Join the UB Alumni Association for a powerful session featuring author and UB Law School instructor Christen E. Civiletto.

Christen will discuss how the major chemical kingpins of the 20th century relentlessly and indiscriminately laid waste to Niagara Falls, New York, as revealed in her eye-opening, harrowing, intimate new book, Thundering Waters: The Toxic Legacy of Niagara Falls. Expertly interweaving environmental crime, history, and memoir, Thundering Waters exposes the astonishing story of exploitation and ongoing abuse lurking in the shadows of one of the world’s most treasured natural wonders.

Few images from the natural world conjure the same awe, power, and amazement as Niagara Falls. Each year, millions flock from around the world to hear the roar of the falls, feel and smell the spray, and maybe take in the sight up close by boat. What they don’t know—nor do most of the locals—is that the city of Niagara Falls is the setting of one of the most shocking and horrific tales of environmental desecration of the past hundred plus years.

By virtue of the Falls’ might, Niagara Falls was the birthplace of the commercial electro-chemical industry—and for decades, those massive corporations dumped, buried, vented, incinerated, and piled their millions of tons of toxic waste in the surrounding farmlands, rivers, meadows, and empty lots. Venture just away from the Falls, and you’ll find the bones of a decrepit city. Its residents are plagued by major health problems, often at rates that far exceed state and national averages. The harm is ongoing and generational. As in all such cases, the poor and marginalized bear the brunt of the injury.

Christen E. Civiletto, BA '90, is an environmental lawyer, author, law school adjunct at SUNY Buffalo Law, and former Niagara Falls resident. She earned her law degree from Vanderbilt Law School and has spearheaded litigation on behalf of hundreds of sick Niagara County residents in high-profile toxic tort cases against municipalities and major chemical polluters. Christen is a summa cum laude graduate from the University at Buffalo.

As a Niagara Falls resident, every place she lived, learned, worked, played, or swam was in the crosshairs of a hazardous waste site or prodigious polluter. Her first family home fell within the Goodyear plume, among others. Her next family home was across from the poisoned creek surrounding the notorious Love Canal. Three generations of her family members worked at the local chemical conglomerates. After her father was diagnosed with a rare and deadly cancer associated with dioxin or plutonium/uranium exposure, she realized that she was prematurely losing too many classmates, friends, and cousins to cancer or illness. She herself is a cancer survivor.

Civiletto conducted more than twenty-three years’ worth of research into Niagara Falls’ industrial and chemical history and interviewed over two thousand current and former Niagara Falls residents. That work not only supported years of environmental litigation, but it also has informed Thundering Waters: The Toxic Legacy of Niagara Falls.

Civiletto is also the co-host of the popular BOOKSTORM Podcast, on which she has interviewed hundreds of authors, including Barbara Kingsolver, David Baldacci, Gregg Hurwitz, Caroline Fraser, Daniel Silva, Marshall Karp, Fiona Davis, and many more beloved writers.

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