Cuyahoga River

I wasn’t alive when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. But, looking back at photographs, I can taste smoke in my mouth, and smell the horror in the air. Late June in 1969, oil covered debris floating on the Cuyahoga River caught fire by the sparks of a passing train. The fire was said to have reached over five stories high. Surprisingly, that wasn’t the River’s first fire. There were thirteen since the year 1868. My mother wasn’t alive to tell me about the fire in 1969 and my family wasn’t in the United States in 1868 to pass down the story of the thirteen fires. I was always under the assumption that there was only one fire in the Cuyahoga. I’ve traveled and seen my fare share of dirty rivers. But as a kid I bathed in the Cuyahoga. She was my babysitter, my best friend, and my most beautiful muse. She was the closest body of water to me. Growing up I never knew anything else.

In 1929, five people died in a Cuyahoga River fire. 1952 is the picture journalists use when they want to paint the most shocking picture. 

That year there was more 1.3 million dollars in damage. It was the 1969 fire that received attention nationwide. After more than one-hundred years from the first fire, people decided that they wouldn’t stand for water pollution. Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes, the first Black mayor of a major U.S. city, went to Congress after being ignored at the state level. Congress responded by creating an Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. The Clean Water Act of 1972 and the first Earth Day in 1970 was inspired by the excessive pollution of the Cuyahoga River.

Cleveland is an industrial city, forty-five minutes away from my side of the river. The Cuyahoga River than runs through Cleveland is bound to be subjected to pollution. The idea of city life is dirty. Cars, trains, busses, professional sporting events, restaurants, and bars. There are more people and more opportunities to litter. My mother was strict. We weren’t allowed to litter in our own rooms. I remember going to Cleveland and being shocked at the homeless people on the streets and the plastic bag tumbleweed and the sour smell in the air. I thought the Cuyahoga River was always brown with dirt and moving fast like there were jets under the surface. I refuse to believe that my side of the river was flammable too. There hasn’t been a fire on the Cuyahoga River since 1969.

After years spent clearing out the imperfections in the Cuyahoga River, the Environmental Protection Agency announced in Spring of 2019, that fish caught in the river are finally safe to eat. Now there are more than sixty different species of fish in the water.  

“The Cuyahoga’s Comeback.” American Rivers. https://www.americanrivers.org/cuyahoga50/index.html?gclid=CjwKCAjwoc_8BRAcEiwAzJevtUiE1X6myOZsgj3qIXGrC6yoFFgTOOXOZVzlGyEClQSlov-n4A6exBoCv70QAvD_BwE 

Levinson, James, “Cuyahoga River, which inspired the creation of the EPA, is safe to fish again.” ABC News.

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/cuyahoga-river-inspired-creation-epa-safe-fish/story?id=61813253