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Interview Transcripts
Kelvin Rogers
Ohio EPA Cuyahoga River RAP/ Storm Water Coordinator
Play the interview with Kelvin Rogers (MP3, 1.1MB, runtime 6:45)
I've been working for Ohio EPA for 30 years now, and I remember one of my first job duties was taking a look at the Cuyahoga River and working with some of the steel mills in the City of Cleveland and seeing a lot of the discharges that they had to the river before they installed any waste water treatment systems. So it was pretty bad back then, 70s early 80s. The original NPDES wastewater permits had been appealed by the industries and municipalities, those sorts of things, and US EPA and Ohio EPA finally got serious in the early 1980s and started to take enforcement actions on municipalities and industries for not getting their wastewater treatment systems up to snuff. I helped review some of the plans for some of the first wastewater treatment systems for that time. It was Republic Steel, which later became LTD Steel which has since changed hands and is now Arcelor Mittal Steel in Cleveland.
Back at that time, things like ammonia, phenols, cyanide... pretty nasty stuff, especially from the coke plant operations that they had there. A lot of that material discharged directly into the Cuyahoga River without treatment. Since that time, and since they have improved their operations and installed wastewater treatment systems. They recycle a lot of the wastewater. So they don't have nearly as much of a discharge anymore.
Nor do they have some of the nastier operations like the coke plant facility that was there that produced a lot of the water pollutants; that has since closed down in the 90s.
I remember one of the first things; this was probably in the late 80s. One of my contacts at Republic Steel at the time called me up and said that they were having problems with their water inlet (because they would take water out of the Cuyahoga River and use it for their processes) because for the first time they actually had fish being caught in these screens. They had never had problems with fish in the river before. There weren't any fish in the ship channel there in the Cuyahoga River.
Some of the earlier studies that Ohio EPA was involved in in the 70s and early 80s. We found very little if any fish, all the way from the City of Akron, which has a major wastewater treatment plant, all the way down into Cleveland on the lake. And that was because the poor quality of the effluents from Akron and from Cleveland at that time.
We would catch basically maybe a few carp and a lot of them had serious deformities; they'd be missing fins, or I remember one case actually: it was missing its eyes; it did not have eyes because of some of the pollutants that were found in the river at that time. Now we've got probably over 50 species of fish in the river. And actually our last survey of the river, which Ohio EPA conducted last year in 2008. We found the majority of the main stem of the Cuyahoga all the way from Akron into Cleveland is actually meeting our water quality standards for fish and benthic macro invertebrate populations. So it's considered in attainment with Ohio's water quality standards now.
I remember seeing the river, probably at its worst, with a lot of pollutants in it and some really nasty stuff, and the lack of really any aquatic life, no fish, very few aquatic birds or anything like that. And over the past 30 years now we've seen the fish populations improve. We actually have steelhead trout migrating up from Lake Erie, all the way up to Cuyahoga Falls in Akron along the river. And we also have significant return of some of the water based wildlife such as bald eagles. A couple of years ago, a bald eagle pair established a nest right along the Cuyahoga River in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
I've been fortunate enough to be able to take part in quite a few different surveys and studies of the river. For example, I remember one time going with the folks from Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, who also do some monitoring of the Cuyahoga River in the City of Cleveland. I remember one of my predecessors, Bob Wieczynski, his comment was, "The Cuyahoga will never be a trout stream!" yet now we've got steelhead trout running up the river! And actually in the National Park, they actually have signs reminding anglers of the size of steelhead that they're allowed to take from the river. So, I mean, the river's become a fishing spot, basically for steelhead at certain times of the year, so that's been just tremendous.
If things keep on, if we continue our efforts in water pollution control, that sort of thing, you know, I hope to see the river continue to make some improvements. There's one section of the main stem at about river mile 20 upstream from Cleveland, where we have a low-head dam that's one of the few dams along the river. And we're very hopeful that we'll see some progress in getting that dam modified or removed from the river to further increase fish passage in that section of the river. Actually, that's one of the very small segments where the fish and macro invertebrate communities don't meet our water quality standards.
We've had some real good success with some dam removals upstream of Akron, where the fish and bug communities have returned. And we think if we get rid of that dam there at State Route 82, or what they call Station Road Dam, that we'll see some more improvements in fish populations as well.
I remember when I first started working on Cuyahoga and when I thought that, you know, once we see bald eagles return and river otters return, we'll know that the water quality is good enough, and I thought that would be a good time to retire. So now we have the bald eagles have returned in significant numbers, and earlier this year actually, in the spring, there was some good evidence that one wildlife biologist indicated that we may have river otters back in the river in the National Park area.
I continue to work with folks, educate them. I'm working with a lot of the communities around the river on developing and improving their storm water management programs, so there's still definitely some work to continue. We hope that this isn't as good as it gets though; there still are some things that can be done. You know, to further improve the river and the quality of life around it.
Glenn Pratt
Retired EPA employee
Play the interview with Glenn Pratt (MP3, 1.1MB, runtime 7:41)
Back in February of 1964 I had finished graduate school and I had then joined the US public Health Service, which is where environmental programs were at the time, and was assigned to Cleveland, Ohio. And so I came out with a blizzard coming behind me to the old Crile Hospital on the south side of Cleveland where the office was.
And this was, probably about every eight years or so, the public health service would come in and do a survey on the Great Lakes. And they would then put the reports in the file and move on. And it was a staff, I think, of around 80 people. And I got involved in the work on writing the basin reports and doing like enteric pathogen studies.
And in Cleveland, working on it in those days, the east side of Cleveland was a garbage dump along the lakefront. I mean, they actually dumped their garbage. And on the one side was a beach with a sign on it saying that they didn't recommend swimming, but if you must swim, don't swim for at least an hour after you eat. And the Cleveland Westside sewage plant discharged very nearby (laughs). So those were the good old days when we were doing, shall we say, sort of dry science. That was before people really got concerned about it.
And so we did a lot of extensive work on the Cuyahoga, and of course our field samplers very much hated to sample on the Cuyahoga, because in those days there was like one to 2 inches of decomposing oil from the steel mills. And so they'd have to spend half the day cleaning their boats after they went out doing the sampling. That was... that went from... that was ‘64 into ’65.
And then, of course, as politicians do, Johnson, to show he was becoming concerned about the environment, moved the water part of the program to the Department of Interior. And so then I changed jobs but sat at the same desk and was then working for the Department of Interior which of course then later on in 68 (sic), Nixon, to show he was doing something, created US EPA and brought the air and water programs back together!
Those were in the days when there was no Clean Water Act. And so the federal government had to prove that pollution actually crossed state lines and caused interferences on the other side. In other words, we had to have interstate pollution. And we started having the Lake Erie Enforcement Conference to focus on the issues and Cleveland in those days had primary treatment at best, so things were pretty gross in the local areas. Nobody would ever think of getting anywhere near the Cuyahoga in those days. In fact during the summertime, at low flow, the city of Akron totally diverted the entire flow of the river to use for water supply and so the river basically dried up until it reemerged below Akron as sewage effluent. And you would see these huge islands of floating soapsuds coming down the Cuyahoga River.
But in fact, when we put together the report, on like the Cuyahoga and the other ones, that was the first time that the federal government had, rather than dry science, where we actually wrote reports for the ordinary person to understand. And we included photographs! The first federal reports ever to have photographs, which sounds like nothing. But in those days, it was almost shall we say, revolutionary.
In those days the basic sort of enforcement tool was called the newspapers and the television. And when we had an enforcement conference as an example, we took the conferees in a boat up the Cuyahoga so people could look at it. And somehow it seemed like a train got stuck on the bridge so they couldn't open the bridge to let the boat go upstream (chuckles). And in fact in those days we couldn't even, we had to use the telephoto lens to take the photos of the steel mills across the river because we couldn't go on their property or even, you know, stand on the shore. But those were very adversarial times. But the photographs I think became very important. In fact, the Ohio Society of Professional Engineers demanded to have the names of the people who had written the Cuyahoga and the reports for Lake Erie because we were needlessly stirring up the public, and it was totally unprofessional.
In the upper parts above Akron we had extensive identification of enteric pathogens which, you know, are serious health threats or problems for people. You know, not only was it unseemly, but it was extremely, extremely a problem for health wise, and for of course the aquatic life and anything that came near it.
In fact, this was sort of tied into the studies that were done on the lake that found out in the central part of the lake, every summer the algae that grew fell to the bottom and used up all the oxygen. And this is where the, the other path of the story on the dead Lake Erie came, because for all purposes the lower part of Lake Erie was dead every summertime. And it was totally anaerobic, without any oxygen, which of course would destroy any type of life that would be in it.
You know, when we did the studies and information on Lake Erie, and then the publicity with the burning Cuyahoga... is it... and the reports that we prepared, I think really caught public attention. In fact, I think CBS did a TV program about the extensive problems in all of Lake Erie and of course focusing on Cleveland. And so it started to get national recognition for the problems. And as they say, the burning Cuyahoga and the dying Lake Erie really became the symbol for the start of the whole environmental movement.
The steel mills started to clean up their act, and it's the type of thing—you went from where you wouldn't even want to leave your car downtown, to where things started to improve. And of course, there's the economics of it, is the fact that some of these were very old steel mills. And so you have the problem of can you modernize or can't you modernize?
And then we could see Cleveland start to become reborn. And the city all of a sudden started to have life downtown! And it's where one could almost feel to have been part of a revolution, but where people said you know we can have it better, we must have it better, we will have it better. The people demanded that the politicians respond and address the issues. So this led the charge for the whole country.
As I say that when you now look at downtown Cleveland, and in a city that's been reborn and alive and vital, that you certainly-- what the people demanded has certainly paid off. The future of the river is, well in fact, like one other example, that back when Udall, when we were in Interior, there was some talk of trying to create urban national parks. And I had the job of driving Udall around the Cuyahoga and helping, working with some of the local people up at Cuyahoga Falls and areas, of trying to convince Udall that we should in fact have a national park along the Cuyahoga River, because we have these islands of soapsuds coming down and the river stunk --- it's hard to have that vision! When you look at the impact on just the livability of the city, I think it makes a tremendous difference. And I think it's a vital part.
It was not the federal government filing lawsuits, although we did sue Detroit, but it was the fact that people demanded that there be change.
Edith Chase
Ohio environmentalist
Play the interview with Edith Chase (MP3, 1.1MB, runtime 5:19)
It was just sort of a dumping place. People at that time thought rivers were the place where you dumped your waste and you know, old tires and junk and pollution of various sorts. And what I found was if I talked with people about clean water and water resources, their eyes glazed over.
We talked about the River here in Kent, and this whole area was so bad, it was really obvious. And there was a man in Cuyahoga Falls who was looking into it, and the only handle you had on the river was flooding. So... (chuckle) that was the Corps of Engineers, so he and a bunch of people invited the Corps to come from Buffalo to Kent, and so we talked cheerfully, and eventually the laws were passed that enabled us to clean it up. And of course we've got a ways to go. I mean, we spent 200 years getting it in sad shape, so it takes a little time to clean it up. We've made a lot of progress.
It's clean, and it's free-flowing. And right here in Kent, that's what's all the problem. Because the city wastewater treatment plant, give them credit, over the years they've kept, you know, upgrading it and so forth to meet federal standards which were set by the Clean Water Act in 1972. That was a big year! The Congress set in the 70s and 80s the framework for the environmental laws that we still use.
The fire was June 22, 1969, and as an example, by November of 1969 we had the National Environmental Policy Act. 1970 was the Clean Air Act. And 1972, it was not only the Clean Water Act but the Coastal Zone Management Act, and the Great Lakes are the fourth seacoast. The media first of all had in the 60s declared Lake Erie was dead. Well, (chuckle) it was really not dead; it was too much alive! It was full of algae. The algae blocked water intakes of industries along the shore, and it was just really a mess. The main living things in the river, at least what they tell me around here, were sludge worms.
So this middle section of the Cuyahoga --- it's a resource and it's an economic asset, too. And you know a lot of people did a lot of work, and pulled together and you know, credit to Ohio EPA because they got all the stakeholders involved. And I'll tell you, that stakeholder process sure does take a long time. But we're very pleased with how it turned out. People didn't know that it was even possible to do any of this stuff, but as I said the, the fire, and that was down in Cleveland, in the navigation channel. All sorts of other issues. We don't really have handles on those yet. And so we've got a ways to go.
There was a time in the 1980s and the early 90s when there were no fish at all in the river from Akron on down. Nobody then knew exactly what the reason was, and I don't know that they still do, whether it was something toxic or just all the general bad conditions.
I've got a picture that I keep on display. I think it was about an eight- or ten-pound northern pike that was caught right in the center of downtown Kent. And it was…Ohio EPA was doing a fish shocking because they survey those up every once in awhile. And there was a beautiful fish, much better than at...
Free-flowing river. Ohio EPA is still working on dam removal and modification for the other dams now. And some are going to be easier to remove. These things take time. And I've learned patience (chuckle) over the years. You've got to look back 25 years at a time and say, "Oh, well, it's much better now than it was 25 years ago." Or 40 years ago. Or whatever. You know, I just chip in when I can and cheer some people on and write letters and all that good stuff. I keep trying to retire, but then when you get something like this, you know, that keeps you going for a while longer.