Environment: Week's Watch

With a canoe and sampling bottles, two Penn State University professors spent five months last year testing 60 miles of the Ohio and Monongahela rivers near Pittsburgh. As a result, Biologist John Zavodni and Political Scientist David Nixon (no kin to the President) documented 500 cases of industrial water pollution and filed 362 affidavits with the Justice Department.

Last week their diligence paid off. Justice charged four big companies with 73 violations of the 1899 Refuse Act, which forbids discharge of pollutants into navigable waters. The defendants, accused of dumping acids, cyanides and metals into the rivers, are Pennsylvania Industrial Chemical Corp....

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