When I was living in Cleveland in 1969, the shores of Lake Erie were littered with dead fish and an oil slick on the Cuyahoga River, which snakes through the center of town, famously caught on fire. The main cause? Industrial pollution. For decades, the steel mills and other factories that lined the river had been spewing toxins into the air and dumping raw, untreated chemicals into the water, which emptied into the lake. I distinctly remember the rotten egg smell of sulfur dioxide hanging over the Flats whenever we went downtown.
The Cuyahoga fire, along with a major oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara that same year, galvanized national attention and led to the first Earth Day, a slew of new air and water protection laws, and the creation of new federal departments to administer them, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Today, our air and water…
Read the full article originally published at blog.ucsusa.org.