Hydrohistorian
Stream pollution. City dump. Dubuque, Iowa
Library of Congress · 1940 · John Vachon, for the Farm Security Administration
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USF34-060524-D No known restrictions on publication. Archive record ↗ · Rights
Source Archival record · verify at Library of Congress ↗
A city dump on a riverbank, photographed for the government thirty-two years before the Clean Water Act. The word in the title is the government's own: pollution, stated as a fact rather than argued.
Shows: What was normal to put in a river inside living memory, and what a town looked like doing it.
What this does not let you conclude: Anything measured. The impairment listings beside this plate are modern, sampled and standards-based; this is the era those standards were written against. April 1940.
Placed on
- Topic quality · plate
The archive’s record page
The archive’s record did not answer our check on 2026-10-12 (refused automated check, HTTP 403). Our copy above is unaffected; the credit stands. A person will look.