Clean Water Act: 30 Years Later

"When Americans decided to clean up the nation's surface waters in 1972, they were finally responding to environmental disasters too dramatic to ignore: the burning of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, the decaying algae and fish kills of Lake Erie. In Wisconsin, some rivers billowed with phosphorus foam from paper mill and detergent discharges. A billion pounds of dead alewives rotted on Lake Michigan beaches.It has been nearly 30 years since the passage of the Clean Water Act, and tremendous progress has been made in bringing streams, rivers and lakes back to life...So why is it still dangerous to eat the fish and swim at many beaches?"