> > heading down to
> > the Passaic River to watch pollution float by
>
> Still then, eh? My father grew up near that thing back in the 1920s
> and 1930s and saw dead horses and human turds floating by all the
> time. He's amazed that swimming in it didn't kill him. I guess
> consciousness changed enough over 40 or 50 years that people stopped
> swimming in it at least.
>
> Doug
>
> ^^^^
> CB: Like an American Ganges.
>
>
Well, sorta, for an extended period of time the Army Corps of Engineers want
to relieve flooding in the river's upper/generally richer reaches by
straightening and concrete lining the river so, basically, the good people
of Elizabeth took the brunt of the floods and their contents... my first
inkling that the phenomena not-yet-named environmental justice might exist.
Later, they wanted to build a massive tunnel from up-river to down-river
(the river's kinda in the shape of a horseshoe and they wanted to go
linearly from top center to bottom outflow... guess where it'd come out?!
Elizabeth...