Demands for Legislation Against Industrial Pollution of Rivers (1875)

In this newspaper article, the Richmond Dispatch advocates for legal protections against the dumping of industrial waste in Virginia's waterways. Throughout North America, manufacturers located on river banks used fast moving water as a source of power and a means to dispose of industrial byproducts. With industrialization dating back to the 1790s, some areas in the country had experienced nearly a century of polluted waters by the time the Dispatch article appeared and residents became aware of its impact on the daily life of citizens and their access to clean water and air.

Richmond Dispatch, Saturday, February 20, 1875

The Pollution of Rivers

We are gratified to perceive that this subject is engaging the attention of the Legislature of the great State of Pennsylvania. For long years we have urged it upon the consideration of the public as one of the most important that could be studied by the statesman. The State of Pennsylvania has a denser population than has the State of Virginia. But we constantly indulge the hope that all our rivers will be utilized by manufactories, and their shores be settled by thrify manufacturing and commercial populations. Reasons are already abundant why the streams should be protected by law from pollution; but they are steadily increasing.

The great reasons that demand legislation on the subject are: Public health and comfort; protection of the streams, that the animals living in them, which furnish so large a part of human food, may flourish; and the return to the land of all the solid offal which is the refuse of what has been taken from then, in order to prevent the reduction of the land to the condition of the desert.

Take any stream you think of. You know that ordinary springs and wells cannot supply the wants of a moderate town, and that its drinking water and all that is needed for domestic purposes must be drawn from the river. Behold these towns thus supplying themselves from the river, and behold each of them pouring all its offal–fecal and all other–into the river from which it drinks. It may seem to be an even-handed justice that it should inflict the nuisance it has received from towns above it upon the towns below it! This logic may suit the judgments of self-indulgent people, but can hardly commend itself to the tastes and appetites of anybody.

The custom is a scandal upon any civilized community. It has received the attention and censure of the highest authorities. The health, and decency, and comfort of society demand a reform. So important has the subject become that Queen Victoria, in her last address, called the attention of Parliament to it. For the sake of the best interests of society, as well as its pleasures and comforts, a great reform is needed. The rivers must be protected from pollution. The nuisances created by making them the receptacles of all refuse will force the law-makers to go to work to shield them from the abuse of self-indulgent, inconsiderate, and apathetic communities.