The following are recollections of Ed Kelly, manager of the field teams that investigated sources of water pollution on the Cuyahoga River and its tributaries along with area streams that discharge into Lake Erie after the big fire in 1969.

My association with the Cuyahoga River began at a get- together with John Moore, who was a friend and a former chemist with the City of Cleveland, Division of Water Pollution Control, Bureau of Industrial Waste. John indicated that the city was in need of field investigators who would seek out potential polluters of the Cuyahoga River. The river had recently caught fire due to the oily and sometimes colorful wastes that continually flowed from unknown sources along the river.

Years later, John would offer his professional opinion why the Cuyahoga River caught fire.

“I do believe the fire was the result of the confluence of the Southerly Waste Treatment Plant 'activated sludge' discharge and the breakdown of the cutting oil emulsion in the Cuyahoga River from the Republic Steel Rolling Mill. Volatile acids and methane are generated in the sludge as the river bottom moves downstream. This is an anaerobic process. Methanogens are the biological engines that generate the hydrophilic low molecular weight fermentation products. The CH4 and CxHx(COOH)x (NH)x has a low solubility in water. Where there is no oil film, the surface of the riverbubbles or gas escapes. But if the cutting oil, which is an emulsion, hits the river, the emulsion is destroyed by the change in pH of the river water and the oil which is hydrophilic comes out of solution and floats on the river surface. The oil is non-polar and so is the methane and volatile acids. The oil has a very high flash point when the 'gas' dissolves in the oil film. The saturated oil flash point drops. Flammability is a real possibility. One spark and the surface of the river could ignite. This is my hypothesis of how the Cuyahoga River 'burned'.”

I told John back then that I had no experience in industrial pollution investigations. He replied, “No one else has experience either! We need people that will do what is necessary to identify sources of pollution to the river and other streams that discharge to Lake Erie.” I accepted the challenge and was soon hired by the Bureau of Industrial Wastes to assist in investigating reported water pollution problems.

The Cuyahoga River was a challenge because the City of Cleveland had no jurisdiction; it was classified as “waters of the state of Ohio” and therefore was, by most local opinions, someone else’s responsibility.

After various internal planning meetings, our administrator, Jim Shafer gave us the go ahead to do a preliminary survey of the river. Our first task was to locate pipes at both east and west banks of the river. The survey was performed on the river using a fourteen-foot Boston Whaler. Once the discharge pipes were located, both at the surface and submerged, each of the pipes were given a numeric designation beginning at the mouth of the river on east and west banks and upstream to the lower Harvard Avenue Bridge. We decided that this was a general southern boundary within the City of Cleveland, which provided us a southern limit to continue our investigation of identifying pipes that conveyed pollutants to the Cuyahoga River.

Now that the pipes were located, the next effort was to identify those flowing pipes using the best available technology. Field crews were hired, trained and stationed at each bank of the river at commercial and industrial facilities that were in the vicinity of a previously identified flowing discharge pipe along the banks of the river. One by one, facilities were tested using a colored dye added into various flowing drains until each was verified at the discharge point at the river. Radios were utilized to communicate from boat to the field crews to acknowledge the observance of dye. All facilities except the major steel mills were tested. At this time the major dischargers – mostly, the steel mills – were meeting with USEPA to negotiate a reduction of wastes to the river and it was felt that it was out of the City’s jurisdiction to deal with the problem.

As mentioned by Mr. Shafer, the owners of these facilities were later notified and asked to attend a meeting with the Water Quality Program office to explain the pollution source found. Each were asked to remove this source by rerouting their flows into the City of Cleveland sewer system. Each of these facilities along the Cuyahoga River began to provide plans and implementation schedules for the rerouting of sources found during the water quality survey of the Cuyahoga River.

The success of this program led to similar work on Greater Cleveland area streams. From the east to west, streams including Euclid Creek, Nine Mile Creek, Dugway Brook, Shaw Brook, Doan Brook, Walworth Run, Kingsbury Run, Morgana Run, Big Creek and Mill Creek were surveyed similar to the Cuyahoga River but these were performed by physically walking the banks of the creeks or culverts. In some cases, we walked inside large-diameter culverts buried underground with personnel on the surface to provide communication and safety assistance. Many of the older streams were culverted as they passed through the various communities on their way to their eventual discharge to the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie.

The Water Quality Program, as it was later called, continued to reduce pollutants from the area streams – our work led to a marked increase in water quality in the river as well as the shore areas near the discharges of the local streams into Lake Erie. The remaining combined sewer overflows were later targeted by what would become the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.

Summary

The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District was formed in 1972 to own and operate the plants and interceptor sewers. This was another recommendation of the city’s Master Plan as well as several other studies and, later, a court order. The Regional Sewer District continued to improve the wastewater plants and to construct several interceptors and tunnels to capture and convey wastewater to the plants.

At the state level, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency was formed. At the national level, several departments and agencies were combined to form the USEPA. A memo to President Nixon from the President’s Advisory Council on Executive Organization recommended that key anti-pollution programs be merged into an Environmental Protection Agency. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (PL. 92-500, The Clean Water Act) also known as the Muskie Bill was passed by Congress which created financial assistance at unprecedented levels.

Over the next twenty years, the recommendation of the “Master Plan for Pollution Abatement” done by the City of Cleveland and several subsequent studies commenced by the Three Rivers Watershed District such as the Cuyahoga River Water Quality Study, The Central Cuyahoga Basin Watershed Study, and the Chagrin and Rocky River Water Quality Study were significant planning tools in the cleaning of the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie. The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District continues to be the stalwart for protecting the water quality of the area.