New River dam defeated on this day in 1976. The massive hydroelectric project, proposed by the American Electric Power Co., would have created two dams with a combined height of 300 feet in a pristine NC and Va watershed. During the decades-long debate about the dam project, Congressman Ken Hechler of West Virginia compared the idea of damming the New River to “dynamiting the pyramids.”
Comments Off on 1976-09-11
Hoover Dam turbines start The first of the electric turbines at the Hoover Dam goes into service on this day in 1936. The massive dam near Las Vegas was dedicated the on Sept. 30, 1935. The dam provides hydroelectric power and drinking water source for much of the southwestern U.S. and was one of the main subjects in the environmental book Cadillac Desert.
Comments Off on 1936-10-26
Kelly Barnes Dam fails on this day in 1977 in Georgia, US, killing 39 people.
Comments Off on 1977-11-06
Los Angeles aqueduct is opened on this day in 1913, bringing water from the Sierra Nevada mountains 360 kilometers to the east. Headed by William Mulholland, the larger-than-life czar of L.A.’s water supply, the project beings with mule trains and bulldozers in 1908 (photo). The aqueduct fuels the enormous growth of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley during the next century and is remembered today as an example of engineering arrogance for its negative impact on the Owens River and the catastrophic failure of the St. Francis Dam in 1928.
Comments Off on 1913-11-05
Hungary abandons dam The Hungarian government abandons the Nagymoros dam project on the Danube River on this day in 1989, conceding that it entailed grave risk to the environment and the water supply of Budapest.
Comments Off on 1989-07-10
The Aswan High Dam is completed on the Nile River in Egypt on this day in 1970. The dam reduces annual floods, which reduces natural fertilizer and makes life harder for traditional farmers along the Nile. And the dam also inundates some ancient Egyptian structures, but the Abu Simbal temple is saved in a massive archeological engineering effort in 1964.
Comments Off on 1970-07-19
Banqlao Dam ruptures in the Ru River of China, killing between 90,000 and 250,000 people. The dam was built to withstand a 1,000-year typhoon, party officials said. It lasted about 20 years.
Comments Off on 1975-08-07
Battle of Matewan WV takes place on this day in 1920 when coal mine guards attempt to evict miners from homes owned by a coal company in the town of Matewan, West Virginia. As the mine guards try to serve what the town's elected mayor Cabell Testerman calls "bogus" eviction notices, a gun battle breaks out. The mayor and two deputies are killed, but sheriff Sid Hatfield (photo, right) and the other deputies kill seven of the mine guards. Hatfield becomes famous for standing up to the coal companies and faces several legal charges in the aftermath. Then, on Aug. August 1, 1921, Hatfield and a deputy are murdered in retaliation by mine guards on the steps of a West Virginia county courthouse. None of the mine guards are charged with any crime. Anger builds as news spreads, and by the end of August, 1921, over ten thousand armed coal miners are in open revolt against the coal industry. The insurrection leads to Battle of Blair Mountain.
Leaded gasoline is a grave threat to public health, experts warn government and industry at a conference hosted by the US Surgeon General on this day in 1925. The event draws ninety attendees at the Public Health Service headquarters next to the US Capitol, including Alice Hamilton, MD, leader of Harvard's School of Public Health, along with industry experts such as Charles F. Kettering of GM and Frank Howard of Standard Oil. The question is whether leaded gasoline should be regulated, and the conference recommends a quick study of people who have already been exposed to leaded gasoline at service stations or garages. The urgent need for study comes after a series of tragic refinery exposures that killed at least 17 workers and made at least 150 permanently disabled.
Thomas Midgley Jr., inventor of leaded gasoline and ozone-depleting chemicals, is born this day in 1889. More than most engineers, Midgley's legacy points to serious ethical issues engineers must face and the consequences of simply going along with corporate management. In the 1921 - 1925 period, while developing leaded gasoline, Midgley was also working on other octane-boosting fuel additives (especially alcohols but also reformates, carbonyls and aromatics). At an automotive engineers conference in 1921, he was particularly enthusiastic about ethanol as an octane - boosting additive for gasoline. But in 1924, General Motors, Standard Oil and du Pont -- which had formed the Ethyl Corp. -- preferred the poisonous leaded gasoline compound that maximized their profits. After at least 17 workers died violently insane from lead poisoning in refineries that year, debate broke out over its public health impacts, and public health experts such as Alice Hamilton of Harvard and Yandall Henderson of Yale stepped forward to challenge GM / Standard / DuPont / Ethyl (New Market). 
Midgley did not remain neutral; he openly lied and claimed that no alternatives existed. Midgley's work in the 1930s on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as refrigerants was in part an attempt to redeem himself because at the time, CFCs were inert substitutes for dangerous ammonia refrigerants; they were not known to contribute to ozone depletion until the 1970s. Midgley expressed remorse for the deaths of workers but disdain for public health "fanatics" during his lifetime, which was cut short by an apparent suicide in 1944. 
¶ London smog has been infamous for centuries, and when 4,000 people died in December 1952, the British government mocked worried meteorologists the same way that climate deniers mock scientists today. (In The Crown, Season 1 Episode 4, Churchill (played by John Lithgow) initially dismisses the gravity of the crisis, calling it an "act of God," while facing political pressure to resign.
Environmental Action Archive
starting with Earth Day 1970 is now open at the University of Pittsburgh.
The hats that created bird sanctuaries like the Mahleur Wildlife Preserve in Oregon in 1908 are featured in this OPB web site. The Mahleur has been the scene of a confrontation between right wingers and the federal government in January 2016.
Pollution regs saved lives says Michael Greenstone in this Sept. 24, 2015 article in the New York Times. Although some people want to repeal the Clean Air Act, air quality regulations have averted tens of thousands of premature deaths, Greenstone says.
¶ A giant tree's death sparked the conservation movement in 1853. Terrific article by Leo Hickman of the Guardian on June 27, 2013. The "Mother of the Forest" was also covered in Neuzil and Kovarik's Mass Media and Environmental Conflict published in 1996.
¶ Dymaxion car Blueprints for the 1933 Dymaxion car designed by Buckminster Fuller showed up in a Massachusetts recently. The car was far ahead of its time but a fatal accident on a test site stalled development. Although widely celebrated for his innovative ideas, Fuller was not much of an automotive engineer, according to Smithsonian magazine.
¶ 1970 Clean Car Race is reported in MIT Technology Review in August, 2013. The cleanest car, among the electrics and hybrids, was a modified internal combustion engine.
¶ History of the Commons and today's environmental crisis is an excellent read in the May/June 2013 Utne Magazine.
¶ Saving the NJ Pine Barrens Writer John McPhee recalls the struggle to save a remnant of wilderness on the east coast. Philadelphia Inquirer, March 4, 2013.
¶ Remembering Darwin Scientific American remembers Charles Darwin and his impact on science on the 204th anniversary of his birthday, Feb. 12, 2012.
¶ Shackleton crew's 1916 ordeal -- a perilous journey taken after their ship got stuck and sank in Antarctica -- is being reinacted by a group of British and Australian adventurers. (Associated Press, Feb. 10, 2013)
¶ US air pollution was a lot like the pollution now in Beijing says Jim Bruggers of the Louisville Courier Journal and Alexis Madrigal in the Atlantic magazine in January 2013 articles. KCET public television also had a well illustrated article on L.A.'s smoggy past.
¶ First subway The London tube is 150 years old on Jan. 9, 2013. Mind the gap!
¶ Birth of the Clean Water Act Living on Earth interviews William Ruckelshaus, the first EPA administrator, about the Clean Water Act of 1972. "it was a terrible time," Ruckelshaus said. "I remember the first time I moved to Washington and the air was brown as I’d go to work in the morning. There was no industry in Washington at the time, that was all automobile pollution." Dec. 28, 2012.
¶ Remembering Barry Commoner A biologist and activist best known for studying baby’s teeth to demonstrate that radioactive fallout from atomic weapons testing was getting into our food supply and endangering our health. Living on Earth, Oct. 5, 2012.
¶ Bodega nuclear fight Gary Pace of Sebastopol, California reflects on the 1960s fight over building a nuclear power plant on top of the San Andreas earthquake fault at the Bodega Headlands. "I often wonder how (environmentalists) found the outrageous hope that they could halt the building of a nuclear plant once the work had started and I ask for similar inspiration." Living on Earth, Sept. 28, 2012.
¶ Climate change drove early human migration, anthropologists believe. NPR, Sept. 20, 2012.
¶ Ancient deforestation created the Danube River delta 8,000 years ago, scientists have found. Sept. 14, 2012New York Times.
¶ Environmental injustice The Hawks Nest Disaster of 1930 - 33 is getting a new memorial. In the infamous incident, between 700 to 3,000 US workers were killed or severely injured for life after boring a tunnel through a section of pure silica without then-standard respiratory protection. Sept. 7, 2012, W.V. Gazette. Also see this People's Press 1935 article about the disaster.
¶ National mammal? Teddy Roosevelt V argues that the US should remember its conservation history by making the bison the country's national mammal. Sept. 4, 2012
¶ Environmental Future Postcards from the past show the world of the future in 2012 in all its dazzling glory, from air police stopping traffic to whales pulling carriages full of divers. Fast Company, Aug. 20, 2012
¶ Smog of History LA Times recaps an article about testing pollution control devices in the 1950s. Aug. 17, 2012
¶ Remembering the Radium Craze France's 19th century radium craze still haunts Paris, Reuters reports. "When the Franco-Polish Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium in 1898, she set off a craze for the luminescent metal among Parisians, who started using it for everything from alarm clock dials to lipsticks and even water fountains." July 20, 2012
¶ Drought in ancient times The ancient Mayan water system was designed with drought in mind, as this New York Times article notes. Are there lessons for the modern era? July 17, 2012.