CHRISTINE ROBINSON Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Friday, September 21, 2007 12:00 am
You could smell the North Platte River in the 1950s in Casper long before you could see the flow of waste.
When Alcova Dam opened regularly to produce power, the river rose from a trickle to a gushing flow, but instead of rushing dirt and silt downstream, it washed a wave of human waste and power-plant pollutants.
"When you were making money in an industry with no rules or regulations, the quickest way to get rid of waste was in the Platte," said Fred Eiserman, former manager of Fisheries Resources for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and an environmental consultant.
He moved to Casper during the height of the pollution, and said the three refineries in the area, Texaco, Amoco and Mobil, dumped all of their waste products - including phenol, sulfides, and calcium and magnesium - into the river.
"The important thing to realize is that the acceptable thing to do with rivers was to get rid of your junk," he said.
There was a slaughterhouse on the river in Casper, and the owner disposed of the unwanted animal parts in the North Platte.
"The river was bloody from the slaughterhouse," Eiserman said.
Because Casper, like most cities in the U.S. at the time, did not have a wastewater treatment plant, the sewers also drained directly into the already polluted mess.
But this was not unusual, said Anne MacKinnon, an adjunct professor with the School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming.
Cities all over the country were dumping their wastes into lakes and rivers, the problem becoming so severe at times, a tributary of Lake Erie caught fire in 1969.
While the North Platte River was never ignited, Eiserman said there were probably enough petroleum products in the water to produce a flame.
The editor of the Douglas Budget in the 1950s, Keith Rider, was so furious about the river's pollution he wrote a stream of tirades against Casper's pollutants, eventually encouraging the governor to begin cleanup and regulations, according to Eiserman and 1966 Reader's Digest article about North Platte cleanup.
In 1968, the U.S. Public Health Service said the river was "so grossly polluted with human and refinery wastes that it is doubtful if recovery can ever be obtained."
Yet recovery was obtained, and today Eiserman said the river has some of the best trout fishing in the state.
"The trout might even be better than in the Snake River," Eiserman said. "I can fish in my backyard, how many other people can say that about their rivers?"
Eiserman said the North Platte River clean-up was one of "the greatest pluses of the environmental movement."
"Before we used to say, 'What can the river do for us?' And the answer to that was to take away our pollution," he said. "But now, it's, 'What can we do for the river?' We use the river for so many things now."
Platte River Revival Project Coordinator Jolene Martinez said she remembers hearing about a restaurant near downtown that was bulldozed into the river, salt shakers, stoves, refrigerators and all. Local law enforcement dove in the river later looking for evidence of a crime and found plates and knives in the river, remnants of the former restaurant.
In what Eiserman refers to as the "final chapter" of decades of cleanup, Martinez is hoping the community of Casper will join together to make the river an even better place to be.
The first cleaning initiatives were done by refineries and government, regulating waste disposal and imposing environmentally-friendly regulations.
In 1966 Reader's Digest magazine wrote the story on the North Platte cleanup, claiming at the time it was the only river in the U.S. to have been revived to this extent.
Casper now has its own wastewater treatment plant, the refineries are gone and the Bureau of Reclamation carefully controls its flows to provide power, irrigation water and a liveable habitat for trout.
The Platte River Parkway provides riverside access for 11 miles, the Whitewater Park provides a recreational area for people from all over Wyoming and the blue-ribbon trout fishing brings tourists from around the country.
All that is left, Eiserman said, is to remove some of the large pieces of junk in the river, clean up the banks and make Casper citizens realize what an invaluable resource they have, slicing through the city from the mountains on its way to the Missouri.
Reach Christine Robinson at (307) 266-0639 or christine.robinson@casperstartribune.net