Environment: The Neighborhood off Fear

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Carter orders a further evacuation from polluted Love Canal

Robert Kott loved the small, neat home overlooking Black Creek in the southeastern corner of Niagara Falls, N.Y., a grimy industrial town near the Canadian border. In the 14 years since he acquired it the muscular chemical worker has spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours painting, insulating and otherwise caring for his precious property. But last week Kott called it quits, shuttering up the house and fleeing with his wife Joann and their five children, ages seven to 15. Said he: "I don't mind telling you we've been scared for a long time, scared for our lives."

So, too, were many of the Kotts' neighbors. Over 700 families in all, they live around Love Canal, the notorious, stinking chemical sewer that has become a symbol of the country's growing toxic waste problem. For the past two years, one report after another has told harrowing tales of noxious odors leaking into homes, of sinister-colored sludge seeping into basements, of children playing in potholes of pollutants and, worst of all, of abnormally high rates of miscarriages and birth defects, of nerve, respiratory, liver and kidney disorders and of assorted cancers among people of Love Canal.

When the nature of this toxic time bomb finally became fully understood in 1978, New York State relocated 239 families whose homes were closest to the dump (cost: $37 million).

But many homeowners who were left behind in the surrounding streets remained convinced that the malignancy of Love Canal had spread beyond what the state called this "first circle" of contamination. And they have been clamoring ever since for help — from the local government, the state, Washington, anyone.