March 9, 1965 -- Feds Set Deadline for Lake Clean-Up

Thursday, March 9, 2017

March 9, 1965 -- Feds Set Deadline for Lake Clean-Up

March 9, 1965 – At the conclusion of a conference at McCormick Place the federal government orders industries and cities bordering the southern end of Lake Michigan to stop the bacterial pollution of the lake within a year. They are given an additional six months to cease the dumping of other pollutants. Murray Stein, the chairman of the conference and the person in charge of the enforcement branch of the pollution control division of the United States health service, says, “This is indeed a milestone in pollution control if the industries and municipalities institute the recommendations we have outlined, the threat to the lake will be over.” [Chicago Tribune, March 10, 1965] Five other recommendations come out of the four-and-a-half day conference: (1) All sewage treatment plants in the Indiana-Illinois area will be required to provide secondary treatment to sewage and to disinfect the effluent by chlorination; (2) Beaches will be considered unsuitable for bathing if the amount of bacteria exceeds 1,000 per 100 milliliters; (3) Industries will be required to improve their housekeeping practices to minimize the discharge of waste from industrial sources and to end the pumping of untreated or partially treated wastes; (4) Industrial plants discharging wastes will be required to take samples of their wastes and to keep them in an open file; and (5) The Thomas J. O’Brien lock, located in the Calumet River, be place into operation to keep the Calumet River from flowing into Lake Michigan. Stein says, “This pollution control process is inexorable. Once the federal government enters an area that has a gross pollution problem, the law requires it to see that the pollution is cleaned up.”

March 9, 1902 -- The course of true love never did run smooth, and that was especially true for Miss Carolina Nuzioto and her distant cousin,

Francisco Nuzioto, as they head with more than 20 of their friends in a half-dozen carriages toward their wedding in a church on Kinzie Street. As reported in the Chicago Daily Tribune, "As the first carriage crossed Madison street the Taylor street trolley car whirled down upon it. There was a shout of warning, and the carriage driver, A. J. Curry, whipped up his horses, but too late. The car struck the rear wheels, there was a crash of glass, a scream and the wrecked carriage was tossed on its side. The prospective bride and groom were thrown into the street . . . The wedding guests sprang from their carriages and hurried to the spot, thinking some one had been killed. They found Miss Nuzioto trying to remove the mud from her bridal gown and veil, while the groom was sorrowfully removing kid gloves that had once been white." As the crowd of angry wedding guests surrounded the driver and the motorman, a policeman intervened and scolded the group for keeping the priest waiting. "Go now and get married," he commanded. And so they did.

Connecting the Windy City

Thursday, March 9, 2017