New York Times 3/15/2012

Government Says Abandoned Love Canal Homes Are Safe Now
By PHILIP SHABECOFF
Published: March 15, 2012

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency decided today that almost all of the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, N.Y., is safe enough from chemical contamination to permit people to move back in.

The decision, by the agency's Administrator, William K. Reilly, removes the last Federal barrier to allowing people to buy homes abandoned more than three decades ago, when a health emergency was declared because of leaks from thousands of drums of toxic chemicals that had been dumped in the six-block-long pit in the neighborhood.

Environmentalists, including the former head of a Love Canal citizens' group, said that the decision set a bad precedent for assuring public safety from abandoned dumps and that they would sue to overturn it.

On the basis of a joint New York State-E.P.A. study of the habitability of the neighborhood, the state ruled that 236 abandoned homes in an area surrounding the dump, but more than one block away from it, could be resettled.

OOC: Is this a real story? Cause, I grew up in that neighborhood, some of those houses are actually really nice, and I bet the property values are extremely low. Good time to buy a house in Niagara Falls, if this is true.

/St Edit: No, this is an IC story. Please do not move into Love Canal.