The first and only documentary on the Dewey Loeffel Landfill Superfund site in Rensselaer County will be screened at the Berkshire Atheneum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts at 6:30 tonight. Titled “Love Canal X 2 — A Landfill Dilemma in Nassau, NY,” the film explores the ongoing impact of toxic waste dumped in the community of around 4,500 in the 1950s and 1960s.
Ahead of the screening, filmmaker Barbara Reina told WAMC that her goal is to shed light on an underdiscussed environmental crisis that’s continually expanding.
REINA: This has been going on for longer than I’ve been alive. It’s been going on for over 60 years, where this site on Mead Road has twice the toxins of Love Canal, 46,000 tons of toxins that were dumped between about 1952 and 1968. That cleanup continues, and it’s spread to Little Thunder Brook, it’s spread to Nassau Lake, and, more recently, a staging site where Dewey Loeffel used to live on State Route 203 and Sweets Crossings [Road] has become a state Superfund site…