Posted by Jared Shepherd The melodious tones of James Earl Jones’ golden pipes grace the narration track of this Cuyahoga River documentary from 1978. This clip features JEJ reading text from an infamous Time Magazine article that followed the 1969 river fire. (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s); if (d.getElementById(id))...
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Chickasaw, formerly known as Jenni, rescued from Big Creek by our crews in 2012. Photo by George Uhl. Blogosphere, we have let you down. Apparently, February 9 was Alligators in the Sewers Day and we had no idea. For this, we’re sorry. The declaration was made five years ago...
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Image courtesy Library of Congress Happy anniversary! On this date in 1919, America officially became a “dry” country as prohibition became the law of the land. Following the ratification of the 18th amendment, there was a whole lotta alcohol that needed to be disposed of around the country, and...
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You have died of cholera. Ah, the memories. Adults who grew up with Apple IIs in the classroom in the 1990s are having a nostalgia field day now that the Internet Archive has made more than 2,000 MS DOS games available online, including the memorable Oregon Trail. What makes...
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The city of Vienna once had a police squad specifically trained for sewer patrols. This 1934 British newsreel showcases the “canal brigade” of Vienna, Austria, braving the bowels of the city, a common hiding place for criminals at the time. Most interesting to us was the squad’s frequency of...
Read More Posted by Jared Shepherd In 1914, Australians apparently took their yard work very seriously. This ad for Dunlop Garden Hoses as seen on Wikipedia takes us back to a different time in fashion. But it also reminds us of two points relevant today. First, if you have a lawn or garden and water...
Read More Posted by Jared Shepherd Quite dapper for a sewer tunnel tour, no? These gents were friends of English civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette attending a tour of the main drainage works of his new London Sewage System in 1862. Tours of anything similar today are accompanied by hard hats rather than top hats, but...
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Throwback Thursday is an opportunity to harken back to a time when we used the words “hence” and “typhoid” in daily American conversation. The 4-minute clip above is from a 20-minute 1928 educational silent film called “Health and Hygiene” which focused on the causes of common diseases and their...
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Image courtesy Wikipedia Before there was Google Maps, there were pigeons. Every November, GIS Day showcases geographic information system (GIS) technology that many of us use every day without even thinking about it. It’s a large part of our work, and our own GIS team has routinely used the...
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“We had people showing up at the plants asking how they could help.” That’s how our then Director of Operations Tim Tigue described employees’ response to the great blackout of 2003 as staff was dedicated to maintaining service for customers. During the event, we sampled water on local beaches...
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