The Year of the River

This is one of a series of stories The Plain Dealer will print this year as a part of "The Year of the River," a recognition of the Cuyahoga River's return to health 40 years after it caught fire.

CUYAHOGA RIVER RE-BIRTHDAY PARTY

2 to 8 p.m. at Heritage Park. Check in at the Cabin on the East Bank, under the Detroit-Superior (Veterans Memorial) Bridge.

Guided walking tours of the Flats, discussions about the river's history and plans for its future, historical reenactments of the lives of Cleveland's pioneer family, music.

Schedule of events: www.crcpo.org

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Even after 40 years, maybe the most surprising thing about the June 22, 1969, Cuyahoga River fire is that it is remembered at all.

The fire -- a brief Sunday afternoon flare-up of oil-soaked debris likely ignited by either molten steel or a spark from a passing rail car -- was doused by local firefighting tugboat crews. The story barely made the newspapers the next day.

But the effect of that two-hour flare-up has lasted four decades.

Today, the river fire stands as an enduring image of progress gone wrong.

But after so many years, it becomes difficult to really understand and feel the rampant water (and air) pollution of the industrial era that led to the Cuyahoga fire.

Unless you were there.

Richard Ellers was there.

And Ellers felt the Cuyahoga River pollution -- literally.

"Back in the '60s ... I went on a news excursion on the river downtown to show how bad the pollution was," Ellers recalled recently. "I remember we could see a layer of crud on the water but didn't appreciate its thickness until the photog on the trip, Marv Greene, said, 'Richard, dip your hand in there and pull it out.' "

The image of a black, gooey hand coming out of the Cuyahoga like a B-movie swamp monster defined the plight of the Cuyahoga. By association, it indicted all industrial American cities -- and a culture that for a century had generally viewed natural waterways as a means to an end.

"The Cuyahoga River -- the thick pollution on the water and the fire -- became a convenient example of what 'bad' really is," said Frank Samsel, whose company aided in early 1970s cleanup efforts.

"And the more you talked down about how terrible it was, the more the press and news jumped on it. But it also made people aware of the fact that things could be different."

The Year of the River

Different. That's exactly what the Cuyahoga River is today.

Over the last six months, The Plain Dealer's coverage of The Year of the River -- designated as such by the Cuyahoga River Community Planning Organization -- has told how the Cuyahoga has become a river teeming with fish and other aquatic species. And how more and more people in Northeast Ohio are using the Cuyahoga as a playground as it runs its 100-mile, U-shaped course from rural Geauga County down through Akron and back north to Cleveland.

The Cuyahoga has come a long way from the waterway that a Cleveland mayor in the 1880s (Rensselaer R. Herrick) described as "a sewer that runs through the heart of the city."

The Cuyahoga had burned as early as 1868 and a several times more before a 1952 fire caused more than $1.5 million in damage.

But there's little doubt of the effect that the last fire in 1969 had. Many credit it as being a catalyst for Congress to finally pass the Clean Water Act in 1972 and for the creation of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency.

But it is Ellers and others who were involved with the river at that time who can really tell the story of the fire, the events that led up to it and the cleanup that followed.

Here are some of those other voices:

VIDEO: Ben Stefanski II remembers standing at the river with Mayor Carl Stokes the day after the fire, declaring war on water pollution.

Cuyahoga River fire - Ben Stefanski, utility director in 1969

Ben Stefanski II

Former Cleveland City Utilities Director Ben Stefanski (1968-1970) stood with the late Mayor Carl Stokes on the banks of the Cuyahoga on the day after the fire and declared war on water pollution.

In fact, the war was already under way: City voters had in November 1968 approved a $100 million bond issue to pay for the cleanup of the river and Lake Erie by improving the city's sewer system (a job still costing billions of dollars today).

But Stefanski said it was the star power of Stokes -- the first black mayor of a major American city -- that was also the true catalyst for taking the fire beyond Cleveland to a national stage.

"We didn't realize that the river had even burned until the next morning -- Monday morning -- when the mayor called me and we went out and looked at the site," Stefanski said in a recent interview.

"But the real reason for all the publicity was Carl Stokes.

"We already had national reporters here viewing and reviewing what he was doing with the city and it just so happened that the fire was there and they were there and they wanted to know what he would do about stopping the pollution in the river and stopping the fires that had occurred for the last 50 years, some of them really big fires."

Stefanski said that up until then, most city workers, city officials and even the media and the public weren't all that interested in air or water pollution.

"But Stokes was a quick study," Stefanski said. "He saw the problem of pollution and understood what the ramifications were on the city.

"He also understood the possible solutions and he was able to articulate this to the press and later to Congress. Even though he was not an expert on water pollution, he was the mayor of a major city that was affected by a polluted river.

"So he gave real context and meaning to what the problems really were."

VIDEO: Retired Congressman Louis Stokes talks about his theory for pursuing clean water laws: If we could clean up the Cuyahoga River, we could clean up any body of water in the nation.

Cuyahoga River fire - Cong. Louis Stokes, pushed clean-up rules

Louis Stokes

Retired U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes said that the nation was shocked by the Cuyahoga River fire and that it could have been a dent in his brother Carl's legacy -- but that the two men did what they could to turn it around.

"This was the unheard of saga of a body of water catching on fire," Louis Stokes said in a recent interview. "It portrayed a totally different image of Cleveland than the image of productive, progressive city that was making news of a progressive nature."

Stokes, who in 1969 was still a freshman congressman, credits his brother Carl with heading the cleanup of the Cuyahoga -- but was also quick to point out that he played a role in getting the Clean Water Act approved as well.

"It behooved those of us with some power to try to do something about it," he said. "Mayor Stokes was already doing work through his administration to try to do something about cleaning up of this very special river.

"The whole thrust of the legislative action that I took in the Congress was based on a theory ... that if you could clean up the Cuyahoga River, that would demonstrate to the rest of the nation that we could clean up any body of water.

"So Cleveland and the Cuyahoga River became the pilot project ... and because of that pilot action, today this is a navigable river -- one where people can go boating and take other recreational activity.

"We've come a long way in 40 years from the day that this river caught on fire."

VIDEO: Frank Samsel, retired owner of Samsel Supply Co., wasn't surprised the river caught fire. He recalls regularly sucking up fats from rendering plants along with fuel and chemical spills.

Cuyahoga River fire - Frank Samsel, ran clean-up boat

Frank Samsel

Frank Samsel -- and his 56-foot boat, the Putzfrau -- played a large role in that work.

Now retired, but owner of Samsel Supply Co. in the Flats since 1958, Samsel and his crews on the Putzfrau -- German for "cleaning lady" -- began first by picking out large debris and then sucking up flammable and chemical liquids.

Samsel said he wasn't surprised to hear the river had caught fire -- and remembered a later incident that could have ended worse.

"Are you kidding? We once cleaned up a 164,000-gallon gasoline spill," he recalled recently. "I mean this was bad, this stopped all railroad and marine traffic, but we didn't tell anyone about it because we didn't want some nut coming down there smoking a cigar."

Samsel said pollution was so pervasive on the river that his crew wasn't even called out unless there was an oil slick or other known industrial spill of more than 2,000 gallons.

"The river was always dirty, that was the way it was," he said. "And it never froze, there was so much heat in the water coming from the cooling waters of the steel mills."

But the Putzfrau began to make a dent in some of the surface pollution on the river.

"But in a 16-hour day, we could pick up 100 cubic yards of debris and 15,000 gallons of oil a day," he said. "And we had spills that would take four or five days, so there was a lot of stuff on that river."

That "stuff" included everything from fats and grease from slaughterhouses and rendering plants along the river to acids used in steelmaking or dyes from paint plants -- along with much of the raw or partially treated sewage from the entire Cleveland-Akron area.

But Samsel said that debris collecting at the mouth of the Cuyahoga wasn't all industrial waste.

"When spring floods would come, picnic benches, screen doors and automobile tires would come down and mix in with the industrial waste," he said. "The industrial got blamed, but it was like the old Pogo comic strip said: 'We have met the enemy -- and it is us.' "

Bob Wysenski

Wysenski, former assistant chief of the Ohio EPA's Northeast Ohio District office, was sometimes known as "Mr. Cuyahoga" among environmental pollution activists and officials at the time.

He also played a key role in the establishment of the Cuyahoga River Remedial Action Plan, or RAP, which still guides river recovery today.

He retired in 2000 after nearly three decades at the EPA, which was formed in the early 1970s in the wake of the Clean Water Act. He now lives in Philadelphia and said he's proud of the work he did to turn the Cuyahoga around.

"Absolutely -- one of biggest accomplishments of my life," he said in a telephone interview. "We covered 15 rivers out of the Northeast District office, and the Cuyahoga was always nearest and dearest to my heart because of its history and how far it had to come back from."

He also remembers his first impressions.

"I grew up on a farm and went to college at Hiram and thought I knew about the Cuyahoga River," he said. "But going into the Cleveland Flats was an eye-opening experience.

"I was sent down to get a water sample near the Jennings Avenue Bridge by Big Creek, where there was a slaughterhouse nearby, and I remember watching blood and animal parts pouring out of the outfall and into the river."

Wysenski said the reddish water and body parts would then go and mix with the oil, chemicals and sewage already in the water.

"There were other days that the river was just orange from the pickling acid used by the steel mills," he said. "And depending on the day, you would routinely see oil slicks on the river.

"But the really amazing thing was that no one really noticed much. Today those would be considered a major spill. Then, it was a regular thing."

Ed Kelly and Jim Schafer

Kelly and Schafer, two of the original employees in the city of Cleveland's Bureau of Industrial Wastes, can still see those spills -- in part because Schafer still has photographic evidence.

The photos showing the river from the summer of 1967 right up to June 1969 were taken as part of a survey of river polluters.

The images reveal a sometimes orangish-brown waterway clogged with crud, debris and sudsy-looking runoff from various sewer outfalls.

"We drove a boat up and down the river and got out and marked the pipes on each side -- from No. 1 to maybe a hundred -- both the west and east sides," said Kelly, who now runs a Brunswick Hills company called Storm Water Control Services.

Schafer said the team used dye to determine the source of the discharge and that a lab "analyzed the wastes so that we knew exactly what was being discharged."

Schafer, now retired and living in Geauga County, said in a written recollection: "This was all done without the knowledge of the officials in Columbus from the Ohio Department of Health or the officials in the city of Cleveland.

"At this time, the state of Ohio and the city of Cleveland were involved in litigation over which governmental level had ultimate authority, and state laws were weak in enforcing water pollution control."

Kelly said their next action was probably a risk.

"We started calling companies to tell them to stop polluting the river," he said. "But we really didn't have the authority to do that, but it also worked a lot of the time."