Bureau of Industrial Wastes forms
As told by Mr. James P. Schafer, retired

The staff of the Bureau of Industrial Wastes came from all walks of life. The original manager, Ray Roth, was the first administrator who hired all the original employees and organized the laboratory and field operations. After the Clean Water Task Force was created, Mr. Roth was promoted to Assistant Commissioner of Water Pollution Control and James Schafer became the chief administrator. Mr. Schafer joined the Bureau of Industrial Wastes in 1968 and served as the administrator from 1969 until 1972 when he left the city and was appointed as Deputy Director of the State of Ohio, Department of Natural Resources.

These are Schafer's recollections of those times with the City of Cleveland Bureau of Industrial Wastes.

My first encounter with the Cuyahoga River was as a college student at Hiram College in 1962-1963. I was a biology major and with several other classmates, we would explore the upper Cuyahoga by canoe and boat. The water was flat, wide and pristine. Many waterfowl would use this area as a resting point on their trip south in the fall. I had seen the lower river in Cleveland and the contrast was spectacular. During my senior year at Hiram in 1966, I conducted a small study of the river, looking at the biology from the headwaters in Montville Township to the mouth at Lake Erie in Cleveland. I attempted to attribute the change in aquatic inhabitants to the polluted discharges I saw.

When I finished college, I called the City of Cleveland to see if there were any jobs available dealing with water pollution control. This is when I first learned of the study being conducted for the City of Cleveland by the engineering firm Havens and Emerson. In 1966, the City of Cleveland contracted Havens and Emerson to prepare “The City of Cleveland Master Plan for Pollution Abatement”. I was hired by the firm to begin work on stream ecology in the summer of 1966. I was in graduate school and spent the next two summers working on the project.

Since the City of Cleveland owned both the water supply system and waste water treatment system in the Greater Cleveland area, the study included the Cuyahoga River from Kent to Lake Erie as well as all the tributary streams flowing to the lake. Studies were also conducted on Lake Erie in order to determine the impact of the discharges from the river and smaller streams and the Westerly and Easterly Wastewater Treatment Plants and combined sewer overflows.

Devices were used to track the direction of water from the Cuyahoga into Lake Erie to help us understand the workings of the system. Water samples were collected for chemical analysis and biological samples were collected in Lake Erie, the Cuyahoga River and all of its associated tributary streams. Part of the study required the establishment of a city-owned lab where we would analyze the water samples. The Bureau of Industrial Wastes under the Water Pollution Control Division provided the chemical analysis, while Havens and Emerson hired biologists to evaluate the biological conditions of the Lake and streams.

The Master Plan was published in 1968, and it emphasized steps to be taken by the city’s wastewater treatment plants and combined sewers, since this was largely the city’s responsibility. Soon after, the Cleveland Clean Water Task Force was created to implement the recommendations of the Master Plan. The Bureau of Industrial Wastes continued to collect the water samples but also expanded its search for specific sources of pollutants discharging to the waters of the area. The Bureau of Industrial Wastes name was changed to the Water Quality Program.

We located virtually every discharge to the Cuyahoga River and, using dye, we were able to determine the source of the discharge. The laboratory analyzed the wastes so that we knew exactly what was being discharged.

The original source of water for the community that became the City of Cleveland was the Cuyahoga River. As the city grew and industry developed along the River, the water supply became less and less desirable. The old records of the City of Cleveland Department of Public Utilities indicate that city officials debated about what to do. An ordinance was passed at some point which made it illegal “to pollute the Cuyahoga River in any manner”.

The next winter, ice jammed and directed the flow of the river to the intake where the city gets its drinking water from the lake. Once again discussion continued about the clean-up of the river and the final decision was to extend the intake further out into the lake rather than clean the river. John D. Rockefeller had his fledgling oil business along the river and was discharging oil to the river.

It was this obscure ordinance that had never been enforced that we used to begin calling industrial polluters into our office, and with dye studies and chemical analysis show how their discharge was polluting the river. We reasoned that this was illegal, and that they would have to stop. We had called the Northeast office of the State of Ohio Heath Department to see if they were willing to join us in the meeting with the various industries (Ohio Environmental Protection Agency was nonexistent at this time). I felt that if the Department of Heath did this, it would be easier to force the industries to comply if they saw that the Ohio Health Department was a part of this.

The strategy worked.

We began calling in polluters telling them that they had to remove any pollution from the Cuyahoga River. They could treat the discharge and divert the pretreated effluent to the City sewer system, but they could not pollute the river in any manner. 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. In 1971, William J. Brown was elected Attorney General in the State of Ohio. State laws were weak in enforcing water pollution control. No legal action had ever been taken against polluters of the Cuyahoga River. Mr. Brown wanted to take action, so we were contacted by his office to identify a discharger that we had good information on concerning the discharge into the river and who was not cooperating with us in our clean-up efforts. We were told that there weren’t any state laws that could be directly used, but they were going to use the Bawdy House Act to enforce pollution control, with our help. This we did and the first successful lawsuit was won setting a precedent for the future.