By Patricia Houser
For Nature’s Sake
Patricia Houser
The photo of seven youngsters at a beach, circa 1969, shows a row of neighborhood chums of varying heights, hair plastered down from swimming, posing proudly behind a network of “dribble castles.”
Three of the friends from that photo, Janice Castle, Jane Cuppernull and David Skirkanitch, gathered on a shady patio a block from Long Island Sound this past July and reflected on their idyllic childhood as Milford “beach kids.” They also mulled over what they had witnessed, often unknowingly, in the way of environmental change.
In today’s era of environmental bad news, these friends and some others from their generation can attest to a bit of good eco-news that may be easy to take for granted. They have seen changes in local waterways – in color, smell, and clarity – since the 1960s and 70s that reflect the vital impact, very much worth celebrating, of the Clean Water Act.
Seven Milford youngsters at a beach circa 1969, several of whom recently recalled the water they played in
during their youth, prior to the Clean Water Act, as “murky.” Photo courtesy of Patricia Houser.
The 50th anniversary is coming up on Oct. 18 of the signing of the 1972 version of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, dubbed the Clean Water Act. Today, the law is praised by nonprofits and government agencies engaged in safeguarding our streams, lakes and oceans as well as private enterprises like tourism and shellfish industries, that are especially reliant on clean water. Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, the country’s largest conservationist organization, regards it as “one of the most successful environmental laws in world history.”
At the time that Congress overrode President Richard Nixon’s veto of the law with overwhelming bipartisan support, American waterways had for decades been used to dispose of a brew of chemicals, oil and excrement spewed via waste pipes into rivers and lakes in every part of the country. For many, the wakeup call on the impact of all that effluent came with frequent depictions of dead fish on the shores of Lake Erie, an enormous water body that had become largely devoid of life, or the 1969 incident in Cleveland, Ohio, where the Cuyahoga River caught fire (as it turns out, for at least the thirteenth time since 1868).
In Connecticut water resources were also profoundly burdened by pollution. Statistics from a 1966 state report suggest that 100 million gallons of raw sewage and another 100 million gallons of industrial waste were entering Connecticut’s waterways each day. Katherine Hepburn described the Connecticut River in a 1965 documentary as “the world’s most beautifully landscaped cesspool.”
As a child, Skirkanich, one of the former “beach kids” and today a member of the Milford Tree Commission, remembers looking out the car window on trips up the Naugatuck Valley and noticing “the Naugatuck River was black and the rocks were dark as can be, and it smelled – it was an awful smell – like burnt rubber.” He also remembers the waste ponds on the grounds of the Raybestos plant in Stratford.
Raybestos, where asbestos was used in the production of brake linings in a factory across the Housatonic River from Milford, was a significant local employer and sponsored a women’s softball team.
“They had a ballfield there,” said Castle, today a part-time consultant in Milford. “We would go see the Raybestos Brakettes team play.”
Through a child’s eyes, Skirkanich remembers that the water in the waste ponds took on phosphorescent shades of “lime green, orange – all these crazy colors that as a kid you think of as pretty.”
When the Clean Water Act came along, it halted the unrestricted release of effluent to places like the Naugatuck and the Housatonic rivers and every other major river and water body across the country. A centerpiece of the act is a rule that makes it illegal to pipe waste into a waterway without a permit. Violators can be fined tens of thousands of dollars per day and be sentenced to prison.
These permits also include limits, monitored by states and the federal government, on the amount and type of pollutants that go in the water. The Clean Water Act also provided significant funding to help municipalities upgrade their sewage treatment plants. EPA figures show that the number of rivers, lakes and estuaries suitable for fishing and swimming doubled within 25 years of when the Clean Water Act went into effect.
In our region, Rich Rosen, president of the Nutmeg Chapter of Trout Unlimited, said, “It took legislation and enforcement, but the Clean Water Act protects an element all living things need to survive and has improved our quality of life. Anglers throughout Connecticut can enjoy numerous rivers, lakes and Long Island Sound in part because of the Clean Water Act.”
Rosen added it’s also been 50 years since the Nutmeg Chapter of Trout Unlimited was established, “and it continues to support cold water fisheries in our area.”
Alicea Charamut, executive director of the Rivers Alliance of Connecticut, noted that the Clean Water Act was actually modeled on the Connecticut Water Act of 1967. When she thought of what it would be like without all that had been accomplished by the nation’s primary water law, she said, “It’s so important that we don’t take how far we’ve come for granted.”
Meanwhile, there is still work to be done. One issue that comes up when experts consider limitations of the Clean Water Act is its central focus on so-called “point source” pollution, or overt pollution from waste pipes (that you could “point” to). While that was the largest pollution source in 1972, today the biggest source of water pollution is non-point, or diffuse, sources of pollution, including stormwater runoff that picks up pesticides and other chemicals as it runs across parking lots, roadways and farm fields and drains into streams and lakes.
Returning to the three childhood friends who had played at the beach, their informal recognition that something had changed about the water came, for Castle and Cuppernull, after they had moved away and then moved back to Milford. As children, they remember the water being “murky.”
“You couldn’t see your feet,” they said, and in games of Marco Polo, where you might dive under the water, they estimated the farthest you might see was about “one and a half feet.”
Cuppernull, who raised her own children in Milford and is now immersed in family responsibilities, first remembered noticing the water was clearer when she moved back to the area as a young parent and brought her children to the beach in the 1980s and 90s. For Skirkanich, there was, most vividly, a moment around 2007 when he had waded up to his waist in the Long Island Sound and suddenly realized, “I can see to the bottom.”
Castle thought of how unaware they were as children, “We didn’t know any better.” They all agreed that they appreciate it more because they lived through the “murkiness.”
Cuppermull said it reminded her of the commercial of the crying Indian from the early 70s “Keep America Beautiful” campaign. “Let’s not go back to murky water,” she said.
Patricia Houser, PhD, AICP, shares her exploration of local and regional environmental issues in this column as a member of the nonpartisan Milford Environmental Concerns Coalition.