Case study

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The Cuyahoga River Fire of 1969: Writer’s Name

The Context and Causes of the River Fires

On June 22, 1969, the Cuyahoga River, which runs through Cleveland, Ohio, and feeds

into Lake Erie, erupted into flames for the 13th time. This event made national news and

created outrage about Cleveland’s industrial abuse of the river and lack of environmental

accountability. However, Cleveland’s residents had become accustomed to the river’s severe

pollution and frequent fires. A common description was that it “oozes rather than flows”

(American Rivers, 1998). Since the mid-1800s, factories along the Cuyahoga River had been

polluting the waterway, destroying the once vibrant ecosystem and regularly causing fires

that fed off oil and other chemicals coating the water.

The river’s history coincides with the growth of industry and commercial

transportation in the U.S. Until the early 1800s, goods were predominately transported by

rail, but the lengthy, expensive process of constructing railroads made rivers an attractive

alternative. In 1807, the same year the first successful steamboat was built, the Cuyahoga’s

basin was widened to accommodate more shipping traffic, and the region became an

industrial and shipping hub. Over the next few decades, many factories began operating

along the river, including a Sherwin Williams paint factory, a slaughterhouse, mills operated

by Republic Steel and US Steel, and a Standard Oil refinery (Hogue, 2019). With no

regulations restricting hazardous waste disposal, the factories routinely dumped byproducts

and chemicals into the river. Sherwin Williams dumped expired paint, frequently changing

the water’s color downstream. Steel mills discharged pickling acids containing ferrous

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sulfate, which absorbed oxygen and led to massive fish deaths. Slaughterhouses consistently

pumped animal waste into the water, and refineries deposited massive oil slicks that floated

on the water like “whirls of black ink” (Hogue, 2019). Residents began documenting obvious

signs of pollution from the late 1800s, with a newly arrived immigrant describing his first

disappointing view of the river in 1884: “‘The water was yellowish, thick, full of clay, stinking

of oil and sewage. Piles of rotting wood were heaped on either bank of the river, and

it was all dirty and neglected….I was disappointed by this view of an American river” (qtd. in

Blakemore, 2019).

More alarming than its repulsive appearance, the river was a safety hazard. Of the 13

times the river caught on fire between the mid-1800s and 1969, the worst fires occurred in

1912 and 1952 (Blakemore, 2019). In 1912, five people died, and in 1952, over one million

dollars in damage resulted, as the flames engulfed an entire tugboat (Blakemore, 2019). The

fire of 1969 was caused by a spark from a train track above falling into the water and igniting

a pile of industrial debris. The oil slick caused the fire to spread rapidly, with flames reaching

50-feet high. Even with such an intense blaze, this fire was less severe than previous fires

because no deaths, serious injuries, or significant property damage occurred. The blaze

lasted only 20 to 30 minutes and was so short, in fact, that there is no known photograph of

the incident. The photograph that is often attributed to it is from the 1952 fire, as seen in

Figure 1.

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Figure 1 Cuyahoga Fire of 1952 (Ohio History Central, n.d.)

Ethical Analysis and Lessons Learned

One of the most interesting aspects of the 1969 fire is that it received much more

attention than the more devastating previous fires, highlighting a turning point for

environmental ethics in the U.S. When the fires began occurring, society was focused on

progress, not environmental stewardship. The public tended to see pollution as a necessary

and inevitable consequence of industrialism (Boissoneault, 2019). In contrast, today’s

engineering codes of ethics recognize that engineers must actively pursue both sustainability

and innovation and that they are not mutually exclusive. For example, in the American

Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Code of Ethics, Canon 2 focuses on the engineer’s obligation

to the environment. Specifically, Canon 2 b instructs engineers to “consider and balance

societal, environmental, and economic impacts” (ASCE, 2020). This idea of balance is central

to today’s concept of progress, showing that the environment, human health and safety, and

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the economy are all connected.

In 1969, the American public was just beginning to recognize that industrial pollution

could have widespread effects on the environment and public health. Earlier the same year,

the nation witnessed a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara that covered 35 miles

and killed thousands of birds and marine animals. Thomas Storke, a Santa Barbara

newspaper editor, expressed surprise at the scale of the public’s reaction: “The oil pollution

has done something I have never seen before in Santa Barbara—it has united citizens of all

political persuasions in a truly nonpartisan cause” (Blare, 2017). The people of the country

were still in a united anger over the Santa Barbara spill when the condition of the Cuyahoga

River was brought to their attention. With public attitudes evolving, an aggressive political

response was also needed to create legislative change. Cleveland mayor Carl Stokes was

determined to get help with the cleanup, first asking the state of Ohio for funding. After

being denied, he and his brother, U.S. Congressman Louis Stokes, testified before Congress

about the seriousness of the pollution and its impact on the city. Having won the funding

from Congress, Stokes argued that “cleaning up an industrial disaster required a massive

investment in the urban landscape,” and his efforts contributed to the creation of the EPA in

1970 and the passing of The Clean Water Act in 1972. It took leaders like the Stokes brothers

to help transform public outrage into meaningful action, changing the way people thought

about their obligations to clean up their own communities (Blare, 2017).

With this new movement came the first Earth Day in 1970. Around 1,000 students

from nearby colleges marched from their schools to the Cuyahoga River in protest of the

pollution (Boissoneault, 2019). Since then, Earth Day has become a national holiday that is

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used to continue bringing awareness to our impact on the environment. Significant cleanup

efforts on the Cuyahoga continued for the next 50 years. The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer

District has invested over $3.5 billion in the purification of the Cuyahoga and maintenance of

the sewer systems, with a promise from the city to devote another $5 billion in the next 30

years. As a living sign of progress, the fish of the river were finally declared healthy to eat in

moderation in March 2019 (Ohio History, n.d.).

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References

Blair, J. P., Calvacca, A., & Greim, J. (2019, June 21). The Cuyahoga River caught fire 50 years

ago. It inspired a movement. Retrieved October 27, 2019, from

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/the-cuyahoga-river-

caught-fire-it- inspired-a-movement/#close.

Blakemore, E. (2019, April 22). The Shocking River Fire That Fueled the Creation of the EPA.

Retrieved October 27, 2019, from https://www.history.com/news/epa-earth-day-

cleveland-cuyahoga- river-fire-clean-water-act.

Boissoneault, L. (2019, June 19). The Cuyahoga River Caught Fire at Least a Dozen Times, but

No One Cared Until 1969. Retrieved October 27, 2019, from

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-

times-no- one-cared-until-1969-180972444/.

Code of Ethics. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2019, from https://www.nspe.org/ethics/code-

ethics.

Cuyahoga River Fire. (n.d.). Retrieved October 27, 2019, from

https://www.ohiocentral/Cuyahoga

Hogue, C. (2019, June 14). Marking 50 years since the Cuyahoga River fire, which sparked US

environmental action. Retrieved November 4, 2019, from

https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/Marking-50-years-since-Cuyahoga/97/i24.

Rotman, M. (n.d.). Cuyahoga River Fire. Retrieved October 27, 2019, from

https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/63.

Summary of the Clean Air Act. (2019, August 15). Retrieved October 27, 2019, from

https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-clean-air-act.