Abstract
When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created following Earth Day in 1970, it was apparent to the public that pollutant sources such as smokestacks, wastewater treatment plants, and industrial waste dumps were having a devastating effect on their surrounding environment. Biological deserts punctuated forests around smelters, petroleum wastes in rivers caught fire, Lake Erie was pronounced dead when dissolved oxygen was consumed by organic wastes and eutrophication, and whole neighborhoods abandoned their homes when toxic wastes were discovered in soils and groundwater. It did not require a graduate degree in ecology to determine that the environment was unacceptably degraded or to determine the cause of most of the problems. Nor was it difficult to notice the return of fish, animals, and vegetation to areas downstream or downwind of pollutant sources following regulation of the worst pollutants.
This paper has not been subjected to policy review by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of EPA. No official endorsement should be inferred.
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Messer, J.J. (1992). Indicators in Regional Ecological Monitoring and Risk Assessment. In: McKenzie, D.H., Hyatt, D.E., McDonald, V.J. (eds) Ecological Indicators. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4659-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4659-7_10
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