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Background Information

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The Love Canal Tragedy took place in the southeast section of the La Salle area of Niagara Falls, New York.

The city was named after the late 18th-century entrepreneur William T. Love who envisioned a canal connecting the two levels of the Niagara River and his plan was to incorporate a canal and would provide cheap hydroelectric power to the Niagara area. This would have been an industrial community named Model City and even though the city was never constructed due to the fluctuations of the economy along with being able to transmit electricity by alternating currents discovered by Tesla. However, the development of the canal had already begun.

The land was sold at a public auction to the city of Niagara Falls in 1920 whom then began using the property as a landfill as a municipal and industrial chemical waste disposal site. Later on, the U.S. Army also began burying waste from chemical warfare there as well.

 

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