Environmental Regulations

  Background

This period begins with passage of significant environmental regulations, including the Clean Water Act. What happens to convince Congress and the American public to take steps to protect the nation’s water?

In the late 1960s, two notable environmental catastrophes take place that change public sentiment for decades to come. The first occurs on June 22, 1969 when an oil slick and assorted debris catch fire under a railroad trestle on the Cuyahoga River, which flows through Cleveland, Ohio and into Lake Erie. This fire becomes a symbol of “a planet in disrepair and an ever-deepening environmental crisis” (Adler 2004).

While the fire on the Cuyahoga River is real, the magnitude of its consequences becomes exaggerated. The fire is intense; however, it lasts less than 30 minutes, not long enough for the news media to get there to photograph the catastrophe. The photograph associated with this fire is actually from a fire that occurred in 1952 (Figure 39).

Burning rivers are common in industrialized areas throughout the late 19th and early 20th century. Clean up of the Cuyahoga and other rivers begins before the fire of 1969.

Figure 39: Burning Cuyahoga River (Pratie Place)

In 1968, the people of Cleveland approve $100 million to finance cleanup of the river. By 1966, every state has adopted water pollution legislation of some type. Even though there are few water quality data available to evaluate the status of water quality, data from the first National Water Quality Inventory in 1973 finds significant improvements in organic waste and bacterial levels in most of the nation’s waters.

As a result, some believe that the 1969 fire is not a sign of an environmental catastrophe:

The 1969 fire was a catalyst for change because it was the wrong event at the right time. It was neither an impressive fire, not one with a significant ecological impact. It may have brought greater attention to the serious environmental problems of the time, but it did not represent a continuing decline in water quality, let alone worsening environmental degradation nationwide. Contrasted with the relevant indifference to burning rivers in decades past, the public outcry over the 1969 fire signified that increasingly wealthy Americans now wanted to devote greater resources to environmental protection - and they likely would have even in the absence of federal regulations (Adler 2004).