Since the 1920s, several companies and the United States Armed Forces used the Love Canal as a chemical disposal site. In 1942, Hooker Chemical Company began disposing chemical waste at the site and, in 1947, it became the sole owner and user of the land. In 1952, the site was filled to capacity and closed off. The company leased the land to the school board in 1953. Later in the 1950s, the local school board requested that the company sell the land, and threatened to use eminent domain. The school board intended to build a school on an unused area of the dump.