Lorain Steel: The view across the Black River from a toxic landfill.

The gravy-brown Cuyahoga looks downright clean today compared to the way it looks in the memories Frank Samsel is dredging up. The 77-year-old walks around the landlocked hull of the clean-up tugboat he fashioned back in the early '70s as owner of Samsel Marine Supply Co. on the West Bank of the Flats, swipes a finger along the museum-ready red, orange and yellow paint. He named her the Putzfrau, German for "The Cleaning Lady," and he still takes care of her, touching up the paint just a few years ago, even though she's rested anonymously here in this industrial valley lot for 15 years at least, the pressing river, a long row of company trucks and a skyline of slag heaps an apt backdrop for her resting place. The proudest time of Samsel's career was aboard this ship, cleaning up this river.

The business "is cleaning up accidents now," Samsel says. A firm called Inland Waters of Ohio runs the environmental cleanup end of Samsel's half-century-old business these days. He's retired, relaxing a bit in Avon. "Before, it was a constant flow, just filthy. Anything and everything that you could imagine getting into the river, it was in there."

The Putzfrau skimmed for tramp oil, a viscous byproduct of the steel mills, with a patented air-friction system to separate the good from the bad in waterways all along Lake Erie. Business kicked off right after a famous fire in 1969 let Mayor Carl Stokes send some needed smoke signals to Washington, launching the Clean Water Act, among other earthly improvements. Tramp oil was one of many dangerous poisons finally being removed from the water cycle after decades of unfettered industrial diahrrea.

So at least it's not like that anymore, Samsel notes.

"There's henhouse clean, and then there's, like, kitchen-floor clean, then hospital clean and then maybe clean-room clean," Samsel says. "We've gotta decide how much we want to spend, how clean we want it to be." As a civilization, in his estimation, "We're past the henhouse stage, and maybe getting into the kitchen-floor stage. We're starting to think all the way down the stream, and now we're finding things we'd never found before because of all that filth that was in it."

These days, he says, industry can't be blamed for everything. Everyone with a toilet that flushes, a car that farts and a garden that grows has a hand in this problem. "Like Pogo used to say, "We've met the enemy, and he is us.'"

There's little argument there. Our water passes over the farms coated in Monsanto's finest, the concrete lacquered in oils and antifreeze, across the old landfills leeching at the shore, and through the antiquated sewers mixing sewer and storm water every time the snow melts fast or the rain falls hard for a toilety splash from one of hundreds of giant pipes pouring straight into Lake Erie. Augment that enthusiastic vision with the tang of a still-long list of harmful toxins being spilled or sent to the sky by a still-longer list of polluters (our printer, our hospitals, our city included), and what you get is a still-thriving cycle of ecodegradation.

And now this: an eight-year study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that, despite overwhelming scientific support, the Bush administration apparently is nervous about letting the public and its liberal lawyers fully digest. It delivers more proof that the rut made from turning the Rust Belt wheel has been lined not just with jobs and homes but higher levels of sickness and early death. It shows how the Cuyahoga and surrounding rivers, though in many ways cleaner and more vibrant than ever, might still be contributing to higher rates of cancer, reproductive problems and infant mortality.

Cast away: An assortment of tires clutters this section of Black River shoreline.

That's information no president of the party of big business wants to bring around. And so the study stayed a work in progress for years ... until last week, when its conclusions couldn't be hidden any longer.

"Certainly, the government right now doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt," says Stuart Greenberg, executive director of Environmental Health Watch. "Ordinarily, the CDC would be entitled to the benefit of doubt. There could be all kinds of reasons for delaying the release of a report like this, but given the Bush administration's terrible history of politicizing science - and I could go on and on with examples here - it raises questions about censorship and also deferring to the interests of the big chemical industries. It'd be no surprise."

These muddy waters aren't the kind you clean up with things like Samsel's tugboat.

You're glumping the pond where the Humming-Fish hum.

No more can they hum, for their gills are all gummed.

So I'm sending them off. Oh, their future is dreary.

They'll walk on their fins and get woefully weary

In search of some water that isn't so smeary.

I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie.

Oh deer! Wildlife flourishes at this Lorain landfill, just not right here.

- from The Lorax, by Theodore Geisel, published in 1971

That's the way Dr. Seuss wanted his story about the rape of nature to read until the mid-'80s, when two scientists from the Ohio Sea Grant Program implored the author to change the dig at the poster child to the past tense. Geisel acquiesced, removing it outright from all future prints (which helped put some pressure on über-dump Flint).

Of course, all of the glumping didn't end. The recently released 400-page study from the CDC's Agency on Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, fortuitously solicited by the Canadian half of the International Joint Commission, is the first of its kind to juxtapose reports on the release into the Great Lakes air and water of 11 so-called critical pollutants (from PCBs and pesticides to lead and mercury that persist in nature) and corresponding public health records.

The report is both heartening and harrowing, providing environmental scientists and public health experts with a starting point for evaluating in tandem the specific risks of persistent exposure to pollution.

"It's an important step," says Peter Orris, a public health professor at the Univeristy of Illinois in Chicago who served as one of three study reviewers. "So now, if we look at, say, Cook County [Illinois], where there's this mountain of asbestos left over from an asbestos plant, and as a county we see a large amount of mesotheleoma. Well, it wouldn't be so unlikely to say, "Gee, maybe there's a relation here.' We're taking what's already been collected and putting it out in a way so it's clear for community organizations and academics to say, "Hey, maybe these things are correlated.'"

Of course, that whole "correlation" thing is creeping some people out at the top. If it weren't for all the recent cries of censorship at the hands of a different brand of political science, this study would still be choking in a sea of red tape. The IJC asked for the report in 2001. It took three years to compile it. Then it's apparently taken four more years to have it reviewed again and again by chosen members of the scientific community. The CDC was supposedly going to publish it in summer 2007, but it backed out again days before the anticipated release, saying it still wasn't happy with the science used to align the different fields of data.

Though he acknowledges the study's taken "quite a long while" to meet the light, Orris says he's inclined to believe the multitude of qualifications the ATSDR has given (atsdr.cdc.gov/grtlakes). But another of the three peer reviewers, Canadian biologist Michael Gilbertson, has a decidedly half-empty tone. He told the Center for Public Integrity earlier this year, "It's not good because it's inconvenient. The whole problem with all this kind of work is wrapped up in that word "injury.' If you have injury, that implies liability. Liability, of course, implies damages, legal processes and costs of remedial action. The governments, frankly, in both countries are so heavily aligned with, particularly, the chemical industry, that the word amongst the bureaucracies is that they really do not want any evidence of effect or injury to be allowed out there."

Christopher De Rosa, a top ATSDR official and author of the report, was demoted last fall after continuously pressing (since 2004) for the report to be published. In an e-mail sent by De Rosa to ATSDR Director Howard Frumkin, and forwarded to the Free Times by IJC spokesman Frank Bevacqua, De Rosa states that the delay had "the appearance of censorship of science and distribution of factual information regarding the health status of vulnerable communities."

A February letter to CDC Director Julie Gerberding from two Michigan Democrats - US Reps. John Dingell, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Bart Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommitee - demanded the study's release. Another letter last fall demanded information about De Rosa's demotion.

Tunnel vision: This pipe flushes Cleveland sewers onto Edgewater Beach when it rains.

"It appears CDC has made a concerted effort to conceal this information," the two wrote last month. "The health challenges facing these Great Lakes communities will not go away by ignoring the scientific facts. This report could be a valuable tool as federal, state and local governments allocate resources for Great Lakes clean-up efforts. We intend to determine through our investigation who at CDC made the decision to withhold the report and whether the author was penalized for advocating for its publication."

Bevacqua, the IJC spokesman, said a week ago that enough stalling had occurred: "The IJC just wants to have as complete a picture as possible of the health risks associated with critical pollutants. When we asked for this, we were concerned that while individual efforts were under way in both countries to remediate some of the contaminated sediments in the areas of concern, there was no comprehensive strategy that was really on the same scale as the problem. Sure, there are limitations to the information in the report. You can't use it to draw conclusions, but it's useful and the IJC would like to see it released as soon as possible."

So a week ago today, the CDC finally relented and released 2004 and 2007 draft reports of the study, a spokesman telling the Associated Press that a review of the science used was being performed by the Institute of Medicine. If it were the first time something like this happened, environmentalists wouldn't be so suspect about the chronology this time around.

"This has been a theme of this particular presidency in a way that we haven't seen before," says John Petersen, director of the environmental studies program at Oberlin College. "Climate change was the central thing. I mean, the EPA being asked to water down reports on climate change? And administrators, not scientists, modifying language in releases, as opposed to scientists doing all that. Compare George Jr. to George Sr. George Sr. would just say, "Let's spend more on studies.' George Jr. says, "Well, I don't agree with the political implications of that study, so let's change the findings. It's fundamentally different."

The report falls just shy of assigning direct blame, of course, delivering the conclusion that several thousand of the nine million Americans living near 25 of 26 environmental "areas of concern" along the American side of the lakes - pretty much every major waterway - exhibit higher levels of reproductive disorders, certain cancers and infant mortality than in other peer cities.

Seventy-one of 108 hazardous waste sites near the Great Lakes still haven't been properly contained. In 2003 alone, it noted over 15,000 times when contaminants were discovered in the watersheds at dangerous levels.

Many of Northeast Ohio's hazardous sites have been contained. Some haven't.

The report lists four hazardous waste sites along the Ashtabula that needed closer attention in recent years, at Big D Campground, the Fields Brook watershed, Laskin/Poplar Oil Co. and the New Lyme landfill. All but the heavily industrial area of Fields Brook have been apparently mitigated. "Several industrial facilities are potentially recontaminating Fields Brook sediment," the report states, noting how clean-up had been performed by 2004.

Along the Black River, two sites are listed. A former Republic Steel Corp. quarry cum toxic dump in Lorain, pointed at by many as the main suspect in a spike in fish caught with cancerous tumors, had been contained by 2002; just a few years ago, Gov. Bob Taft was in town for the lifting of a longtime fishing ban, though few today can bring themselves to actually eat anything caught there.

Mmmmm...tumor!: This cancerous fish was one of hundreds caught in Lake Erie waters.

A few miles upriver, the Ford Road landfill just across the border into Elyria sits with 25 years worth of industrial waste under a thin pad of soil. Elyria Mayor Bill Grace, ever the one-man tourism bureau, doesn't return calls seeking comment on the site. EPA is just now getting around to cleaning up the site, which "may continue to contribute to the Black River [Area of Concern's] environmental burden of the IJC critical pollutants including PCBs," the report states, and needs further testing to determine the full extent of contamination.

Usually the demographic data are more precise. The report notes a small neighborhood within a stone's throw. This time, no public health data was reported. And despite a long list of point-source polluters along the Black River, the report states that "agricultural and storm-water runoff, sedimentation from habitat loss and rapid construction growth, combined sewer overflow, and failing home sewage treatment systems are non-point sources of water-quality degradation and are current issues."

That dynamic holds true in one watershed after the next.

"Today, we're paying for the sins of the past," says new Lorain Mayor Tony Krasienko. He's been planning and hoping for a multi-million-dollar combined sewer containment or separation for much of his dozen years as an elected official, but hasn't been able to see his city afford the investment like neighbors Avon and Avon Lake. "And we can't produce enough income to alleviate those sins fast enough. But we've come a long way. Now we need to make sure we're reducing some of the more damaging health pollutants and then they need to come down with funding. We want to upgrade our systems and improve what we're putting back into the environment, but there's only so much we can afford. There's a breaking point."

And don't count the old burning river out just yet. Of the Cuyahoga's three hazardous sites - the contaminated wells along Cady Road in North Royalton, and the Bolin Oil and Sam Winer Motors sites in Summit County - all apparently have been mitigated. Though the report notes a preponderance of "onsite chemical releases and also a number of surface water discharges in populated areas," health worries "about the Cuyahoga River generally involved issues of bacterial contamination of the water." An estimated four billion gallons of untreated sewage makes its way from the Cleveland area into Lake Erie every year.

Populations surrounding all three Northeast Ohio rivers show higher mortality rates than the average in peer cities for breast and colon cancer. The areas around the Black and Cuyahoga rivers also have more deaths due to lung cancer and infant mortality. Add to Cuyahoga County lower birth weights and more premature babies, and you've got yourself a political argument.

The report recommends a deeper look at the health risks in those areas with the most overlap between pollution, sickness and death, and at-risk populations, namely the young, the old and women of child-bearing age.

Jim White, executive director of the Cuyahoga River Remedial Action Plan, establishes groups of watershed watchdogs across the region. He says the mission is kind of like "holding corks underwater - as soon as you take the pressure off in one place, up pops something somewhere else." White's not convinced the study uses adequate statistical methods. He relays that his contacts in the state and federal EPA call it "a bag of shit." He understands the CDC's hesitance. "I don't think there was anything political about it," he says.

Delivering blame shouldn't matter, says David Beach, executive director of the GreenCityBlueLake Institute at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, as much as finding ways to further reverse the cycle of pollution embedded in our civilization's design: "We've improved a lot, but we're reaching a point where it's hard to reach further improvements because pollution is not just coming from a few point sources, but from everywhere. It's a design challenge. We have to think about how to rebuild our cities. That'll be a big part of future environmental progress."

The cleaning man: Frank Samsel and the boat he used to help clean the Cuyahoga.

True enforcement might be beneficial, too, says Ward 14 Cleveland Councilman Brian Cummins.

"Clearly the EPA, specifically the OEPA, is not viewed by environmentalists as having the type of enforcement or standards that many people would like to see," says Cummins. "When people bring up the OEPA in some air or water quality issue, you can just see all the eyes start to roll."

Congress increased funding this year for Great Lakes cleanup programs, but struggling municipalities like Cleveland and Lorain are still largely on their own when it comes to finding ways to replace aging sewer systems - widely accepted as the necessary next step. A recent study by the Great Lakes Commission found that cities were outspending the federal government 10 times over for water-quality improvements. Francis Ciappa, director of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, says that imbalance will lead the district to have to pass on double-digit bill increases to residents over the next few decades to bankroll the government-required creation of a system within either 20 to 30 years that will completely treat all combined sewer overflow before it splashes into the lake. The district currently spends about $80 million a year on improvements; soon that figure is expected to leap to twice that.

The new system is envisioned to consist of a combination of separated sewers and combined sewers overflowing into giant underground tanks that would store combined wastewater until treatment plants can get around to treating it. The Mill Creek storage tunnel, one of several envisioned across the city, is currently under construction. The total price tag for all the improvements regionwide: as much as $2 billion. Ciacca testified to Congress in 2005 that nationwide it will cost taxpayers $400 billion to move past the era of combined sewer overflows. Currently, he says, 79 percent of the region's sewage ends up getting treated. After the improvements, about 97 percent will be captured.

"It's just going to be big, long headache," Ciacca says. "You're cleaning up the environment, and that's a good thing. I don't consider that a headache. It's a headache making people realize what all this is going to cost."

On Friday, the snow continued its long, slow melt into spring. On the beach at the western edge of Edgewater Park, a giant metal door remained closed, concealing a pipe big enough to drive a truck through. It's No. 69 of several hundred combined sewer overflows along the Erie shore. A sign warns that the door will creak wide with every heavy rain in the coming months and unleash a cocktail so fetid you'll wonder which came first here, the scenic beach or the stinky pipe.

Maybe soon we'll see just how sick and tired all of this is making us.