• Commander_Data [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Yeah, I don't think people realize how close this is to very densely populated areas. Columbiana County is right between the Cleveland-Akron-Canton CSA (4 million people) and the Pittsburgh-Parkersburg, WV CSA (3 million people). It's 40-70 miles away from several major population centers and a national park.

    It's crazy to think about, but one of the causes for the political urgency that resulted in Nixon and Congress creating the EPA were the many times the Cuyahoga river caught on fire south of dowtown Cleveland in 50s and 60s. People were furious that industry was destroying their cities. Now that kind of thing is barely talked about. I was living in downtown Cleveland in 2007, when one of the chemical plants on the Cuyahoga caught on fire. It took firefighters hours to put it out, and the next day the river mouth at lake Erie was covered with football fields of dead fish. The fire itself was maybe two minutes on the evening news and no follow up regarding the huge fish kill.