In this early 1960s image, U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie ’36 and Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, with an unidentified park ranger, visit Maine’s Cadillac Mountain. Image courtesy of the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

One of the landmark environmental laws developed by the late U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie, the Clean Water Act turns 40 in mid-October 2012.

Bates College, from which Muskie graduated in 1936, presents a panel discussion exploring the history and future of the Clean Water Act at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Editor’s Note, Oct. 5, 2012: See video of the panel.

The event is open to the public at no cost. An installment of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships’ Civic Forum series, the event is jointly sponsored with the history department, the environmental studies program and the Muskie Archives. For more information, please call 207-786-6202.

The panelists are:

• Stephen Hinchman, an attorney who works with the Androscoggin River Alliance, an organization dedicated to the health of the river, the local economy and local communities;
• Pete Didisheim, advocacy director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, one of Maine’s best-known environmental advocacy organizations;
• Emily Figdor, director of Environment Maine, a research, education and advocacy organization;
• and John Storer, engineer for the city of Auburn’s water and sewerage districts and the Lake Auburn Watershed Protection Commission.

A native of Rumford, Maine, Muskie grew up well-aware of the sorry condition of the Androscoggin River, rendered one of the nation’s dirtiest waterways by decades of municipal and industrial pollution. An early champion of environmental protection, Muskie spearheaded the Clean Air Act of 1970 and later the Clean Water Act.

Today, while not pristine, the Androscoggin is dramatically healthier and is increasingly the focus of recreational and economic development initiatives.

Coinciding with growing public awareness of environmental issues and the establishment of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, these laws were instrumental both in reducing pollution of the nation’s air and waters, and establishing the pro-environmental mindset that continues to shape U.S. society and policymaking today.

Environmental historian William Cronon.

With the 40th anniversary of the landmark federal Clean Water Act approaching in mid-October, Bates College will observe the occasion with a talk by influential environmental historian William Cronon at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 20, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Cronon’s talk, titled The Riddle of Sustainability: A Surprisingly Short History of the Future, is the Charles and Virginia Tangney History Lecture at Bates. Open to the public at no cost, the event is the second installment in this fall’s Civic Forum Series, produced for Bates by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships.

The talk is jointly sponsored by the history department, the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, and the environmental studies program, as well as the Harward Center. For more information, please call 207-786-6202.

Cronon is Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studies American environmental history and the history of the American West.

He is a national leader in the study of past human interactions with nature, concentrating on how people depend on the ecosystems around them to sustain their material lives, how they modify the landscapes in which they live and how ideas of nature shape the world around us.

Cronon heads UW-Madison’s Center for Culture, History and Environment, which brings together scholars from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, history and forestry to study environmental and cultural change throughout human history.

He has written and edited several prize-winning books, including Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (Norton, 1991), which was awarded the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for best non-fiction work in 1991 and was one of three nominees for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in History.

Oct. 18 is the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act of 1972, one of two transformational pieces of environmental legislation championed by the late U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie, Democrat of Maine. Bates has a special interest in this legislation that launched a massive cleanup of the nation’s waters.

A member of the college’s class of 1936, Muskie was a native of Rumford and grew up near the Androscoggin River, which by the mid-20th century was one of the U.S. waterways most badly affected by industrial and municipal pollution. The Androscoggin has long been the focus of research by Bates students and faculty, including one chemist, Walter Lawrance, who was the state-appointed Androscoggin rivermaster.

The environmental legacy of the late U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie ’36, who was dubbed “Mr. Clean” for spearheading clean water and air laws in the 1960s and 1970s, found its way into a Supreme Court ruling May 15.

The ruling, affirming the states’ right to regulate river water quality, was handed down in a Maine case. At issue was whether a Westbrook paper company needed state licensing to operate five company-owned hydroelectric dams on the Presumpscot River. The state, wishing to use the licensing procedure to force the company to make dam improvements, argued for the power to license under the Clean Water Act of 1970. The company argued that dams weren’t covered under the law.

Writing a unanimous opinion, Justice David Souter championed the Clean Water Act and Muskie’s vision of states having ultimate control of their rivers, not the federal government. He quoted from Muskie’s 1970 floor speech in the U.S. Senate as the Rumford native introduced the legislation:

“No polluter will be able to hide behind a federal license or permit as an excuse for a violation of water quality standards,” said Muskie. “No polluter will be able to make major investments in facilities under a federal license or permit without providing assurance that the facility will comply with water quality standards. No state water pollution control agency will be confronted with a /fait accompli/ by an industry that has built a plant without consideration of water quality requirements.”