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)
Federal and state governments have cut
back on monitoring some big sources of
pollution, and small sources are rarely
monitored. Lester Graham reports it’s a
problem that’s even tougher when state
budgets are cut:
Transcript
Federal and state governments have cut
back on monitoring some big sources of
pollution, and small sources are rarely
monitored. Lester Graham reports it’s a
problem that’s even tougher when state
budgets are cut:
Industry does not pollute like it did in the 1960s or 70s. Today, regulators monitor most of those big factories.
Tom Lyon is the Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan.
“Big smokestack industries we have a fairly good eye on, but there are a lot of areas that we still don’t have a good handle on.”
Like small businesses which collectively can release a lot of toxins, and farms that use pesticides and fertilizers on millions acres.
Jennifer Sass is a Scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She says, under the Bush Administration, pollution monitoring of big industry was cut back. Sass says that monitoring needs to be restored and expanded to smaller sources.
“If we quit our monitoring programs, then we don’t really know. It’s a lot like putting our head in the sand.”
But many state agencies say they don’t have the resources to keep track of all those sources of pollution.
For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.