How far have we come?

[44man]

I remember living in Cleveland when the steel mills in the flats sent out orange smoke. You could not breath and the paint on houses and cars was destroyed. The Cuyahoga river was oily slime and actually caught fire once. I could see the river run 5 miles into lake Erie.
At Edgewater park there were turds and toilet paper floating. Go out a little way into the water and there was a ton of broken bottles and glass. You could only see a few feet in the water or six inches.
Ford built a foundry next the CLE Hopkins and you could not breath. The smoke destroyed paint on the cars.
It was cleaned up and then the zebra mussels got in. They eat everything and remove food for small fish. You can now see 40' deep. Fishing has been better with larger fish even with the zebras.
I had to move here to WV and the Potomac has acid from coal mines get in so they put lime in the waters. The Shenandoah still has PCB's in the bottom, can't eat the fish. Government facility that poisoned the river. Air is clean though.
California has the most restrictions but the most foul air and water.
The bay is filthy but the solution was for the Maryland governor to tax how much rain that falls on your property. I guess it will pay him to clean the water as he sucks it through his gills.
We lived through the most foul environment ever, smoke, leaded gas, leaded paint, sewage into waters, etc.
The WV state flower is trash on the road side.
Has anything gotten better?

[theperfessor]

When I was a kid Pop took me fishing on the Ohio River where it runs through Evansville. Had to wipe the TP off the line when you reeled in. It's been cleaned up a lot since then.

[Bad Water Bill]

In the 60s the Illinois river was something else. If you wanted to go upstream thru the locks you had to anchor 1 mile DOWNSTREAM as they lowered the lock. Soap suds were 4 feet high at the lock. When you got home you had to spend HOURS with cleanser scrubbing the CRUDE OIL off the sides of the boat.

Today we have walleye,bass and now muskies in the river. But then again there are THE ASIAN CARP. :evil:

[MtGun44]

The air and water are much, much cleaner than they were in the 50s and 60s. Modern cars put out nearly zero
pollution, but that is not enough for the eco-whackos at the EPA. They now call carbon dioxide (which is what
plants breathe, and have to have to survive) as a pollutant. This is crazy.

Bill

[JeffinNZ]

Is it cleaner because all the dirty industry has been exported to China/Brazil/Mexico?

[DIRT Farmer]

Fishing up river from Evansville whenI was a teenager (40 plus years ago) I cought a large catfish. Mom cooked it, It smelled like deisel fuel. I did not take my kids back to fish the mouth of the Anderson river where it empties in the Ohio just below Troy after trying to figure an age approtite explination of the rubbers that lined the shore.
Now good fishing, clear water that does not smell like sewage with an oily sheen.

[missionary5155]

Good morning
Grew up along the Paw Paw River in Riverside, SW Michigan. When I was young the river smelled plain awful from the paper mill in Waterveliet. After that got shut down the river changed dramaticly. Lots of bass, pike, huge pan fish and just good old dirt particles from the spring runoffs.
Mike in peru

[41 mag fan]

Ohio River in Indianas side, says not to eat more than 5lbs of fish a yr, or it was that way up to a few yrs ago. Same for the White River that runs thru Indiana, not to eat more than 20lbs per yr, and in some areas of the rivers length DNR advises not to eat any fish caught.
Just 5 or 6 yrs ago, last time I fished the White River where it connects to the Wabash River, I was catching Blue Cats with open sores on their bodies.

[Texantothecore]

The difference in water and air quality between this century and say, the 1960s is dramatic. We have done quite a good job of cleaning up both.

[1Shirt]

Kinda glad I live in Nebraska!
1Shirt!

[bbs70]

So I was right after all!
I've always said there is something in the drinking water in Chicago that makes our politicians so stupid

[Bad Water Bill]

I think we just found our answer.

For many many years the city drained their SEWAGE in one area of the shore line. Then PROGRESS set in and they decided to furnish all of the residents water delivered to your kitchen sink. Guess where the intake system was built?

End of your history lesson for today.

Now you know why MOST residents have sh17 for brains.:bigsmyl2:

[reloader28]

You know why its cleaner?
Because there is NO industry. There is no business to make it dirty. No jobs. Theres a trade off.

Commie China is #1 in manufacturing and you cant breethe the air there. Ever notice all the masks they are wearing? Thats not for work safety, thats so they can breath. The airs so bad there you cant hardly see.

[2wheelDuke]

My parents live in Northeast Georgia. They moved up there after retiring. You'd think that the place has alot of relatively unspoiled wilderness. Talking to old timers up there, they said that the area was visible as an orange streak when men first flew into space.

The copper smelting and sulfuric acid plant and acid rain had it so barely anything grew anymore.

The plant near their town has been closed for years now, a labor dispute was the final straw in shutting it down. The plant has been dismantled and shipped to China since then.

[Bzcraig]

I live I the Central Valley of CA (the valley from which the old western series The Big Valley was named) which produces 60% of the food and fiber needs of this nation. This is also a very arid place which relies on irrigation. We get nearly all of our water from snow melt out of the Sierra's (on an average year we get just over 10" of rain, this year has been half that). Here is my beef, well one of them anyway, the last time a water storage facility was built in the valley was completed in 1949, the population of this area has exploded since then. There is no political will to make the decisions necessary to deal with our water issues. The farmers are the ones taking it in the shorts cause the irrigation water they need is not allocated to them. Instead the Eco-wackos are worried about protecting a smelt that has NO affect on anything if it goes away. A large portion is sent to SoCal for drinking water. BTW, farmers have to pump ground water for crops increasing food costs nationwide. Where is the logic? No water, no food! We need reservoirs so everyone will be taken care of in the future but the Delta Smelt wackos and commy CA liberals don't give a rip about common sense, just what their agenda is and to **** with everything else. All they care about is getting their way. In CA our air is cleaner than in the past but we never really had the water pollution issues like the industrial east did just the occasional sewerage spills at the coast. Rant over.

[Love Life]

I just left San Diego, CA. I would NOT say the air is cleaner, or just plain clean for that mattr. Just a nice haze of smog.

Oh, and street bums.

[jmort]

"Is it cleaner because all the dirty industry has been exported to China/Brazil/Mexico?"

Yes - China is a toxic dump

[Bzcraig]

I just left San Diego, CA. I would NOT say the air is cleaner, or just plain clean for that mattr. Just a nice haze of smog.

Oh, and street bums.

Love Life, how long were you in San Diego? You're right about the street bums and it is just getting worse coupled with the lunacy of Jerry's prison realignment increasing crime, CA will become the first third world state.

[WILCO]

"Is it cleaner because all the dirty industry has been exported to China/Brazil/Mexico?"

Yes - China is a toxic dump

And they are on target to take the number one spot of wealth and military might, while stepping on our dying carcass.

[Harter66]

Tell me about the water and idiots. LA water and power has 3 dams in the Walker river basin ,yet somehow it is the farmers fault Walker lake is dropping like a stone. LA takes half on the Ca side of the border. The state EPA fought a a mine that wanted to pump shaft water into the Walker river to fortify the lake ...........wait for it.............because the water was cleaner than the river and might up set the downstream balance. Walker lake is for all intents dead w/disolved salts,last I saw,110% of sea water. In the 70's there was a fishing restriction on Walker lake,you couldn't keep anything under 14" or over 26''. In the 50s if you fished w/less than a 10 pound rig you were begging to loose tackle to big lake trout. In the late 70s the EPA decided the mercury from the Comstock days was a problem. several people offered to clean up atleast 70% mile of the Carson river for mineral rights. Today the mercury is so high you can't eat the fish below below Lahonton dam in the river or resiviors. Go Eco Freaks,protect me to death.

[JeffinNZ]

You know why its cleaner?
Because there is NO industry. There is no business to make it dirty. No jobs. Theres a trade off.

Commie China is #1 in manufacturing and you cant breethe the air there. Ever notice all the masks they are wearing? Thats not for work safety, thats so they can breath. The airs so bad there you cant hardly see.

Trade off; yes and no. It's not primarily environmentally restrictions that send jobs overseas. It's cheaper labour. Lax environment laws also help of course and China is living proof if you call that living.

I have a friend is a long term greenie. We had a discussion one day about industry and I made this point:


From a global point of view industry is better off being in the developed world where it can be monitored and regulated in terms of the waste/pollution etc. Left to the third world they will discharge pollution right, left and centre without a second thought. So the problem is a moral one of whether the West should export it's dirty industry to other nations who will do it cheap? Here's the clincher thought.

The previous Labour guvmint in NZ (raving lefties) introduced the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). BS if ever I saw it because what it does is tax the pants of industry to the point that they pull out and go to the third world. It's a fine line between keeping industry and taxing them out of the country. Do we think globally or locally. My country is clean therefore the world is good? No quite. Classic case is Rio Tinto operate a BIG aluminium smelter at the bottom of the South Island. It makes the most pure Al. in the world but uses 15% of the national electricity production. Rio threatened to pull the plug on NZ if the ETS came into being. They would have taken their production somewhere else, done it on the cheap and dirty. Of course now Rio is threatening to pull the plug if they don't get dirt cheap electricity so me thinks they are going to bale anyways.

[smokemjoe]

I was glad when I got back from Chicago downtown to home and could say I grew up on s--t kicking Wis. farm.

[Bad Water Bill]

When the stock yards were operating at 42nd and Halstead the PERFUME was enough to cover up the AROMA of a hugh still right next to a Chicago Police station for YEARS.

Now add in the mess from the many steel mills in the area.

Now we have traded off the fears of dying from cancer caused by those products for fears of finding yourself on some gang bangers turf and being shot on sight.