Almost 53 years ago, sparks from a passing train were enough to ignite the Cuyahoga River. On June 22, 1969, an oil slick burst into flames by a Cleveland steel mill just before noon. To residents of the Rust Belt city, the fire came as no surprise — not even making the front page of either daily. To the nation, it was a wake up call that animated a bipartisan conservation movement.
Just one county over in the city of Lorain, Ohio, President Joe Biden paid homage to that history last month with a show of across-the-aisle environmentalism. On the banks of Lake Erie, President Biden stood in a shipyard at the mouth of the Black River to announce a $1 billion investment into the Great Lakes Basin via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
