The famous photo of the Cuyahoga River fire that appeared in Time Magazine. The photo is not of the 1969 blaze, but rather of another fire on the river in 1952. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)
Four decades ago, one event changed how much
of the nation viewed environmental issues. The Cuyahoga River caught fire. Now a filmmaker is
releasing a documentary on the burning river and how it
became a catalyst for change. Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
Four decades ago, one event changed how much
of the nation viewed environmental issues. The Cuyahoga River caught fire. Now a filmmaker is
releasing a documentary on the burning river and how it
became a catalyst for change. Julie Grant reports:
People viewed things much differently in the middle of the
20th century than they do today. Pollution was an obscure
term, and smokestacks were a sign of prosperity.
“And like a good sign in the heavens, is the smoke from
these mills. A sign of the forgings and castings and sheets
and wire products to come.”
That old film sets the scene for a documentary called The
Return of the Cuyahoga River .
It wasn’t just smokestacks, but sewer pipes the spewed out
gunk.
As mills manufactured paints, varnishes and oils, the color of
the river changed daily.
In the documentary, longtime river-man Wayne Bratton says
it could turn orange, red, blue or green – depending on the
color paint mills were making.
“Fifty years ago, the river boiled like a cauldron. This was all
very black, high petroleum content. Anoxic. And just
constantly bubbling like a stew on a stove.”
And prime for catching fire. But, 1969 was not the first time
the Cuyahoga caught on fire, and it wasn’t the only river to
burn.
Jonathon Adler is a professor at Case Western Reserve Law
School in Cleveland. In the film, he says that, at that time,
It wasn’t even surprising for a river to catch fire.
“It wasn’t just in Cleveland where we had industrial river
fires. This occurred on the Rouge River in Michigan, the
Chicago river, the Schuykill river in Philadelphia. The
Baltimore harbor. All of these areas caught fire due to the
collection of industrial waste and debris that at the time
wasn’t being cleaned up.”
The film-maker who’s responsible for the documentary on
the Cuyahoga, Larry Hott, says at the time it barely made
the news. It wasn’t until six weeks later when Time
Magazine ran an article about the fire in its new “Environment”
section.
“This was just after the moon shot, the first landing, and it
was also just after Ted Kennedy’s incident at Chapaquitic.
And this turned out to be the best selling magazine in time
magazine’s history. So millions of people saw this story.
And then people started talking about it – ‘what do you
mean, a river caught on fire?’”
After the Time Magazine article, the Cuyahoga became the
poster child of the environmental movement. In the
documentary, Professor Jonathon Adler says people were
astonished.
“One consequence of the Cuyahoga fire was greater political
pressure for additional federal legislation. And one of the
things that led to was the Clean Water Act of 1972, when the
federal government really increased dramatically its role in
helping to maintain water quality.”
The Clean Water Act and other federal regulations stopped
factories from dumping waste directly into rivers.
Many of the nation’s rivers are still being cleaned up. The
Cuyahoga still has problems, but it’s much cleaner than it
was a few decades ago. The documentary producer, Larry
Hott, says he recently took a boat into the river and was
surprised by the beauty of the Cuyahoga.
“You can save a river. It’s a symbol of hope. It gives us
hope – that after everything has gone wrong, after the cities
have burned and the river has burned, it can come back, and
we can be hopeful about the environment.
For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.
