Burning Rivers: Revival of Four Urban-Industrial Rivers that Caught on Fire

摘要

Few areas exemplified the urban-industrial pollution ills that were a major focus of the post-World War II environmental movement more than the Buffalo, Chicago, Cuyahoga, and Rouge Rivers. In the 1960s, for example, pickle liquor waste discharged by steel mill operations sometimes gave the Rouge a noticeably orange hue. Even more dramatically, three of these rivers experienced major fires in the late 1960s when oil wastes on their surfaces ignited. The fires on the Chicago River occurred in the late nineteenth century, illustrating the longstanding nature of the degradation suffered by waterways flowing through dense industrial areas.