When Rick Unger was a boy, he and his father would fish from the breakwall where the Cuyahoga River enters Lake Erie. “I remember the smell,” says Mr. Unger, now 59. “I remember the oil slicks. I remember the fishing not being very good.” The Cuyahoga was then so polluted that the surface occasionally caught fire. Erie was considered a “dead” lake; in summer floating mats of stinking blue-green algae consumed so much oxygen in the water that large areas of the lake were rendered lifeless. But in 1972 Congress passed the Clean Water Act, one of the most far-reaching and ambitious environmental laws ever enacted in the United States. The act cut industrial pollution, set new goals for the health of the nation’s waters, and provided billions of dollars to help cities build and upgrade sewage treatment plants. The effect on the Cuyahoga and Lake Erie was swift and dramatic/Richard Mertens, Christian Science Monitor. More here.

Question: How important is the Clean Water Act to you?