https://archive.md/MHPV7
"Fifty years ago, Congress voted to override President Richard Nixon’s veto of
the Clean Water Act. It has proved to be one of the most transformative
environmental laws ever enacted.
At the time of the law’s passage, hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage
was dumped by New York City into the Hudson River every day. This filth was
compounded by industrial contaminants emptied into the river along much of its
length. The catch basin for all of this was New York Harbor, which resembled an
open sewer. At its worst, 10 feet of raw human waste blanketed portions of the
harbor bottom, and certain reaches held little or no oxygen to sustain the life
of its fishery. Trash floated among oil slicks.
Health advisories against eating fish from the Hudson remain, but its ecology
has largely recovered, thanks to the law, which imposed strict regulations on
what could be discharged into the water by sewage treatment plants, factories
and other sources of pollution. Today people swim in organized events in New
York Harbor, which would have been unthinkable in 1972 when the law was passed.
Across the country, billions of dollars were also spent to construct and
improve sewage treatment plants, leading to recoveries of other urban
waterways.
Cleaner water has made the harbor far more hospitable, and other steps have
helped to rebuild life there, like fishing restrictions and the removal of some
dams on tributaries in the Hudson River watershed.
The harbor’s environment remains compromised even so. It continues to be
stressed by sewage overflow during rainstorms and by habitat degradation, such
as loss of salt marshes from development and sea level rise. But the ecological
workings of the harbor have been returned to a functional level, a
revitalization that owes much to this landmark act of Congress.
Fifty years on, the story of this remarkable recovery can be told through some
of its key animal species."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/goodnews-global-democracy-cancer-usa-rhinos-india/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
