News

“It is, of course, possible that these multiple cases are not connected to one another,” they said, “but out of abundance of caution, we are looking into any environmental factors at the school that may be a factor in their diagnoses.”

Although the high school was constructed in 2012, the evaluation will include research into any previous uses of the site.

That sort of thing does seem to be a good checkbox to tick off when one is building schools.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal

By the end of the 1940s, Hooker Chemical Company was searching for a place to dispose its large quantity of chemical waste. The Niagara Power and Development Company granted Hooker permission during 1942 to dump wastes into the canal. The canal was drained and lined with thick clay. Into this site, Hooker began placing 55-US-gallon (210 L) drums. In 1947, Hooker bought the canal and the 70-foot-wide (21 m) banks on either side of the canal.[16] It subsequently converted it into a 16-acre (6.5 ha) landfill.[17]

During March 1951, the school board prepared a plan showing a school being built over the canal and listing condemnation values for each property that would need to be acquired.[22] During March 1952, the superintendent of Niagara Falls School Board inquired of Hooker with regard to purchasing the Love Canal property for the purpose of constructing a new school.

Despite the disclaimer, the School Board began construction of the 99th Street School in its originally intended location.

Not long after having taken control of the land, the Niagara Falls School Board proceeded to develop the land, including construction activity that substantially breached containment structures in a number of ways, allowing previously trapped chemicals to seep out.

Over the next three decades, Love Canal attracted national attention for the public health problems originating from the former dumping of toxic waste on the grounds. This event displaced numerous families, leaving them with longstanding health issues and symptoms of high white blood cell counts and leukemia. Subsequently, the federal government passed the Superfund law in 1980. The resulting Superfund cleanup operation demolished the neighborhood, ending in 2004.

When the state of New York stepped in to Love Canal in April 1978, 230 adults and 134 children lived in the homes with backyards directly on the canal, 410 student went to the elementary school, and 2,618 people lived in homes spread not more than four blocks from the landfill.

Love Canal was not an isolated case. Eckardt C. Beck suggested that there are probably hundreds of similar dumpsites.[75] President Carter declared that discovering these dumpsites was "one of the grimmest discoveries of the modern era".