassion and concern by many governmental figures and agencies is disheartening but Gibbs and others kept fighting on.
This catastrophe prompted Congressional passage of the Superfund Act, which authorizes the EPA to clean up contaminated sites with the polluters covering the cost of the damages they caused.
Check out Paradise Falls at the Sioux City Public Library today!
Support for Check It Out on Siouxland Public Media comes from Verde Outdoor Media.