Deja vu, anyone?

“If I had ever been here before I would probably know what to do. Don’t you? And I feel like I've been here before.”

Love Canal is back. The reality is ugly. Apologies to David Crosby, but I feel like I have been here before.

Christen Civiletto spent about 5 years writing her book “Thundering Waters.” She is a Niagara Falls native and attorney who evolved organically to become an expert on the toxic legacy that flows under, through and over Niagara Falls as well as the government bureaucracy that works to hide the truth and minimize panic.

Civiletto’s book was published by Princeton University Press and is available at The Book Corner in Niagara Falls as well as other stores. She spoke Thursday at The Niagara Falls Book Circle at Holy Trinity Church, the historic Polish site on Falls Street.

The book documents her experience, from growing up to attending Vanderbilt Law School, practicing law in Atlanta and returning home for high school reunions to find friends dying of rare cancers to watching her own father succumb. She had friends suffering from multiple sclerosis, lupus and a rare form of melanoma. In Georgia, she knew few people who were battling cancer, if any. The disparity was remarkable.

The discussion began with Civiletto’s book but mostly focused on the toxic legacy in our midst.

As an attorney, she was counsel of record for more recent Love Canal victims. Those lawsuits were dismissed in New York a few years ago largely on a legal technicality.

She evolved into an expert and, as her book published, was in the perfect place for the residents of the Town of Niagara recently beset by revelations of radioactive waste used as fill in their neighborhood.

About that timing

The timing of the book’s release is chilling, particularly as the Town of Niagara neighborhood’s crisis comes to light and Civiletto, along with a team of experts, is helping the residents figure out a way forward.

As the story begins to spread, suddenly the author, with a new book on the shelf, is getting calls from numerous media outlets.

Thursday she spoke not only of the Town of Niagara but of the ongoing issues with Love Canal and the Falls Street tunnel.

The flow of waste

Before the conduits were constructed in the late 1950s to carry water from the upper Niagara River to Lewiston, where Robert Moses stole land from the Tuscarora for a reservoir, groundwater from the chemical plants along Buffalo Avenue flowed under Robert Moses Parkway and into the upper river.

When those tunnels were put in place under the Falls Street tunnel (they are perpendicular to one another), polluted groundwater from seven sites began infiltrating that tunnel and flowing away from the river, undergroundwith the discharge from the wastewater treatment plant under the city to where it is expelled just north of the Rainbow Bridge.

The failing Love Canal liner

Meanwhile, Civiletto raises the question as to whether the 42-year-old cap on the Love Canal landfill is failing. The plastic membrane, just a bit thicker than a credit card, was designed to last about 20 years before replacement.

A disturbing trend in her research is black and orange ooze in people's basements and teenagers moving into basement bedrooms only to fall ill and have their pets get sick as well. It is too disturbing, and too frequent, to be coincidental.

Civiletto was introduced by Linda Graves who compared the potential impact of Thundering Waters to Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” which changed the way the world viewed miracle chemicals like DDT.

As she researched things during her father’s progressive illness, she became aware of 89 different hazardous waste sites close to where she had lived and every school she had attended.

She learned more about Love Canal waste dumped off Forbes Street in North Tonawanda. Litigation over that mess is now in Year 9. The toxic burden of the heavy metals and chemicals like dioxin come with harsh impact, for example, compromised tooth enamel resulting in bad teeth. Often, people in Niagara Falls think bad teeth are normal because everyone else suffers the same way.

Mental health impact is immeasurable

Mental health is a component of the crisis as well. These chemicals are neurotoxins, and people across the region have had significant exposure. The Niagara County suicide rate is nearly double the state average. On one street she encountered as part of her research, multiple people reported tachycardia, rashes and sick pets in numbers to great be coincidental if not related to adjacent toxicity.

Meanwhile, many houses in the former Love Canal neighborhood were purchased, fixed up and sold to families at a discount while bureaucrats from the Environmental Protection Agency assured people they were safe because they were moving into the most tested community in the world because there were test wells everywhere.

About that stuff oozing in the basement

The trouble is the nastiest phase of the pollutants, non aqueous phase liquid doesn’t flow into those test wells, Civiletto explained. Instead it shows up in sumps and drains.

While most of what Civiletto talked about was the legacy of sites like Bloody Run and Love Canal, the most recent government coverup related to the radioactive contamination from uranium processing related to the Manhattan Project. Leftover product was used as fill in places like Lewiston Road in Niagara Falls, where it became evident during road construction.

The first radiation issue

It also was used around homes on Upper Mountain Road in Lewiston where a family suffered a loss from breast cancer allegedly caused by contaminated fill. The Department of Environmental Conservation delayed aerial surveying for another 6 to 7 years until 2023 and 2024. A mobile survey, including more than 1,000 miles of driving, occurred in 2025.

Even then, the DEC has been reticent to release raw data. Instead, it sent letters to the homeowners in the Town of Niagara asking them to waive their rights to compensation if they wanted further testing. Civiletto presented it as illegal coercion.

The state has declined to release that raw data, claiming it needs to protect homeowners from false positives. Civiletto counters privacy rights are trumped by a public health crisis.

Politicians like Town of Niagara Supervisor Sylvia Virtuoso would rather minimize the crisis than speak truth and jeopardize home values, at least in the opinion of the Niagara Express which also believes the same level of denial is occurring on Grand Island.

Ultimately, Civiletto said, Niagara Falls needs a new sewer system. Much of what needs to be done needs to be paid for by the legacy polluters, billion dollar corporations still in existence.

For now, Civiletto will keep tilting at windmills. She may be back next month when the book will be discussed again, this time after most of the crowd has had a chance to read it.

Back to Crosby:

“And you know, it makes me wonder

“What's going on under the ground

“Do you know?

"Don't you wonder

“What's going on down under you?”