It was a low moment for Cleveland and for industry. The Cuyahoga River, largely polluted by manufacturers, caught fire on June 22, 1969—forty years ago this week.

How does a river catch fire? When it’s coated with oil and clogged with trash. That was the state of the Cuyahoga back then. Time magazine described it as brown and bubbling with gases.

The fire helped bring about water pollution control measures including the Clean Water Act and the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. So at newpig.com, the references to EPA’s SPCC rules and many other regulations flow back to the Cuyahoga.

Interesting trivia: According to the EPA, there are no news photos of the fire. It only burned for half an hour, and no news outlet responded quickly enough. It’s much nicer to look at a picture of the Cuyahoga today, anyway (below).

Image © Bob Daveant - Fotolia.com

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By Chris

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Environmental. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.