Cuyahoga River Fire Galvanized Clean Water and the Environment as a Public Issue

[depakid]

Firefighters battle a fire on Ohio's Cuyahoga River in 1952. The 1969 blaze, one of nine on the river since 1868, came at a time of increasing environmental awareness and symbolized years of environmental neglect. This, in turn, helped spur grassroots activism that resulted in a wave of federal legislation devoted to clean air, clean water, and natural resource protection.
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Environmentalists observing 2009 as "The Year of the River" are celebrating the remarkable return to health of the Cuyahoga River over the last four decades. But before there was a Cuyahoga comeback, the Cuyahoga was a catalyst.

When the oily, murky and sluggish waterway caught fire in June 1969, it not only caught the attention of a previously indifferent industrial nation -- it also ignited an already smoldering ecological movement. That movement toward environmental responsibility included the first Earth Day and passage of the federal Clean Water Act of 1972, still the most influential water improvement measure on the books.

"The fire did contribute a huge amount to the new environmental movement and it put the issue in front of everyone else, too," said Jonathan Adler, environmental historian and law professor at Case Western Reserve University. "Water pollution became a tangible, vivid thing -- like it had never been on a national level.

"There was a sense of crisis at that point. It was: Oh, my God -- rivers are catching on fire.' "

Of course, raging rivers of fire weren't unheard of in Cleveland. In fact, the Cuyahoga had burned at least nine times since the late 1860s. The river was increasingly filled with flammable liquids as it drained Cleveland industrial byproducts into an equally polluted Lake Erie. Oil slicks on the river surface burned much worse in the past. Among them: A 1912 fire had killed five dock workers when the blaze spread to the shipyards and a 1952 fire caused an estimated $1.5 million in damage.

But while some of those earlier disasters had commanded banner headlines in The Plain Dealer and the now-defunct Cleveland Press, they didn't appear to dent the broader consciousness of an American public focused on economic progress. "In both Cleveland papers, the news was the damaged trestles, not the burning river," write history professor David Stradling of the University of Cincinnati and brother-journalist Richard Stradling. The duo's paper, "Perceptions of a Burning River," was published in the July 2008 Environmental History magazine.

"Remember, a lot of people saw a filthy river as a sign of progress, not a problem at all," Adler said.

More: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/04/12

[XemaSab]

1. I think Nixon gets a bad rap

I've said it before and I'll say it again: he signed into law ALL our important national environmental legislation.

[Captain Hilts]

3. VERY true. nt

[depakid]

5. Great bit of history on that:

With major props to Rachel Carsen, doubtlessly one of your heroes and mine:

http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/epa/15c.htm

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. Nixon was a political animal

Ecology was a hot "button" topic at the time.


http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=247072

Roberts Helps Devise McGovern Ecology Policy

Published On Tuesday, October 10, 1972 12:00 AM
By JEREMY S. BLUHM

A young Harvard economist played a key role in the preparation of a comprehensive environmental policy statement released Sunday by the McGovern-Shriver campaign.

Serving as executive director of McGovern's advisory panel on environmental issues, Marc J. Roberts '64, associate professor of Economics, worked with members of McGovern's "issues" staff in assembling and selecting the proposals that went into the statement.

…

The statement begins with an attack on President Nixon's environmental record, which it calls "fertile with rhetoric but barren in performance." It charges that the Nixon administration has attempted to weaken proposed legislation, that it has failed to spend millions of dollars appropriated for environmental protection, and that it has failed to enforce existing legislation "energetically or effectively."

The remainder of the statement is devoted to McGovern's "agenda for environmental action." The "main initiatives," according to the statement, include these:

…

Nixon responded to public pressure. In those days, the ecology movement had a lot of public backing. As for Nixon (frankly) ecological legislation was a bone he could throw to all of the lefties who didn't like "The War."

[Webster Green]

2. The great Randy Newman wrote a song about it..

'Burn On', from the album 'Sail Away'

There's a red moon rising
On the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There's a red moon rising
ON the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There's an oil barge winding
Down the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There's an oil barge winding
Down the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

Cleveland city of light city of magic
Cleveland city of light you're calling me
Cleveland, even now I can remember
'Cause the Cuyahoga River
Goes smokin' through my dreams

Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on
Now the Lord can make you tumble
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can't make you burn

Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on

-Randy Newman

[Captain Hilts]

4. Didn't the mayor's hair catch fire that year also? nt

[Berry Cool]

6. No, that was a few years later.

He was trying to open a new steel plant by cutting a steel ribbon with an acetylene torch.

[Enthusiast]

7. People don't understand what we had

as a resource in Lake Erie, the other Great Lakes and The Ohio River. At one time these bodies of water were the greatest freshwater fisheries on earth. Consider for a moment, the most commonly harvested commercial fish in Lake Erie, the blue pickerel, a subspecies of walleye, is now extinct. And the lake sturgeon is nearly extinct. Both fish were an incredible source of protein for native inhabitants for centuries. Pollution and uncontrolled commercial fishing caused the damage. Today's recreational angler thinks Lake Erie has recovered from the ravages of pollution and overfishing-nothing could be further from the truth.

Sauger and walleye stack up below the dams on the Ohio River by the millions as they unsuccessfully try to make their spawning runs to the headwaters of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Muskingum rivers. These once great commercial fish are so full of mercury, dioxin and other chemical pollution that they remain unsafe to eat.

[pscot]

9. I once watched a guy on a fishing show

dress out a 5 lb coho taken from lake Erie. By the time he was done removing the parts most likely to concentrate toxic waste he was left with a couple of fillets that weighed less than a pound each.

[Enthusiast]

10. Yes, I've seen the same. And most anglers

don't take the time and care to remove the fatty portions. Such a shame.

I have an old issue of Fishing Facts Magazine. The magazine included the original voting record for the Clean Water Act. Only a scant few Republicans voted yes. I guess their aim was to protect the corporations, and their right to pollute, at any cost.