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THE START OF A JOURNEY
Love Canal was so more than a contaminated blemish on the face of America’s soil. Love Canal marked the beginning of a journey that launched a movement of working towards the prevention of environmental health harm, the prevention of exposures to toxic  chemicals present in our environment. Through the toxic emissions oozing up from people’s yards, amidst the scared and angry faces of mothers with sick children, were sewn seeds of righteous empowerment. Precisely because of the lessons learned at Love Canal by people like Lois Gibbs and her neighbors, this country has begun to move from reaction to prevention on all things toxic and potentially harmful to people and communities.
In early 1978, when Lois Gibbs first went door-to-door talking to her neighbors to find out if any of their children were suffering from severe illnesses (as was her son), little did she know that she would soon learn a toxic waste site known as Love Canal was located three blocks from her home and that it also extended underneath the 99th Street elementary school where her five year old son attended. Without knowing it, an alarmed and anxious mother, Lois Gibbs, was beginning a journey that would transform her into not only the “Mother of Superfund,” but also a soon to be mentor of this new movement. A movement whose goal has become to ensure that the harm inflicted at Love Canal would not happen again anywhere in America without a fight.
Mile Markers Along the Journey
As the case of Love Canal demonstrates, the Nation was only prepared to operate inreaction mode when it came to environmental health harm. Nor did any roadmap exist for Lois and her neighbors to follow as they were forced to begin a journey of preventingadditional health harm from coming to their families. The question became one of how to prevent Love Canals from happening to our nation’s citizens in the future; along with how to deal with those already occurring. Lois responded by founding the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste, now the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ), in 1981.
Lois’ work uncovered a key report (the Cerrell Report in 1986), it became clear that the movement would need to continue to grow in its savvyness. This report revealed long held suspicions that industries consciously planned the location of toxic landfills in areas where low income, minorities and/or elderly people resided. Not only was environmental health harm being permitted, it was purposely unjust in “choosing” its victims. The movement born at Love Canal out of reaction was now poising itself to fight for environmental justice in order to prevent harm. For a partial list of some of the key mile markers along the Love Canal journey, lessons learned in society, victories of the movement, Click here.
The Destination
We have not yet reached the destination. But we are closer. The journey of Love Canal has placed us closer to prevention than reaction because of the lessons learned, the people empowered and the accomplishments along the way. With the roadmap in hand, given to us thirty years ago during Love Canal, we are moving closer to the destination of preventing environmental health harm, a place that indeed knows zero toxic waste.
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