We all know the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. What’s being done to clean it up?
There’s lots of buzz starting to generate these days around the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, as local residents and water enthusiasts begin gearing up for the 50 year anniversary of the last time the river caught on fire in 1969. Since then, many changes have taken place along the Cuyahoga and much effort has been made to restore the river and its watershed.
The infamous 1969 fire was actually the last of a series of occasions in which the river “caught on fire.” In reality, it wasn’t the river itself that was burning, but the oil, sewage, industrial waste, and flammable debris floating on the water’s surface. In addition to the spectacle of a burning river, all of this contamination heavily degraded water quality, damaged terrestrial and aquatic wildlife habitats, and ultimately led to a major loss of biodiversity.
Read the complete story on the OSU Extension CD blog: u.osu.edu/extensioncd.
Submitted by: Scott Hardy, Extension Educator, Ohio Sea Grant College Program.