Quote:
Originally Posted by RezZ
Be you the rivers here in downtown Pittsburgh are worse. Filthy brown color year round.
|
Hmmm... I think I'll take that bet:
Quote:
|
As early as 1769, a visiting Englishman was moved to comment on the “mess” in the Delaware River at Philadelphia. In 1940, the health of the Delaware River was so poor that the Interstate Commission on the Delaware River Basin called the tidal river below Trenton at Philadelphia and Camden "one of the most grossly polluted areas in the United States". During the Second World War, a newly painted ship faded to the colors of the rainbow as it sailed into the toxic river. Army and Navy pilots were instructed to ignore the stench of the river as they flew a mile overhead. By the 1950s, the urban Delaware Estuary was noted as one of most polluted stretches of river in the world with zero oxygen levels during the summer. American shad were unable to migrate through the zero oxygen barrier at Philadelphia leading to near extirpation of the species with genetic origins in the basin. In 1973, three years after USEPA was created, the agency concluded the Delaware River would never achieve fishable water quality standards.
|
From
History of the Delaware River Basin | Water Resources Agency.