Cuyahoga River Fire Essay

This paper focuses on the plight of the Cuyahoga River, its history of pollution, and the environmental movements it helped create. The river has been highly degraded due to toxic substances and bacterial contamination, which has contributed to loss of biodiversity ("About Cuyahoga River AOC," 2016). 1 On June 22nd, 1969, the river caught fire one last time. Time magazine heard of the fire and published a story. It caught the attention of the entire nation describing the Cuyahoga as the river that “oozes rather than flows” ("CuyahogaRiver6," 2008). However, the nine previous fires went mostly unnoticed: 2 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, and 1952 – the 1952 fire caused nearly $1.5 million in damage. The 1969 fire burned only 24 minutes and there is no photo known to exist (Rotman, 2017). Clearly, a river fire affects the river itself and Lake Erie – no fish and no recreational abilities has an impact on the economy. The past 48 years have been spent creating laws, government agencies, and developing sustainable answers to

The 1969 fire that caught a nation’s attention happened due to the industrial waste dumped into it. There were all kinds of signs around Lake Erie – no swimming, no boating, use at your own risk, and polluted water. According to Ben Stefanski, the utilities director of Cleveland at the time, he remembers that all the industries would dump their waste into the water. 3 It’s just what the river was there for ("How a burning river helped create the Clean Water Act," 2017). Water pollution didn’t seem to bother residents much. It was viewed as a cost of doing business that had brought success to the city (Rotman, 2017). The city of Cleveland was booming in the oil and steel industries. It became an important trading town and was the source for coal and iron ore (Kovasity,