A Brief Alert To NAL Readers – This Monday Night at 9 P.M., A TV Doc. On The Love Canal Disaster

Posted by Doug Draper, Niagara At Large publisher and a veteran environment reporter for the once independent St. Catharines Standard

Monday, September 8^th, 2025

This Monday night at 9p.m., if you get the PBS channel (WNED) out of Buffalo, N.Y. that public broadcast network will be playing a two-hour long American Experience documentary called “Poisoned Gound- The Tragedy At Love Canal”  in Niagara Falls, New York.

That disaster, which unfolded in Niagara Falls, New York in the mid-to-late 1970s, destroyed an entire neighbourhood and wreaked havoc on the lives of hundreds of mostly working class families as toxic chemicals buried under and around their homes oozed to the surface of the ground and leaked into surrounding creeks flowing to the Niagara River and ultimately, Lake Ontario.

One of the many abaondoned homes in the Love Canal neighbourhood in Niagara Falls, New York.

This disaster, which triggered not one, but two federal disaster declarations from the White House of then U.S. President Jimmy Carter, also raised public awareness on both sides of the Niagara River about toxic chemicals reading the international waterway from numerous dumps and industrial pipes near the Niagara River’s shore.

While not featured in the Love Canal documentary, the late Margherita Howe, a resident of Niagara-on-the-Lake, will be there in spirit. In the wake of that disaster, she received an Order of Canada medal for her work leading an environmental group called Operation Clean, pressing for governments to stop the dumping of toxic chemicals into the Niagara River and Lake Ontario.

Ultimately, it resulted in an epic battle by citizens groups in Niagara, Ontario and Niagara and Erie Counties, N.Y. to successfully press their governments to sign and act on a cleanup agreement for the Niagara River.

This reporter was there, covering all of this, and I would argue that one of the reasons why this documentary is important to watch now is that with the current U.S. President, Donald Trump, now gutting environmental rules and the agencies that enforce them, a disaster like this could very well happen again.

It is up to we, the people, on both sides of the Niagara River, to fight together to make sure that doesn’t happened.

• Doug Draper, Niagara At Large, former environment reporter for the once proud and independent St. Catharines Standard

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