Water Quality
The Androscoggin was once heavily polluted by a variety of textile mills, paper mills, and other industries located along its banks, and helped inspire the Clean Water Act. Although the river has benefited greatly from environmental work and the departure of certain types of industry from the region, recent EPA test results indicate unacceptably high levels of mercury-contaminated wastewater are still being discharged into the river from numerous paper mills. One environmentalist group has cited the results in calling the Androscoggin one of the 20 most polluted rivers in America. One 14-mile (23 km) stretch requires oxygen bubblers to prevent fish from suffocating. As of May 2007, environmental groups have a lawsuit pending, in an attempt to force the paper mills located along the river to clean their waste streams. Companies have resisted, citing cost.
Read more about this topic: Androscoggin River
Famous quotes containing the words water and/or quality:
“We have to learn how to come out of unclean situations cleaner than we were, and even how to wash ourselves with dirty water when we need to.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“It is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)