The Love Canal Case and the Superfund Law - U.S. Environmental Policy Shift (after 1978)

The Love Canal Case and the Superfund Law - U.S. Environmental Policy Shift (after 1978)

In 1978, in Love Canal, a residential area near Niagara Falls, New York, USA, toxic chemicals leached from the ground and caused serious health problems for residents, including miscarriages, deformities, and cancer. The damage was caused by the fact that the area was once a landfill for chemical plant waste, on which homes and schools had been built. Residents' protests spread across the U.S., and the Carter administration declared a state of emergency and implemented mass relocation. This incident led to the enactment of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), the so-called Superfund law, in 1980. This law clarified the "polluter pays" principle and introduced a mechanism to require the companies involved to pay cleanup costs and compensation for past pollution. It was considered an epoch-making shift in environmental policy, especially in that it imposed "joint and several liability" on multiple companies, even if the responsible
entity was unknown. In Japan, illegal dumping of industrial waste and soil contamination were becoming problems, but no comprehensive system existed, and drastic measures were delayed until the Soil Contamination Countermeasures Law was enacted in 2002. The Love Canal incident was an opportunity to position environmental pollution as a national crisis and to spread the "polluter pays" principle internationally, and had a major impact on today's environmental regulatory framework.