This sort of back-and-forth it typically between those who *do* remember when rivers ran orange, caught on fire, or actually gelled, when entire hillsides downwind from smelters were dead - and those who do not.

I have lived on/around three major rivers (Hudson, Susquahanna & Delaware) and our summer house is on a large creek. All three of the majors were open sewers not so very long ago, all three of them now are reasonably clean and produce edible fish. Our summer house creek narrowly (very narrowly) avoided mine-runoff pollution (a total 'killer') in the mid 1990s. All due, specifically, to the efforts of the EPA, and its state brethren. The present incumbent in the White House just lifted the runoff regulations that saved our creek - happily the mining that would have caused it is now gone and the mine is a tourist attraction (and making more money by this than as a mine). But, those in West Virginia may not realize the same outcome.

It really does not take much. A single incident of run-off will destroy a living stream for 50 or more years.

Burning trash: Not a good idea. Sure, cardboard for kindling, perhaps. But food trash - not in bear country. Plastics - the amount of poison spread out in the ash and smoke is stunning - but your neighbor is the one stunned, as I am sure you burn on the edge of your property so the smoke goes elsewhere.

And so on and so forth.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA