By the late 1970s, the odor seemed just about everywhere on the east side of Niagara Falls, New York, in a neighborhood with thousands of residents and two area public schools. Noxious fumes seeped into basements. The stench filled backyards. It clung to one engineer's sweater for days after his visit. A chemical stain appeared on the bed sheets of one factory worker. The odor was spreading from drums the Hooker Chemical Company had unceremoniously dumped decades prior in an unfinished canal.
That canal was built by a shady developer who — in journalist Keith O'Brien's telling — had skipped town by 1896. His name was William Love. The neighborhood built atop the toxic landfill would become a household name, cultural shorthand for catastrophe: Love Canal.
