Love Canal Incident

iii. Love Canal Incident

Love Canal is an area close to Niagara Falls in the USA. It takes its name from an old waterway that over several years was used by the Hooker Chemical company as a dump site for its toxic wastes. The canal was covered and the land was sold off to a developer. On the land were built a school and houses into which families moved with no knowledge of what lay beneath the ground.

During the 1970s it became clear that the chemicals were seeping through the ground contaminating the residents, although studies of their effects proved inconclusive. In 1978 a state emergency was declared at the site and hundreds of families were evacuated. The incident prompted the establishment of the ‘superfund’ for environmental repair and led to an awareness that the vast bulk of American toxic waste were being disposed of without due care. In 1995, the company responsible was sued for $129 million by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

iv. Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

The oil spill which occurred when the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a coral reef off the coast of Alaska is considered to be the second largest disaster which destroyed nature, after the Union Carbide gas leak.

On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez was moving South West after leaving Port Valdez. The ship was carrying over fifty million gallons of crude oil. When the Valdez was only twenty-eight miles from the port, it ran aground on Bligh reef. The bottom was ripped open, and 10.9 million gallons of North Slope Crude Oil spilled into the frozen Alaskan waters at a rate of two hundred thousand gallons per minute. The remaining forty-two million gallons were off loaded. In the ensuing days, more than 1,200 miles of shoreline were hit with oil. This area included four National Wildlife Refugees, three National Parks, and Chugach

National Forest 38 .

v. Ballard v. Tomlinson

The Court held that no person has the right to contaminate a source which is common to everyone so as to prevent his neighbor from using it 39 .

vi. Hungary Sludge (River Danube Pollution)

On 4th October 2010, a reservoir at an alumina plant in Ajka, Hungary burst releasing an estimated 1 million cubic meters of sludge. The alkaline sludge was released into tributaries of the Danube (Europe's longest river). By Thursday the sludge reached the Danube despite emergency officials trying to neutralize the alkaline with clay and acids. PH levels in the river initially climbed up to 9 but started to fall as it became diluted and neutralized. The spill has caused huge environmental damage over large areas and claimed the lives of seven people, mostly from the 2 meter high flood when the reservoir broke. MAL Hungarian Aluminum the company behind the spill is owned by three of Hungary's richest men. The company released $150,000 to help with clean up costs.

38 Available at: http://schoolworkhelper.net/exxon-valdez-oil-spill-overview-summary/. 39 (1885) 29 Ch. D. 1115.

vii. China (Songhua River) 40

The pollution in the Songhua River began after 3,000 barrels of explosive chemicals were washed into the river after a heavy flood. The Chinese and the Russian officials were worried about the fact that the chemicals may impact drinking water supplies. Drinking water for the Chinese city of Jilin is taken from the river and the Russian city of Khabarovsk also uses water from the river for drinking. China had the worst record of river pollution. Whenever rivers are polluted the chance of the pollution incident becoming regional or trans-boundary is increased.

viii. Chernobyl Accident 41

The accident which took place in the year 1986 in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is the only accident in the history of commercial nuclear power plant to cause damage to both human life and pristine environment. The accident occurred due to a flaw in a reactor design along with human error.

ix. Trans-boundary pollution of Arctic 42

It has been found that persistent organic pollutants (POPs), heavy metals and radio-nuclides which are released into the environment from industrialized parts of the world are transported to the Arctic through rivers, oceans and the atmosphere. Once in the Arctic, many pollutants accumulate in food webs where some bio-magnify to levels at which adverse effects are seen in wildlife and humans. The indigenous people of Arctic are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of these pollutants through their traditional diet including marine mammals and other aquatic species.

40 Available at: http://greenfieldgeography.wikispaces.com/Transboundary+pollution. 41 Available at: https://www.nei.org/Master-Document-Folder/Backgrounders/Fact-

Sheets/Chernobyl-Accident-And-Its-Consequences.

42 Trans-boundary pollution in a changing Arctic- white paper prepared for the Arctic Observing Summit, Vancouver, April 30- May 2, 2013, by Jason Stow, Russel Shearer, Hayley Hung, Sandy

Steffen, Tom Harner, Birgit Braune and Meredith Curren.

x. Chile Air Case

This is case plays a very important role in explaining the impact of intense air pollution caused due to large quantities of harmful gases released into the atmosphere without any impact assessment.

The court in this case stated that the impact of air pollution is as follows:

a. Costs of cleaning,

b. Reduced vegetation and agricultural productivity,

c. Vision impairment,

d. Loss of revenue from tourism,

e. Closing down of schools during emergencies,

f. Restricting the functioning of industries, and

g. Limiting the number of vehicle on road.