The burning river that fueled a US green movement
UC’s David Stradling cited as expert on the Cuyahoga’s role in environmental protections
An article by the BBC takes the reader back to the late 18th and 19th centuries, when prosperity in the United States was defined by the industrial revolution — a time with little regard for the pollutants that came with industrial expansion.
The article focuses on Ohio’s Cuyahoga River as the origin story for the U.S. environmental movement. The river was once so polluted by human and industrial waste that it caught fire on multiple occasions.
"The Cuyahoga was a completely dead river for decades," David Stradling, professor of history, says in the article. He says, "there were no fish, no water fowl" and the article states that those who lived nearby cautioned that if you fell in, you had to be rushed to the hospital.
Incidents of fire on the Cuyahoga were the precursor expanding The Clean Water Act in 1972: "It was late summer (1969) when Time magazine ran a story about water pollution in the United States," using photos from a prior Cuyahoga River burn, says Stradling, who co-wrote “Where the River Burned”, a history of the infamously polluted Cuyahoga, with his brother Richard Stradling.
Featured photo at top: Cleveland and the Cuyahoga River/iStock.
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