“They knew enough. And what they did know was alarming. Instead of remediating or evacuating families, they allowed people to build homes and continue living in them. Those families had no idea that some of the most toxic substances ever invented by mankind were in the soil below their homes. It is inexcusable. This type of wrongful conduct is repeated over and over in Niagara Falls.” — Environmental Attorney Denise Civiletto
The Fireman and the Island
The call came in sometime in the early 1950s — a dump fire on the western end of Cayuga Island. In the Niagara Falls Fire Department, calls like this one were not rare events. They were a feature of life in an industrial city, as routine in their way as the hum of turbines at the power plants along the gorge. A crew climbed aboard. The truck crossed the narrow bridge that connected the island to the mainland and rolled west along the rivershore drive toward the source of the glow…