I thought I read a while back the Hudson River was pollutant free. Must have been one of those PR gimmicks or perhaps both of these are.

Nah, #1, it was OK until that evil Sully crashed that plane into the Hudson. All that fuel and oil re-polluted(?) the river.

Yeah, that´s it!

I remember growing up on the Monongahela river. I remember raw sewage being dumped into the river and I remember when people threw their trash out of their cars. I also remember the smoke stacks in Pittsburgh, Dusquesne and Clairton spewing choking smoke.

Environmentalism is a good thing when done right.

Wealth brings order and cleanliness, no laws required. However, the left won´t stand for that. Hence, EPA.

The specific problems with the Charles and Hudson rivers were municipal waste problems where untreated or partially treated water was being dumped in the harbors. Because that involves politicians, that issue is still not fully resolved. In the meantime the EPA is trying to regulate non-navigable waters such as creeks and farm ponds. The are using the Clean Water Act to block the mining of coal via mountain top removal. Putting dirt and rock into dry creek beds has been deemed hazardous because it doesn´t pollute but does change the ecology of "dry creeks". Lets enforce existing law against mayors and governors who destroy harbors and stop trying to apply regulations to private non-navigable waters.

The rivers were getting better before the act but, amen, the act has helped. I don´t think that putting more teeth into it will help but may I suggest some intelligence?

1) The Dead Zone in the Gulf increased by 35% when the ethanol mandates went in force. Cancel that. It´s smart and consistent with wanting clean water.

2) Read the studies: Fracking is safe. Water injected into the earth 1 to 2 miles down does not interfere with aquifers that are 500 feet down. I know you guys (greenies) keep hoping that there is something wrong with it but you´ll just have to seek counseling.

Outside of that, it seems that history started when the author was a lad (no trend information from before the 60s) and it´s hard, hard, hard to admit that we´ve come a long way.

Other note: as of 10 years ago (when I saw the study and, darnit, didn´t save a copy) there was one river in China that had more pollution in it than was generated in all of North America.

Go West, young greenie. Go West.

#4, is correct. It is a lesson the radical greenie left has not, and probably never will, learn. Only wealthy nations with a strong and growing economy can afford to be environmentally freindly.

Too many greenies believe not in environmentalism but in an absolutist preservationism. Nothing can or ever should change, man is a disiease and was never a part of the natural world. Thus vast swaths of the planet must be made essentially off limits to humans.

They do not realize that their absolutism only hastens the destruction of the planet they so devoutly worship. In order to ensure a thriving economy which will then ensure a minimal footprint some of nature MUST be exploited. There is no other way. I am all for huge tractts of public land, clean rivers and wilderness areas of splendor and solitude. But I live in a house made of wood, eat hamburgers from cattle fed on the open range and cooked on a gas stove. I drive a car fueled by oiland eat produce grown with fertilizers made from oil byproducts. I enjow fruit grown in Peru and shipped to me in January.

I, and most Americans am wiling to pay a premium for the environment I want, but if the economy crashes I won´t be able to. A hungry man will feel no remorse feeding his children the last black footed ferret for dinner.

Fine, let´s applaud the successes, but not forget the failures, like the almost total shutdown of logging in the pacific northwest and the hundreds of thousands of lost jobs due to environmentalism.

No Federal bureaucracy should be able to destroy an American company, let alone an entire American industry.

The example for this is in the Charter for the FAA, where they´ can´t levy a safety regulation that would cripple/bankrupt an airline. Why doesn´t this wording exist in ALL alphabet Federal bureaucracies?

#3, when those stacks were belching smoke, thousands of people were working making steel, Braddock, Clairton and other communities were alive and vibrant, not crime ridden unemployment zones. What have we lost by getting rid of that smoke?

As the environment keeps getting beter and better, the EPA continues to get bigger and bigger instead of smaller and smaller. That´s why they have sell us the global warming hoax - it keeps them in business.

That´s the problem with every government bureaucracy.

Laws and regulation fixed some very shortsighted issues, but now the sitting regulators go out of their way to find new problems that aren´t there and in the process destroy entire industries and communities, like areas of once productive farming in CA and the coal industry. The regulators are out of control and need a much shorter leash.