The Occidental Chemical Corporation operates the Niagara Plant in Niagara Falls, NY. Here, they are making Chlorine, seventeen million pounds of it at a time. Chlorine is incredibly useful to industry due to its wild effects on organic chemistry. Lots of it is used to bleach paper; even a medium sized pulp mill can use 90 tons a week. Lots of that winds up in a river somewhere. It all comes from here. This one factory is probably responsibly for poisioning most of the midatlantic.
When talking about a huge industrial production facility like this one, the word factory is interchangable with plant. Most plants of the vegetable kind are generally pretty benign. This kind of plant is not.
Free clorine, grown here, is rare in nature and is incredibly toxic to life — so toxic that chlorine gas was used by the German Army against the French in 1915 as a weapon of war. Producers describe it as “fatal after a few breaths.” Since most uses for this stuff are industrial, accidents with chlorine tend to happen around other chemicals, and these interactions have effects that are combinatorialy more harmful to life.
Chloride, the ion Cl- on the other hand is common in nature, and is found everywhere, especially in seawater. In inland seas like the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea, places where ocean water has evaporated, it is also abundant. The cloride in these salty waters was emitted volcanically over millions of years, concentrated by the motion of water. It didn’t go away. It persisted. Manufactured chlorine also persists in the environment. It is permanent.
Most industrially produced chlorine is made through the electrolysis of brine, reusing these salts; This factory is probably placed right where it is because of the readily available water and electricity in Niagra Falls, NY. According to the EPA, over a million people would be harmed in a worst-case accident at this plant, which is why most people don’t want to live near a chlorine factory.
As toxic as chlorine is, lots of chlorine factories would be worse to live near than this one. For some incalculably stupid reason, people still make chlorine using mercury, a process invented in the 19th century. Mercury, which is then either released into the air (see pdf), or ‘lost’, also persists in the environment. When people eat fish that eat fish, the environmental mercury is concentrated and causes all sorts of serious health problems.
For some reason, the Google Maps satellite view is blurred out even though other areas around there are a much higher resolution. For this reason the image above comes from Microsoft’s TerraServer. On both you can see how the factory is positioned relative to the surrounding environment, and the effect it has on the land. As usual, click the picture to visit.
Hah, I friend and I were doing some urban exploration at an abandoned graphite factory recently just down the block from that place. Now I know where a certain peculiar smell was coming from.
Of course this is almost the next door neighbor of love canal. It might be interesting to see meaningful underground images (maybe infrared) of niagara county. It would not be a pretty picture. Most of what is above grade-level in niagara falls is pretty bleak as well.
I just want to express my disagreement with the mexican government who want to make a river dam at the Presidio River in the northwest state of Sinaloa, Mexico. This dam will flood several towns that have been there for generations since prehispanic and colonial times. It will destroy aprox 100 or more km of land destroying plants and animals native to the region. Please transmitt this message to the proper international agencies who can speak on behalf of these communities who may be forced by the government and special interest groups to leave their home towns against their will. I am really concerned because I was born in one of those towns along the presidio river near the city of Mazatlan, Sinaloa. Thank you !
Jesse Rodriguez
San Jacinto, Ca
@Marco I know what your mean. In the current economy its hard to find a career that pays well and is consistent. I have found that if you just work hard and are consistent you can go places . Look at the author of this page , they are oviously hard working and have just been consistent over time and are now enjoying at least what would appear as somewhat of a success. I would encourage everyone to just keep hustling and moving forward.