Confluence

I wore my usual ‘river rat’ apparel, an old bathing suit top with cutoffs and tennis shoes, my college friend a new bikini despite me telling her the river cove where I swam was very different than her pool and suntan scene. I led the way down the rocky bank and dove in. She surveyed the chalky waters and asked me with some trepidation if there were many fish in there. I knew she was used to water so clean and clear, she could see her polished toenails. I shook my head. ‘Never saw one before.’ After some coaxing, she plugged her nose and took the plunge reluctantly. Some years later, I became a reporter for a Pittsburgh-area newspaper and wrote an investigative article about contaminated tap water that had caused several communities in the Pittsburgh area to go without it for nearly two weeks. I was not so sure I would drink spigot water again let alone dip as much as my big toe in the river. It all started with freshwater clams clogging the water system at the steel mill along the Allegheny River where the town also drew its water supply. The company requested permission from the State to use a chemical to kill them. When it did not get an answer in a month’s time, it interpreted that as tacit permission to use it, but that was not the case (Corso 1986). I also dug up some background information on the rivers and learned they were once filled with so much industrial waste that the water often reached temperatures of 130 degrees or more and was acidic enough to corrode the metal parts of a steamship boiler. I knew then what I could have said at the cove to convince my college friend there probably wasn’t a fish in sight: Pittsburgh rivers were so polluted, most species were killed off. Yet it had never occurred to me that I may have been putting my friend’s and my physical health at risk by swimming in them. In a book of poems (Corso 2004), I came to explore the course of development and its consequences in Pittsburgh river towns, the human toll exacted