WEBVTT

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ARTHUR TRACY:
I want to say something.

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I'm sure that God is not going
to send me to hell,

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because I found it
here on Earth.

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(crowd laughing and applauding)

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I'm 65 years old, almost.

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I'm sick and tired

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of being a yo-yo,

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pulled this way,
pulled that way,

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pulled the other way!

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(crowd cheers and applauds)

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Now, somebody's gonna say to me,
"What do you want, Mr. Tracy,

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after 35 years
in this Love Canal?"

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Well, I'll tell you what I want.

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Just give me my 28.5

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that you appraised my house for.

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WOMAN:
All right!

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TRACY:
All I want is my 28.5,

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and give it to me tonight,

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and I'll go down that road,

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and I'll never look back
at the Love Canal again!

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(crowd cheering and applauding)

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CROWD (chanting):
We want out!

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We want out! We want out!

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We want out!

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We want out! We want out!

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♪ ♪

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BONNIE CASPER (stammers):
It was hard to believe.

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This could not happen in
the United States of America.

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REPORTER:
For years, the Love Canal
Homeowners Association

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has cited evidence of
significant health problems

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in the neighborhood.

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REPORTER 2:
Birth defects and miscarriages.

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REPORTER 3:
Severe migraine headaches.

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REPORTER 4:
Respiratory disease.

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WOMAN:
Already eight cases of cancer
on a 15-house street.

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WOMAN 2:
I thought I just had problems
with my one daughter,

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and we just found out
in January

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our other one
has rheumatoid arthritis.

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We have hearing problems
with all the children.

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Uh, the baby,
he has a deformed foot,

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so it's just,
it's just constantly, still,

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running to the hospitals
and children's hospital...

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CASPER: People were talking
about how they were ill,

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but nobody exactly knew
why they were so ill,

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or why so many people
were so ill.

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REPORTER:
Now, a quarter of a century
after it went in,

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chemical waste is coming
out of the ground, and it's...

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AMY HAY:
People had no idea
that they were

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living on top of 22,000 tons
of toxic chemicals.

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REPORTER:
Health experts found more
than 80 dangerous chemicals

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oozing to the surface.

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JENNIFER THOMSON:
All of a sudden, on a dime,

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everything blows up.

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More people are sick.

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There's, you know, black sludge

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coming into their homes.

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REPORTER:
The family is afraid to even go

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in the basement
because of high readings

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of an explosive chemical
called toluene.

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RICHARD NEWMAN:
Love Canal was the first

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chemical disaster to unfold
before Americans' eyes.

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LOIS GIBBS (archival):
We are dying, literally dying,
from benzene.

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We're getting cancers from
all these other compounds.

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Now you're talking about nerve
gas-- there's just no way...

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(in interview): It's much worse
than I even imagined.

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Certainly much worse than
what the government is saying.

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Can you tell me when I'm not
gonna lose any more children,

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because one is
already dead?

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Please tell me
those things.

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PATTI GRENZY:
It really hit it home for us

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that, at this point,
we're on our own.

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We have to make this happen.

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They're not gonna do it for us.

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So, that spurred me
to want to do something.

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We've got to do something.
I mean, the fight came to us.

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We didn't look for it.

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Each and every one of you
in this room are murderers.

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You're a bunch of
sick, sadistic people!

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PATTI GRENZY:
They looked at us
as hysterical housewives,

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and they figured,
"Oh, well, they'll give up.

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"They'll go back
to their knitting,

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and to their babies,
and this will blow over."

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But we were stronger than that.

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♪ ♪

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NEWMAN:
This incredible group

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of women become the faces
of environmental reform.

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But there was
absolutely no road map.

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BARBARA QUIMBY:
I'm sick of being a guinea pig.

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I want out.

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Test me later, but my God,

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get me out now and my kids.

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THOMSON:
The fear was that

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it could happen to all of us.

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And the thing was, it was
happening to other people,

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in places throughout
the country.

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REPORTER:
The Love Canal is merely
the tip of a dangerous

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and terrifying chemical iceberg.

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I am not moving

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until I get
an answer why.

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(in interview):
I wasn't thinking about building

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a movement
or anything like that.

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I was thinking about survival.

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(crowd jeering)

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How do we get out of here?

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We need to do something,
and I don't care what it takes.

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(projector whirring)

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♪ ♪

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QUIMBY: It was just
such a nice neighborhood.

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To a child, oh, my goodness,
we had fun there.

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A lot of times, we would just be
more near the school,

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playing baseball or something,

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but we always ended up
where the,

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what we called the Black Lagoon.

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(camera shutter clicks)

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PATTI GRENZY:
On the surface, it had, like,
an oily substance to it,

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like, a, a green and a blue.

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(shutter clicks)

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And if you dropped something
into it,

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it would bubble up and sink.

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So we called it quicksand.

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QUIMBY:
It was like a wonderland.

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We had these rocks
that we called pop rocks.

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And we used to just
slide them across,

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and they would
actually have a flame.

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It was like fire.

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And, oh, I remember, my mother
always yelled about our shoes.

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This one time,
she had bought me new sneakers.

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And I came home, and she said,

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"What? It looks like
your sneakers are burnt.

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"What happened
to all the rubber around it?

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"You're not getting
new sneakers.

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What are you doing?"

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"I'm just playing
at the school."

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(laughing):
I mean, nobody went
and investigated and said,

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"Why are these shoes burnt?"

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♪ ♪

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GIBBS:
I found the house
on 101st Street,

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the one in
the Love Canal neighborhood.

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It was starter homes
for the most part.

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(dog barking in distance)

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And it was
the perfect neighborhood,

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from my perspective.

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It had the Niagara River
to the south.

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To the north was a creek,

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and the kids could go
and walk along the creek

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and pick up pollywogs, or...

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You know,
it was just a cute, little,

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very shallow creek,
good for children.

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We moved in with Michael,
who was one years old by then,

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a healthy little boy, and,
and then we had our little girl.

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(camera shutter clicking)

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I really believed
I achieved so much.

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I had this house and a husband
who was gainfully employed

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and these beautiful children.

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Everything seemed to be fine.

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DEBBIE CERRILLO CURRY:
Love Canal was
government-subsidized.

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My husband wasn't making
very much money,

06:34.666 --> 06:41.066 align:left position:20% line:83% size:70%
and they made that a very
tasty little deal to move into.

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We paid $135 a month
to live in a brand-new home,

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which was really unusual.

06:48.766 --> 06:51.633 align:left position:12.5% line:89% size:77.5%
I wasn't going to question it.

06:51.633 --> 06:57.466 align:left position:12.5% line:83% size:77.5%
And so we felt quite lucky that
we fell in at the right time.

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I lived in Niagara Falls
all my life.

06:59.766 --> 07:02.300 align:left position:12.5% line:5% size:77.5%
And when I married, my husband
was from Niagara Falls.

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We had two boys.

07:04.666 --> 07:09.000 align:left position:25% line:83% size:65%
We saw this beautiful
brick house in Love Canal

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with one acre of land
all around it.

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And it sat on a creek,
and it was just,

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it was just ideal,
and we were thinking,

07:18.100 --> 07:20.100 align:left position:35% line:83% size:55%
"What a place
to raise your children."

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JANNIE GRANT-FREENEY:
I moved to the development
called Griffon Manor.

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It was a brand-new
housing project.

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It's a beautiful place.

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Flowers, the grass was green.

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There was, like, a little pond

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that the kids used to play in,

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and had trees and all of that,

07:40.433 --> 07:43.300 align:left position:22.5% line:83% size:67.5%
and they would swing on
the branches and what have you.

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CAROL JONES:
We had a small yard
in the front,

07:47.766 --> 07:51.600 align:left position:12.5% line:83% size:77.5%
and in the back, we would see--
I'm gonna call it water--

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but swampland
that just looked oily.

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(slide shifts)

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At times, it smelled
like burnt rubber

07:58.533 --> 08:01.066 align:left position:25% line:89% size:65%
or a strong cleanser.

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It was just a foul, foul odor.

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Often, enough to choke you.

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But we didn't pay that
any attention.

08:11.133 --> 08:14.800 align:left position:27.5% line:83% size:62.5%
It was normal to us
to smell these smells.

08:14.800 --> 08:16.166 align:left position:32.5% line:89% size:57.5%
(slide shifts)

08:16.166 --> 08:17.500 align:left position:42.5% line:83% size:47.5%
CURRY:
People always knew

08:17.500 --> 08:19.766 align:left position:15% line:83% size:75%
when they were getting close
to our home,

08:19.766 --> 08:24.266 align:left position:12.5% line:83% size:77.5%
because we had this horrendous
smell behind our house.

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Actually,
the whole neighborhood.

08:26.433 --> 08:30.400 align:left position:40% line:77% size:50%
REPORTER:
The mailman even carries a
gas mask on his delivery route.

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MAILMAN:
It smells like hell.

08:32.000 --> 08:34.700 align:left position:22.5% line:83% size:67.5%
You got that one house
at 510 99th Street.

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It's one of the worst smells
I ever had around here

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in a long, long time--
it's terrible.