^1. Rabin, Robert L., “Federal Regulation in Historical Perspective,” Stanford Law Review 38 (1986): 1278–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Vogel, David, “The ‘New’ Social Regulation in Historical and Comparative Perspective,” in Regulation in Perspective, ed. McCraw, Thomas K. (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 155–86Google Scholar. On the Public Interest movement, see Vogel, David, “The Public-Interest Movement and the American Reform Tradition,” Political Science Quarterly 95 (Winter 1980–81): 607–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitchell, Robert Cameron, “From Conservation to Environmental Movement: The Development of the Modern Environmental Lobbies,” in Government and Environmental Politics: Essays on Historical Developments Since World War Two, ed. Lacey, Michael J. (Washington, D.C., 1989), 91–92Google Scholar; and Brand, Donald R., “Reformers of the 1960s and 1970s: Modern Anti-Federalists?” in Remaking American Politics, ed. Harris, Richard A. and Milkis, Sidney M. (Boulder, Colo., 1989), 37–38Google Scholar. The public-interest groups focused especially on the corrupting power of big business in the American political system, echoing the preoccupation of many Progressive Era reformers. See McCormick, Richard L., “The Discovery That Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism,” American Historical Review 86 (April 1981): 242–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^2. Hoberg, George, Pluralism By Design: Environmental Policy and the American Regulatory State (Westport, Conn., 1992), 7–9Google Scholar; Graham, Hugh Davis, “The Stunted Career of Policy History: A Critique and an Agenda,” The Public Historian 15 (Spring 1993): 22–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rabin, “Federal Regulation in Historical Perspective,” 1278–1315. See also Vogel, David, National Styles of Regulation: Environmental Policy in Great Britain and the United States (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986)Google Scholar; and Marcus, Alfred A., The Adversary Economy: Business Responses to Changing Government Requirements (Westport, Conn., 1984).Google Scholar

^3. See, for example, Vogel, David, Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America (New York, 1989)Google Scholar; and Wilson, James Q., “The Politics of Regulation,” in The Politics of Regulation, ed. Wilson, James Q. (New York, 1980), 357–94.Google Scholar

^4. In the field of water pollution control, see Lieber, Harvey, Federalism and Clean Waters: The 1972 Water Pollution Control Act (Lexington, Mass., 1975).Google Scholar

^5. See David Vogel, “The Public-Interest Movement and the American Reform Tradition,” 609–10.

^6. Act of July 9, 1956, chap. 518, 70 Statutes at Large, 498.

^7. Useful secondary sources on state environmental regulation before the institutional changes that began in the late 1960s include Hays, Samuel P., Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985 (Cambridge, 1987), chap. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davies, J. Clarence III and Davies, Barbara S., The Politics of Pollution, 2d ed. (Indianapolis, 1975), chap. 7Google Scholar; and Haskell, Elizabeth H. and Price, Victoria S., State Environmental Management: Case Studies of Nine States (New York, 1973)Google Scholar. An older work, Flannery, James J., “Water Pollution Control: Development of State and National Policy” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1956)Google Scholar, has much useful information on the state water pollution control boards. But the best source for understanding the character of state water-quality policy are the words of state officials themselves. Water pollution control administrators at the state level were expected to participate in professional conferences and publish papers on their work as part of their duties, so articles in professional and trade journals devoted to water pollution control provide valuable insight into their views.

^8. Testimony of Vogt, John, Director of the Division of Engineering, Michigan Department of Health, inProceedings of the Joint Federal-State of Michigan Conference on Pollution of Navigable Waters of the Detroit River and Lake Erie, and Their Tributaries Within the State of Michigan, 1st sess.,Detroit,March 27–28, 1962 (Washington, D.C., 1962), 209Google Scholar (hereafter Detroit River Conference—March 1962).

Primary treatment referred to physical manipulation of effluent, such as screening and settling, that removed less than 50 percent of organic pollutants. Secondary treatment used various methods to re-create and accelerate the oxidation process that occurred naturally in streams and could achieve more than 90 percent removal of organic pollutants. In addition to the standard methods of primary and secondary treatment, additional processes—sometimes grouped under the heading “tertiary treatment”—could be incorporated to attain even higher levels of organic pollutant removal or to remove other forms of pollutants, such as phosphorus. The adoption of these latter methods could often increase treatment costs dramatically.

^9. Dappert, Anselmo F., “New York Pollution Control Policy and Lake Erie,” Industrial Water and Wastes 9 (January–February 1964), 30.Google Scholar

^10. See, for example, Kazis, Richard and Grossman, Richard L., Fear at Work: Job Blackmail, Labor, and the Environment (New York, 1982)Google Scholar, chap. 2; Barker, Michael, ed., State Taxation Policy (Durham, N.C., 1983)Google Scholar; and Jacobs, Jerry, Bidding for Business: Corporate Auctions and the Fifty Disunited States (Washington, D.C., 1979)Google Scholar. According to Jacobs, “a substantial body of literature on industrial location decisions” pointed to “proximity to markets, efficient and inexpensive transportation and a plentiful and skilled labor force” as the most important factors in these decisions. See 29.

^11. See U.S. EPA Oral History Interview no. 1, William D. Ruckelshaus (January 1993): 5–7.

^12. See, for example, the testimony of the major steel, paper, petroleum, and chemical trade association in House Committee on Government Operations, Water Pollution Control and Abatement (Parts 1A and 1B—National Survey): Hearings before the Subcommittee on Natural Resources and Power, 88th Cong., 1st sess., May and June, 1963.

^13. At a conference on the enforcement of water pollution laws in November 1965, John A. Moekle, associate council for the Ford Motor Company, commented that in Michigan legal enforcement of water pollution regulations relating to industry had “not been a matter of combat or litigation, but a matter of reasoned cooperation, a working out of problems through mutual efforts of government and industry.” See Moekle, , “Relation of Water Pollution Law Enforcement to Industrial Operation and Development,” inProceedings of the Conference on Water Pollution Law Enforcement in Lansing, Michigan, November 22, 1965(Lansing,1965).Google Scholar

For almost identical comments, see the testimony of Jerome Wilkenfeld of Associated Industries of New York State, a state trade association, in House Committee on Government Operations,Water Pollution Control and Abatement (Parts 1A and 1B–National Survey): Hearings before the Subcommittee on Natural Resources and Power, 88th Cong., 1st sess.,May and June, 1963,1631–32.Google Scholar

^14. Letter, Charles Lounsbury, Plant Manager, DuPont, to E. J. Riley, Plant Manager, Ferro Chemical Corporation, 3 May 1965, and attachment, Ohio Water Pollution Control Board Records, Ohio State Archives, Series 1800, Box 10, file 2. At the time of the letter, Lounsbury was co-chairman of the committee.

^15. Minutes of Cuyahoga River Basin Water Quality Committee, May 26, 1965 Meeting, 2–3, in ibid.

^16. Melosi, Martin V., “Lyndon Johnson and Environmental Policy,” in The Johnson Years, Volume Two: Vietnam, the Environment, and Science, ed. Divine, Robert A. (Lawrence, Kan., 1987), 113–49Google Scholar. In one five-month period in 1964, the radio and television public service advertisements sponsored by the Public Health Services generated more than 16,000 letters of inquiry to Washington. See letter, Robert S. Hutchings, Chief of Information Branch, Division of Water Supply and Pollution Control, to Robert Sansom, 21 December 21 1964, Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, Record Group 382, Washington National Records Center, A/N 68A-1938, Box 12, “Public Awareness Program” file (hereafter FWPCA Records). The statistics on the growth of the agency are drawn from “New Anti-Pollution Agency Faces Personnel Problems,” Engineering News-Record, 7 October 1965, 28–29. Construction grant funding made up the great bulk of the annual budget.

^17. See Proceedings of the State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators in Joint Meeting with the Conference of State Sanitary Engineers inWashington, D.C.,May 21, 1962,Google Scholar by the Dept. of HEW, Public Health Service, Division of Water Supply and Pollution Control, 8–9.

^18. See Quigley Oral History Interview, 1967, 39, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

^19. Wilson, “The Politics of Regulation,” 386–87.

^20. Senate Committee on Public Works,Water Pollution Control: Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution, 88th Cong., 1st sess.,June 1963,246Google Scholar. For statements citing concerns about driving industry out of state as a result of tough water pollution regulation, see the testimony of Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Public Works,Water Pollution Control Hearings on Water Quality Act of 1965, 89th Cong., 1st sess.,February 18, 19, and 23, 1965,232–34Google Scholar; and the testimony of Michigan Assistant State Attorney General Nicholas Olds, House Committee on Public Works,Water Pollution Control Act Amendments, 88th Cong., 1st and 2d sess.,December 1963 and February 1964,497–98.Google Scholar

^21. Testimony of Nelson, Senate Committee on Public Works,Water Pollution Control: Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution, 88th Cong., 1st sess.,June 1963,246Google Scholar; and testimony of Kennedy, U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Public Works,Water Pollution, Part 2: Field Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution, 89th Cong. 1st sess.,June 17, 1965,792–93.Google Scholar

^22. Scheiber, , “Constitutional Structure and Protection of Rights: Federalism and Separation of Powers,” in Power Divided: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Federalism, ed. Scheiber, and Feeley, Malcom M. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), 25–26Google Scholar. Quote from 25. For similar comments concerning state pollution control specifically, see Davies and Davies, Politics of Pollution, 162–65.

^23. See Blackford, Mansel G. and Kerr, K. Austin, Business Enterprise in American History, 2d ed. (Boston, 1990), 257–58Google Scholar; and Graebner, William, “Federalism in the Progressive Era: A Structural Interpretation of Reform,” Journal of American History 64 (September 1977): 331–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^24. This concept is an important theme in Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence. See especially 36–39.

^25. During his testimony before the Lake Erie Federal enforcement conference in August 1965, Cleveland City Councilman John Pilch posed the following questions:

How can you tell if by some youngster swimming in that polluted water, that polluted lake, and he swallows one or two mouthfuls, that maybe years later, he will suffer from some sickness, possibly leukemia? Who can tell? Nobody knows what it is. Possibly cancer—who can tell? Can you? Can I? No, but it could happen.

See Proceedings of the Conference in the Matter of Pollution of Lake Erie and Its Tributaries, 1st sess.,Cleveland,August 3–6, 1965 (Washington, D.C., 1965), 107.Google Scholar

^26. See, for example, the statement submitted by the Michigan United Conservation Clubs in Detroit River Conference—March 1962, 945–8.

^27. See Hutchings to J. Stewart Hunter, 23 September 1963, U.S. Public Health Service, Record Group 90, Washington National Records Center, A/N 66A-484, Box 21, “Reports” file.

^28. According to James Q. Wilson, “entrepreneurial politics” is usually behind a policy that “will confer general (though perhaps small) benefits at a cost to be borne chiefly by a small segment of society.” This equation holds true for many environmental laws and policies, although in the long run most of the costs involved are ultimately passed on to consumers. Skillful entrepreneurs push these policies through to adoption by linking proposals to perceived crises and associating legislation with widely shared values such as clean water. Wilson also stresses that this kind of regulation “depends heavily on the attitudes of third parties,” who he defines as various political elites such as members of the media and public intellectuals who are not directly affected by the policy in question. See Wilson, “The Politics of Regulation,” 370–71.

^29. See Schudson, Michael, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York, 1978), chap. 5.Google Scholar

^30. In 1960, a survey of newspaper editors from around the country found that, while they were aware of the progress that had been made in controlling water pollution, the editors believed that state programs were not achieving results at a fast enough rate. The editors called for stronger laws and stricter enforcement of existing statutes, along with higher levels of state funding for pollution control. See Everts, Curtiss M., “The Position of States in Water Pollution Control,” Journal, Water Pollution Control Federation 33 (February 1961): 161.Google Scholar

^31. Drake is quoted in “The Press Agentry of Pollution,” Clean Waters for Ohio 11 (Summer 1962): 14–15.Google Scholar

^32. Detroit News, 12 May 1962.

^33. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 3 April 1960.

^34. Michigan Water Resources Commission, Quarterly Bulletin, no. 7, quarter ending March 31, 1960, 1.

^35. Memo, State Controller Ira Polley to Governor John Swainson, August 3, 1961, Swainson Papers, Bentley Library, University of Michigan, Box 14, “Detroit River Pollution” file; and Detroit River Conference—March 1962, 362–65.

^36. These generalizations are based on letters submitted for the record at the Detroit River federal enforcement conference by individuals, civic associations, local conservation groups, and other parties from this area. See Detroit River Conference—March 1962, 356–584.

During 1961 Michigan experienced the greatest outbreak of hepatitis in its history, as did the United States as a whole. Monroe County, which contained Sterling State Park, was particularly hard hit, but the county health director denied any connection with polluted lake water, maintaining that all evidence pointed to person-to-person contact as the means for spreading the disease. See 759–75 of the conference.

^37. “Start Drive to Stop Lake Erie Pollution,” Detroit News, 14 September 1961.

^38. Letter, Chascsa to Ribicoff, 15 December 1961, Swainson Papers, Box 33, “Detroit River Pollution” file. The minutes of the second through sixth meetings of the Lake Erie Cleanup Committee are reprinted in Detroit River Conference—March 1962, 599–631. These meetings were held once a month from September 1961 through February 1962. The respect accorded the committee's influence is evident in appearances by officials from the Michigan Water Resources Commission and Department of Health, the PHS, the City of Detroit, state legislators, and some local industries.

^39. Detroit River Conference-March 1962, 498–511. Coliform bacteria were not in themselves harmful, but their presence in large numbers served as an indicator of fecal pollution and the possible presence of pathogenic organisms. The governments of the United States and Canada established the International Joint Commission after the two nations entered into the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. The binational commission was responsible for resolving issues and disputes arising from use of the boundary waters. In the area of water pollution, the commission acted as an investigative body, carrying out studies at the request of the two governments and then issuing findings and recommendations. In its most recent study of Great Lakes water pollution, published in 1951, the International Joint Commission had recommended a number of water-quality objectives for the connecting channels of the Great Lakes, which included the Detroit River. See International Joint Commission, Report on the Pollution of Boundary Waters (Washington, D.C., and Ottawa, 1951), 18–22.Google Scholar

^40. Letter, Hart to Swainson, 18 October 1961, Swainson Papers, Box 14, “WRC: General” file. On the similar urging by Representative Dingell, Senator Pat McNamara (Democrat), and downstream state legislators, see memo, Milton Adams to Water Resources Commission, 29 November 1961, 3–4, Swainson Papers, Box 14, “Detroit River Pollution” file.

^41. Letter, Adams to Swainson, 2 November 1961; and memo, Boyd Benedict, Governor's staff, to Swainson, 7 November 1961, Swainson Papers, Box 14, “Detroit River Pollution” file.

^42. Letter, Adams to Water Resources Commission, 14 November 1961; and memo, Boyd Benedict to Swainson, 15 November 1961, in ibid.

^43. Letter, Swainson to Ribicoff, 5 December 1961, George Romney Papers, Bentley Library, University of Michigan, Box 336, “Great Lakes States Conference, May 1965” file.

^44. “U.S. Agent Promises Action on Pollution,” Grand Rapids Press, 17 December 1961.

^45. Detroit River Conference—March 1962, 103–4.

^46. Statement of Carbine in Detroit River Conference—March 1962, 143–44; and “The Furore About Lake Erie,” Clean Waters for Ohio 11 (Spring 1962): 12–13Google Scholar. The steady decline of Lake Erie's commercially valuable fish populations in recent decades lent a sense of urgency to the research by the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. The earlier work of fishery biologists in the Great Lakes emphasized overfishing rather than pollution as the major cause of commercial fishing woes. See Egerton, Frank N., “Missed Opportunities: U.S. Fishery Biologists and Productivity of Fish in Green Bay, Saginaw Bay, and Western Lake Erie,” Environmental Review 13 (Summer 1989): 33–63Google Scholar. Fish continued to be plentiful in Lake Erie, but their total population had shifted from a predominance of high-value species such as pike and white fish to low-value fish like carp and smelt. The introduction of exotic fish species was another factor behind the industry's decline.

^47. “The Furore About Lake Erie.”

^48. Drake is quoted in “The Press Agentry of Pollution,” 13. For the large algae deposits on Lake Erie beaches, see Michigan Water Resources Commission, Quarterly Bulletin no. 36, quarter ending June 30, 1962, 5.

^49. John H. Puzenski, Cuyahoga County Sanitary Engineer, “A Report on Pollution Control Progress in Cuyahoga County,” 14 June 1961, 12, Ohio Water Pollution Control Board Records, Ohio State Archives, Series 1800, Box 16, file 9.

^50. “Pollution and Politics,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 17 February 1962.

^51. Harold Titus, “The Fight to Save Lake Erie,” Field and Stream, March 1965, 10–11. Stephen Fox emphasized the importance of the “radical amateur” in his history of the American conservation movement and its transition to modern environmentalism. See Fox, , John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (Boston, 1981).Google Scholar

^52. Memo, H. W. Poston, Regional Program Director, Division of Water Supply and Pollution Control, PHS, to Gordon McCallum, Chief of Division, 14 July 1964, FWPCA Records, A/N 68A-1938, Box 18, “Lake Erie” file; Cleveland Plain Dealer, 29 July 1964; and “Pollution Foe Defends Use of Billboard,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 30 July 1964. An outdoor advertising company donated twelve billboards to Blaushild's campaign, stretching along the Ohio lakeshore from Conneaut to Port Clinton.

^53. These resolutions can be found in FWPCA Records, A/N 68A-1938, Box 18, “Lake Erie” file. By November, an additional seventeen Ohio communities had passed the Blaushild resolution. See “Ohio's Troubled Waters.” News in Engineering, November 1964, 7.

^54. “Locher Asks for Delay in Anti-Pollution Action,” Cleveland Press, 1 August 1964; and “Pollution Policy Defended,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 September 1964.

^55. Charles Northington, “Record of Meeting at City Hall, Cleveland, Ohio, on September 3, 1964,” Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Record Group 235, Washington National Records Center, A/N 69A-1793, Box 46, “Pollution, September–December 1964” file (hereafter HEW Records).

^56. For a discussion of the river basin study and planning programs, see the testimony of James Quigley in House Committee on Government Operations,Water Pollution Control and Abatement (Parts 1A and IB—National Survey): Hearings before the Subcommittee on Natural Resources and Power, 88th Cong., 1st sess.,May and June, 1963,55–56Google Scholar; and letter, Dean Coston, Department of HEW, to Senator Charles Keating of New York, 13 May 1964, HEW Records, A/N 69A-1793, Box 46, “Pollution, April–May 1964” file.

^57. Northington, “Record of Meeting at City Hall, Cleveland, Ohio, on September 3, 1964,” HEW Records, A/N 69A-1793, Box 46, “Pollution, September–December 1964” file.

^58. “Pollution Policy Defended,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 September 1964; “Call Better Sewers Key to Clean Lake,” Cleveland Press, 25 September 1964; and Northington, “Meeting with Cleveland City Council Committee on Air and Water Pollution, September 25, 1964,” 3, FWPCA Records, A/N 68A-1938, Box 18, “Lake Erie” file.

^59. Northington, “Meeting with Cleveland City Council Committee on Air and Water Pollution, September 25, 1964,” 4, FWPCA Records, A/N 68A-1938, Box 18. “Lake Erie” file. When Northington reported that he had told the local parties that evidence of substantial progress and cooperation by the city of Cleveland and local industries could prevent the convening of an enforcement conference, he received a sharp rebuke from Regional Program Director Wally Poston, who stated that only the secretary had the authority to make such decisions and that personnel in the field should make no assurances of this kind. See memo, Poston to W. Q. Kehr, Director, Great Lakes–Illinois River Basin Project, 6 October 1964, in ibid.

^60. Vanik's letter of 2 March 1965 is reprinted in Proceedings of the Conference in the Matter of Pollution of Lake Erie and Its Tributaries, 1st sess.,Cleveland,August 3–6, 1965 (Washington, D.C.: FPCA, 1965), 25–26Google Scholar. The other letters are in HEW Records, A/N 69A-1793, Box 46, “Pollution, January–March 1965” and “Pollution, April–June 1965” files.

^61. For the expanding media coverage of Lake Erie, see memo, James Barnhill, Deputy Chief, Division of Water Supply and Pollution Control, to Quigley, 31 March 1965, 1, FWPCA Records, A/N 68A-1938, Box 18, “Lake Erie” file. Johnson, “Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty, February 8, 1965,” in U.S. President, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, Book 1 (Washington, D.C., 1966), 162.Google Scholar

^62. “Critical Pollution Is Found in Lake,” Cleveland Press, 25 March 1965.

^63. Hess, David, “The Decline of Ohio,” The Nation, 13 April 1970, 429–33Google Scholar; and Zwick, David R. and Benstock, Marcy, Water Wasteland: Ralph Nader's Study Group Report on Water Pollution (New York, 1971), 177.Google Scholar

^64. Letter, Quigley to Rhodes, 22 April 1965, Anthony J. Celebrezze Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Series II, Box 17, folder 327.

^65. “Proceedings of the Governors Conference on Great Lakes Pollution, in Cleveland, May 10, 1965,” typed manuscript, State Library, Columbus.

^66. Ibid., 168–72.

^67. Ibid., 56–68.

^68. Ibid., 68–69.

^69. Letter, Rhodes to Celebrezze, 11 June 1965, James Rhodes Papers, MSS 353, Ohio State Archives, Box 14, folder 6. By this time HEW officials believed there was enough evidence of interstate pollution to justify the inclusion in the conference of all the states discharging to Lake Erie.

^70. Zimmerman, Joseph F., “Preemption in the U.S. Federal System,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 23 (Fall 1993): 7–8.Google Scholar

^71. Proceedings, Progress Evaluation Meeting of the Conference in the Matter of Pollution of Lake Erie and Its Tributaries,Cleveland,June 4, 1968 (Washington, D.C.: FPCA, 1968), 17–20Google Scholar. Quote from 19. For similar sentiments, see the editorial, “Lake Cleanup Pressure Needed,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 4 June 1968.

^72. Proceedings, Progress Evaluation Meeting of the Conference in the Matter of Pollution of Lake Erie and Its Tributaries,Cleveland,June 27, 1969 (Washington, D.C.: FWPCA, 1970), 446–53.Google Scholar

^73. Proceedings, Fifth Session of the Conference in the Matter of Pollution of Lake Erie and Its Tributaries,Detroit,June 3–4, 1970 (Washington, D.C.: Federal Water Quality Administration, 1971), 134–35Google Scholar, 142–43 (hereafter Lake Erie Conference—June 1970).

^74. Lake Erie Conference—June 1970, 405–9.

^75. For the record of other enforcement conferences, see Holmes, Beatrice Hort, History of Federal Water Resources Programs and Policies, 1961–70 (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1979)Google Scholar; and Zwick and Benstock, Water Wasteland. In his account of the early days of the EPA, Cleaning Up America: An Insider's View of the Environmental Protection Agency (Boston, 1976)Google Scholar, John Quarles described the consensus that had arisen among members of Congress about the flaws in the current federal enforcement mechanisms and the need for a more streamlined, tougher approach. See especially chap. 8, which deals with the legislative history of the 1972 Water Pollution Control Act. See also Lieber, Federalism and Clean Waters.

^76. Rosenbaum, Walter, Environmental Politics and Policy (Washington, D.C., 1985), 155.Google Scholar