Vintage EPA photos reveal what US waterways looked like before pollution was regulated

[G_j]

https://www.businessinsider.com/vintage-epa-photos-reveal-us-waterways-before-pollution-was-regulated-2019-6


View of semi-submerged automobile wreckage lining the shore of acu rve of the Cuyahoga River (looking south), near Jaite, Ohio, 1968. A railroad bridge is visible in the background. Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images


Just over 50 years ago, Ohio's Cuyahoga river caught fire.

The disaster prompted a public outcry that in part led to the formation of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970. The EPA was charged with regulating the country's polluted air and waterways, among other environmental objectives.

Soon after its founding, the agency dispatched 100 photographers to capture the US' environmental issues as part of a photo project called Documerica. The photographers took about 81,000 images, more than 20,000 of which were archived. At least 15,000 have been digitized by the National Archives, and the images now function as a kind of time capsule, revealing what states from California to New York looked like between 1971 and 1977.

Many of the photos were taken before the implementation of rules meant to keep water and air free of contamination.

The images of polluted waterways are especially striking. The following Documerica photos reveal what US rivers, streams, and coastlines looked like before the EPA started regulating pollution.

..more..

[MineralMan]

1. I'm betting those cars are there in an attempt to

reinforce the river bank and prevent flooding. They're too orderly to have just been dumped there. It's not a good idea, but I think that is why they're there.

ETA: I was right. It was a fairly common practice. See this:

https://billingsgazette.com/news/local/autos-from-detroit-s-glory-days-transform-along-yellowstone-river/article_73d79cd2-fd37-5239-a971-90920a3fbe97.html

[Botany]

2. Not far from the same area but after "those liberals" got their way

[hunter]

3. I remember all that shit.

Using old cars to shore up river banks was especially common. Landowners, farmers especially, just did it.

I also remember the air in Los Angeles could be unbreathable, especially driving out to Pasadena in my grandmother's giant Cadillac. Her car had a big V8 engine and no emission controls, thus contributing to the smog everyone complained about.

During the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill my parents took us out to "help" with the cleanup efforts, which basically involved throwing clean straw into the surf and throwing oily straw into dumpsters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_Santa_Barbara_oil_spill

That oil never did come out of our family car's upholstery. A few years later my dad sold that car to a surfer who was always covered with the tar-like oil anyways, so it didn't matter.

Underwater oil seeps in that area of California are natural but I'll bet most of the oil on Southern California beaches during the 20th century wasn't natural. We used to hang out around active oil fields as kids and the warm water brought up with the oil was dumped into surface streams with only minimal treatment. It always had an oily sheen on it.

I later got a summer job in a high-tech place that used a lot of toxic chemicals. The disposal of these was extremely unsophisticated by today's standards. The organic waste went into one tank (nasty shit like contaminated trichloroethane) and everything else went into another tank that was kept at a roughly neutral pH using the same chemicals you might use in a swimming pool.

The only thing the hazardous waste company cared about was the vapor pressures and flammability of the organic waste, because they didn't want their trucks and trailers to explode, and the pH of the inorganic liquid wastes. This was all dumped in a place that was later designated a Superfund site.

[misanthrope]

4. Yeah, that is the "great" America

that supply-siders, trickle-downers, anti-public sector automatons want to return to as quickly as possible. Those pesky regulations, huh?

[Hekate]

5. Thanks for the reminder. There used to be bipartisan support for the EPA, too. nt

[jpak]

6. I grew up on the Androscoggin River in Maine

"Foam-bergs" as tall a man.

Massive fish kills - that stank for weeks.

Frightening disgusting odors and fumes - that literally peeled the paint off of riverside houses.

Dead animals and birds.

Raw sewage.

The methane bubbling up from the sediments in the summer made it look like it was raining - on a sunny day.

Thank you Senator Ed Muskie (who grew up on the Androscoggin) for the Clean Water Act.