The United States - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 25

United Smoke Council, consisting of 80 groups in the metropolitan area.
This soon merged with the Allegheny Conference on Community Devel-
opment, a business sponsored group concerned with economic develop-
ment of the downtown. A strong supporter was Richard King Mellon, head
of the Mellon Bank, and the richest man in town. In 1945 the voters elected
David Lawrence mayor on a platform of controlling smoke. Pittsburgh was
successful in cleaning its air, partly because of the Ordinance, and partly
because of changing fuels. Natural gas became available for heating houses.
Railroads switched to diesel engines. Old steel plants within the city limits
closed, and in general heavy industry declined.
In California in 1952, the new director of the Sierra Club, David Brower,
learned about a proposal by the US Bureau of Reclamation to dam the
Green River in Colorado. The reservoir would flood Echo Park Canyon
in Dinosaur National Monument, established 40 years earlier under the
Antiquities Act. Building a big dam fit the New Deal tradition of gigan-
tism and public employment. Area farmers and ranchers wanted the
electricity and irrigation water. The new Republican administration of
Dwight Eisenhower agreed with the proposal. Brower and leaders of the
Sierra Club disagreed. The club had decreased its political activity after
John Muir's death, and when Brower took over, its membership was only
2000. The new director began a campaign of visits to Washington to see
members of Congress and officials in the Department of the Interior.
He mobilized the public with press releases and direct mail. he Sierra
Club purchased full-page advertisements in the New York Times and
the Washington Post , and published photographs showing the ravages of
environmental exploitation on animals and the environment, a previously
unused tactic. Brower and the Sierra Club were successful in preventing
the Bureau of Reclamation from building the dam at Echo Park Canyon.
This inspired the club to block other dams, most notably one in the
Grand Canyon. Sierra Club membership went up to 80,000. The club's
victories against dams inspired a citizen group in the Hudson Valley to
sue to prevent the Consolidated Edison Company of New York from build-
ing a massive pumped storage unit on Storm King Mountain (a favorite
landscape to paint a century earlier). The Court of Appeals ruled for the
first time that the Federal Power Commission was required to consider
non-economic factors and that a citizen group had the right to sue. Other
groups came into being. The Defenders of Wildlife organized in 1947, and
the Nature Conservancy organized in 1951.