Posted June 21, 200915 yr http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/us/21river.html From the Ashes of ’69, a River Reborn By CHRISTOPHER MAAG Published: June 20, 2009 CLEVELAND — The first time Gene Roberts fell into the Cuyahoga River, he worried he might die. The year was 1963, and the river was still an open sewer for industrial waste. Walking home, Mr. Roberts smelled so bad that his friends ran to stay upwind of him. http://www.mainstreetpainesville.org/
June 21, 200915 yr Nice. I'm surprised the the writer didn't mentioned the green bulkheads. This allows the walls to remain for commercial shipping, but also permits fish to flourish. The design was created for the Cuyahoga, but they are hoping to patent the design and implement it in other rivers around the country.
June 21, 200915 yr grrr, that's a nice writeup except he couldn't take it just a step further could he? meaning the writer neglected to mention that in his neck of the woods there were fireboats and all that and the hudson river burned daily not only in those days, but even up into the 1980's too. not to mention the newtown in queens and gowanus in brooklyn burned and were just as bad if not worse for pollution than the cuyahoga. how many gene roberts fell into those and came out stinky? instead, he ignores that it's his east coast media brethren that chose to pour it on over the years about cleveland the cuyahoga instead and make it their whipping boy. the burning cuyahoga meme is just as much an east coast media creation as it is/was a dirty river, but that's an angle to the story a nytimes writer would never touch, would they? :whip:
June 21, 200915 yr grrr, that's a nice writeup except he couldn't take it just a step further could he? meaning the writer neglected to mention that in his neck of the woods there were fireboats and all that and the hudson river burned daily not only in those days, but even up into the 1980's too. not to mention the newtown in queens and gowanus in brooklyn burned and were just as bad if not worse for pollution than the cuyahoga. how many gene roberts fell into those and came out stinky? instead, he ignores that it's his east coast media brethren that chose to pour it on over the years about cleveland the cuyahoga instead and make it their whipping boy. the burning cuyahoga meme is just as much an east coast media creation as it is/was a dirty river, but that's an angle to the story a nytimes writer would never touch, would they? :whip: actually, mrnyc, I'm not sure where the writer, Christopher Maag, is from originally, but he has Ohio connections. A while ago I started noticing that he had Ohio-based stories appearing in the NY Times, and I then remembered that he used to be a staff writer for Columbus Monthly magazine, for which I had a subscription a few years ago (but let lapse). As a matter of fact, i believe he went to OSU. Don't know if he's from Cleveland, though... http://www.mainstreetpainesville.org/
June 21, 200915 yr yeah, i know. there is a female writer from cleveland on the nytimes staff too, lisa chamberlain. ideally i'd hope they would inject a little best served cold type payback after 40 yrs of ragging, but i suppose they cant very well bite the hand that feeds them.
June 26, 200915 yr Well, here's some bad news from cleveland.com: Cuyahoga River littered with dead, oily gulls Posted by Michael Scott/Plain Dealer Reporter June 26, 2009 12:41PM Categories: Animals, Breaking News, Cuyahoga River, Environment, Real Time News CLEVELAND — Hundreds of sludge-smeared gulls -- already dead or dying slowly -- are floating on the waters of the Cuyahoga River. Most of them are just downstream from the site where environmentalists this week celebrated the stream's remarkable comeback since the June 22, 1969, river fire. http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/06/cuyahoga_river_littered_with_d.html
June 7, 20196 yr 10 years later from the creation of this thread...a new article is born ... from the New York Times: A Cleveland River Once Oozed and Burned. It’s Now a Hot Spot. The Cuyahoga River burst into flames for the last time in 1969. As tourism climbs, the city celebrates the river’s rebound 50 years later. By Erik Piepenburg June 7, 2019 A misconception still clings to Cleveland and it comes down to three words: river on fire. From 1868 to 1969, the polluted Cuyahoga River, which cleaves Cleveland into east and west, caught fire 13 times. In 1969, a photo in Time magazine dramatically showed a brave little fire department boat battling a wall of angry flames. This June marks the 50th anniversary of the day in Cleveland when the Cuyahoga River burst into flames for the last time. Outrage over the disaster led to the creation of state and federal environmental protection agencies and to the passage of the federal Clean Water Act. Thanks to environmental safeguards and the formation of a regional sewer district, the thriving river is helping to redefine Cleveland’s public face, to a point where tourism is up. In 2017, Destination Cleveland, the regional convention and visitors bureau, announced that Cleveland had seen an average increase of nearly 550,000 visitors per year for the previous eight years. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/travel/cleveland-cuyahoga-river-pollution.html
June 8, 20196 yr On 6/7/2019 at 8:50 AM, MuRrAy HiLL said: 10 years later from the creation of this thread...a new article is born ... from the New York Times: A Cleveland River Once Oozed and Burned. It’s Now a Hot Spot. The Cuyahoga River burst into flames for the last time in 1969. As tourism climbs, the city celebrates the river’s rebound 50 years later. By Erik Piepenburg June 7, 2019 A misconception still clings to Cleveland and it comes down to three words: river on fire. From 1868 to 1969, the polluted Cuyahoga River, which cleaves Cleveland into east and west, caught fire 13 times. In 1969, a photo in Time magazine dramatically showed a brave little fire department boat battling a wall of angry flames. This June marks the 50th anniversary of the day in Cleveland when the Cuyahoga River burst into flames for the last time. Outrage over the disaster led to the creation of state and federal environmental protection agencies and to the passage of the federal Clean Water Act. Thanks to environmental safeguards and the formation of a regional sewer district, the thriving river is helping to redefine Cleveland’s public face, to a point where tourism is up. In 2017, Destination Cleveland, the regional convention and visitors bureau, announced that Cleveland had seen an average increase of nearly 550,000 visitors per year for the previous eight years. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/travel/cleveland-cuyahoga-river-pollution.html I was going to post this, but I think it belongs in the "tourism" or "cleveland marketing" threads. The guy glossed over a ton of area's that should be spotlighted.
June 8, 20196 yr Wow, 50 years since the "big'' '69 River Fire. Just one of several historic and cultural anniversaries from the summer of 1969. Thanks Randy Newman for this 1972 tune...set in a video from early 2016, a year that immensely helped Cleveland's Burning River image. Edited June 8, 20196 yr by Oxford19
June 8, 20196 yr ^Randy Newman’s ode to the Cuyahoga didn’t just open “Major League” but it was the entry song for my wedding party back in 2008 at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church (Tremont Greek Festival Church, though I’m not Greek?)....great memories whenever I hear that song!!
June 9, 20196 yr On 6/7/2019 at 5:50 AM, MuRrAy HiLL said: A Cleveland River Once Oozed and Burned. It’s Now a Hot Spot. By Erik Piepenburg June 7, 2019 To to be fair, it was also a “hot spot” when it was burning! Edited June 9, 20196 yr by jeremyck01
June 25, 20195 yr The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland in between fires, before the EPA and before the Clean Water Act. I remember the river being that orange well into the 1970s. It was from the pickling acid the steel mills used to dump in the river. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
July 12, 20195 yr This C-Span Special was very informative. https://www.c-span.org/video/?461941-1/cuyahoga-river-fire-50th-anniversary
July 12, 20195 yr On 6/25/2019 at 12:07 PM, KJP said: The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland in between fires, before the EPA and before the Clean Water Act. I remember the river being that orange well into the 1970s. It was from the pickling acid the steel mills used to dump in the river. Wow. That's quite an image.
Create an account or sign in to comment