Steel Belts

 

               Al Unser was on top of open-wheel racing.  In 1970, he dominated the prestigious Indianapolis 500, known as the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” leading 190 of 200 laps and beating the next nearest finisher by almost thirty-two seconds – an eternity when you’re speeding more than 170 miles per hour.  That year, in addition to winning the Indy 500, Unser racked up wins at Phoenix, Springfield, Milwaukee, Du Quoin, Sedalia, Trenton, and Sacramento, earning enough points to easily make him the United States Auto Club (USAC) national driving champion.

               Unser, who later became known as Al, Sr. or “Big Al” when his first son was born, was from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and for a time attended Albuquerque High School along with my parents.  My parents remembered Unser as a quiet boy who preferred building and driving race cars to attending school. In fact, he never finished high school, dropping out of Albuquerque High to focus on racing.

What he lacked in a formal education, though, Unser more than made up for with his knowledge and skill on the racetrack.  His racing education came in the form of building race cars at his dad’s garage on the city’s west mesa (on the path of the old Route 66) and tearing up Speedway Park, a quarter mile oval dirt racetrack at the end of Eubank Boulevard near the entrance to Kirtland Air Force Base.

               Years before he was the USAC champion, Unser was the Speedway Park champion. In 1957, at the age of eighteen, Unser won the Speedway Park championship with a record of twenty-three wins in twenty-eight races. He and his dad had built the car he was racing, powered by a flathead Ford engine. Unser would go on to win many more races across the country over the next decade, on his way to becoming an Indy 500 champion and a celebrity in Albuquerque where it all started.

               By May 1971, expectations were high for Unser to defend his title at the Indy 500.  At that time, my father was executive sports editor at the Albuquerque Journal, and the newspaper assigned him to travel to Indianapolis to cover the race in person.  My parents took the assignment as an opportunity for the whole family to experience the great American road trip, so they loaded us kids in the family car and drove to Indianapolis.

               Unser swept to victory again in 1971, setting a course speed record.  The next morning, the front page of the Albuquerque Journal led with the headline “Al Unser Wins Indy,” along with my father’s story and by-line, phoned in from the racetrack.  My father wrote, “Albuquerque’s Al Unser continued his incredible domination of championship auto racing Saturday by winning his second straight Indianapolis 500.”  No one had won back-to-back Indy 500s in 17 years.

               With Unser’s victory complete and excitement running high, we started our trip home to Albuquerque with plans to visit some of the nation’s landmarks along the way: Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (then called Custer Battlefield National Monument), and Yellowstone National Park.

               But first we headed north to Chicago and Lake Michigan, which are in the heart of the so-called “Steel Belt,” a region that arcs around the Great Lakes Basin and includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York, as well as the Canadian province of Ontario. At the time, the area was home to thirty million people.

               The Great Lakes Basin encompasses 94,250 square miles and twenty-one percent of the Earth’s freshwater. It includes Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario. For a family of desert dwellers from Albuquerque, the idea of that much water in one place was a marvel.  Prior to that, the largest body of water we had seen was Navajo Lake in the northwest corner of New Mexico, a twenty-four square mile reservoir formed by Navajo Dam on the San Juan River, a puddle by comparison.

               The day we arrived at Lake Michigan near Chicago, the sky was overcast. A light rain was falling, and the temperature was chilly.  A stiff breeze, which created a little chop on the water, made it feel colder than it was. Exhaust from the nearby industrial plants’ smokestacks added to the dull gray sky. We scrambled across some slimy rocks covered in algae down to the water’s edge. The shore was covered with rotting fish, and trash bobbed on the lake’s edge where the water lapped at the shoreline.

When we got to the water’s edge, we stared across the giant lake, amazed we could not see the other side. Huge ships floated on the horizon. To us, it resembled what we imagined an ocean looked like. But we were shocked by the sight and smell of rotten algae, dead fish, water-logged trash, and industrial air pollution. The shores of Lake Michigan were certainly no place for a picnic, and we didn’t linger long.

What we saw that day was the truth about Lake Michigan in the early 1970s: it was a giant cesspool. The lake was a toxic mix of chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, oil, garbage, fertilizers, detergents, and radioactive particulates. All of this was the direct result of the intensive agriculture, industry, and manufacturing that had been built within the Steel Belt. Factory discharge pipes, sewage plants, storm drains, dumps, disposal sites, smokestacks, nuclear power plants, and run-off from cities and farms were all responsible for the pollution. The United States Army Corps of Engineers even got into the act by depositing contaminated spoils from harbor dredging into other parts of the lake.

The same could be said for the rest of the Great Lakes, too. In fact, the Cuyahoga River, which is a tributary to Lake Erie that runs from Akron, Ohio, to Cleveland, was so polluted that the surface caught fire in June 1969. The event surprised no one: the incident was but one of a dozen fires that occurred on the river over the course of several years. Ironically, Akron was the headquarters of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, the manufacturer of the steel belted tires Unser rode to victory at Indy. Following the race, he was even featured in an Albuquerque Journal advertisement promoting specially branded “Firestone 500” passenger car tires.

Not only were the waters of the Great Lakes in terrible condition, so was the area’s air. Like the lakes, the air was a toxic mix of chemicals including sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ozone, volatile organic compounds (benzene, toluene, xylene, etc.), and fine particles. These were byproducts of industrial and agricultural combustion processes that were common in the Steel Belt, including coal-fired power generation, cement production, smelting, refining, and land clearing. The combustion of gasoline and diesel in automobiles and trucks was also a major contributor.

These air pollutants posed a wide range of risks to human health and the environment. In humans, exposure to them increased the risks of allergies, respiratory problems, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Similarly, in the environment, they increased the risks of loss of biodiversity, disruption of the food chain, stunted plant growth, and poorer air quality.

A particularly significant threat to the environment from the polluted air was acid rain. Acid rain harms wildlife, especially fish, invertebrates, and trees; corrodes limestone and marble buildings and monuments; and leaches lead from pipes – as happened in Flint, Michigan, exposing 100,000 residents to unsafe levels of lead in their drinking water.

The term acid rain refers to rain, snow, sleet, hail, and fog with a pH level of less than 5.2. pH is a quantitative measure of the acidity or basicity of a liquid solution, ranging from 0 to 14. Water with a pH level of 7.0 is considered neutral. Any liquid with a pH level less than 7.0 is considered an acid. Rain and other precipitation become acidic through a chemical reaction between sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides. Combined with water, these compounds form sulfuric and nitric acid, which fall on the land in the form of precipitation. 

Presumably the rain that was falling on us the day we visited Lake Michigan was acid rain, unbeknownst to us.

In short, Lake Michigan was in such dire shape that at that time Neil Munro and William Kubiak wrote an article in the Grand Rapids Press entitled “Is Lake Michigan Dying? If It Is, What Should We Do About It?”, which explored the real possibility that Lake Michigan was on the verge of becoming a dead sea.

Not all was lost, however, because growing awareness of the issues began to cause a paradigm shift. The roots of this awareness can be traced back to Rachel Carson, the scientist whose 1962 book Silent Spring logically and earnestly articulated the great harm being done to plants, animals, and people by the indiscriminate use of toxic pesticides, especially DDT.

The unofficial start of the paradigm shift was New Year’s Day in 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which had been approved by Congress the year before. With high hopes for the future, Nixon said at the signing that it was “…particularly fitting that my first official act of this new decade is to approve the National Environmental Policy Act.”

NEPA was a broad foundational piece of legislation that has been described as the Magna Carta of U.S. environmental law. NEPA didn’t directly regulate pollution or set specific environmental standards. Rather, it established a procedural framework that required federal agencies to assess the environmental consequences of their proposed projects and decisions before moving forward. These assessments were called Environmental Impact Statements and became one of the most important (and contentious) parts of U.S. environmental policy.

To further these ends, NEPA called for the formation of a Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to give the president expert advice on environmental matters. The CEQ was also charged with reviewing Environmental Impact Statements. Ultimately, President Nixon merged all the federal government’s environmental programs, including the CEQ, into an independent department called the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who’s first administrator was Assistant Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus.

The year that began with an environmental flourish ended fittingly with a flourish, too: passage of the Clean Air Act, which Nixon signed into law on the last day of the year. The act was the evolution of clean air laws dating back to 1955, but it resulted in a major shift in the federal government’s role in air pollution control.

The Clean Air Act established National Ambient Air Quality Standards for six principal pollutants, called "criteria pollutants," that are common in outdoor air, considered harmful to public health and the environment, and that come from numerous and diverse sources: carbon monoxide, particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, lead, ozone, and sulfur oxide.

To comply with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, industry was required to reduce the criteria pollutants, which ultimately required an investment in technologies that can be generally described as “scrubbers.” A scrubber is simply a system which converts harmful pollutants into benign compounds as emissions are passed through it, effectively scrubbing out the pollutants before the air is released back into the environment.

One such system known to every car owner is the catalytic converter. The job of a catalytic converter is threefold: to convert carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide; to turn unburned oil and gas hydrocarbons into carbon dioxide and water; and to change nitrogen oxides into nitrogen and oxygen. These reactions occur simultaneously as the exhaust gas passes through the catalytic converter, converting the harmful pollutants (carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides) into less harmful or even benign compounds (carbon dioxide, water, nitrogen, and oxygen).

Another scrubber technology, one that is typical on fossil-fuel power plants, is flue gas desulfurization (FGD). FGD removes sulfur oxides from the exhaust of these power plants by injecting a slurry of limestone (calcium) into the exhaust stream. The slurry reacts with sulfur oxide to form calcium sulfate, which is simply synthetic gypsum. Synthetic gypsum can in turn be used to manufacture wallboard (drywall) and cement or used in other agricultural and construction applications.

A final noteworthy scrubber technique is selective catalytic reduction (SCR). SCR also removes harmful pollutants from the exhaust of fossil-fuel power plants, in this case nitrogen oxides. It works by injecting ammonia into the exhaust stream, where the nitrogen oxides react with ammonia and oxygen to create nitrogen and water, both of which are benign to the environment.

Quite obviously, it costs more to install scrubbers on automobiles and power plants than to not install them. Therefore, business and industry complained about this new cost of compliance at the time, and they warned it would hurt their profits if they didn’t pass the cost along to consumers, a scare tactic to avoid compliance. In reality, the cost was minimal compared to the costs of polluted air harming human health and the environment.  

Nevertheless, by 1972 Nixon bowed to these types of unfounded business complaints when it came to cleaning up U.S. waters, and he reversed course as an environmental champion. He vetoed the Clean Water Act (a sister version of the Clean Air Act) that called for the regulation of pollutant discharges into U.S. waters. Congress, however, saw the wisdom of having clean water and overrode Nixon’s veto, making the act law in October 1972.

Like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act established a structure for the regulation of pollutant discharges, in this case into U.S. waters. It also set wastewater standards and made it unlawful to discharge any pollutant from a stationary source into navigable waters without first obtaining a permit. And it funded the construction of new sewage treatment plants.

Thus, the period from 1969 to 1972 was truly revolutionary in how the United States addressed the environmental problems facing it. During these years, the country adopted key pieces of federal legislation that would form the backbone of environmental policy for years to come. And that legislation led to important reforms in manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation practices that would eventually bring about profound improvements in land, air, and water quality, not just in the Great Lakes but throughout the entire country.

When my family visited Lake Michigan in 1971, the environmental paradigm shift was just beginning. I don’t know if my parents were aware of the changes or understood the importance of the laws, but perhaps that is one of the reasons why they took the family there in the first place: to see American history being written firsthand.

In the years following our trip, Al Unser continued to write history, too.

He won the Indianapolis 500 again in 1978. And in 1987, he won it for a fourth and final time just before his 48^th birthday, making him the oldest driver to ever win the race and one of only four drivers to win it four times. By the time of Unser’s final victory at Indy, Lake Michigan and the rest of the Great Lakes were on their way to a successful, yet tenuous, recovery.

In fact, Lake Michigan is practically idyllic today. It has even been described as resembling Lake Tahoe, the alpine body of water on the California-Nevada border that is famous for a historic water clarity of ninety-eight feet. The Clean Water Act has been crucial in reducing pollution levels in Lake Michigan over the years through the cleanup of contaminated sites, the restoration of natural habitats, and the removal of some invasive species. In particular, limiting agricultural and sewage run-off has had a huge impact on improving water quality.

By the same token, an overall decline in heavy industry in the Steel Belt, coupled with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards established by the Clean Air Act, have combined to significantly improve the air around the lake, especially near Chicago. Years of successful cleanup of emissions from transportation, power generation, and industrial sources have all contributed to falling levels of air pollution. And importantly, the problem of acid rain, once such a threat, has largely been abated.

Even the infamous Cuyahoga River in Ohio has been significantly restored. Birds and fish share the waters with kayakers, paddleboarders, and anglers, while diners enjoy high-end restaurants along the banks of the river.

Despite the success of federal and state laws regulating air and water standards, much work remains to be done in the Great Lakes Basin. Climate change, the man-made change in the average weather patterns that define the Earth’s global climate, poses significant new threats to the region. It is directly responsible for a variety of environmental problems in the region – all of which could lead to big impacts on fishing, tourism, and livelihoods.

In short, the region will be warmer, wetter, and windier than in the past. Both deepwater and surface water temperatures are increasing due, in part, to reduced winter ice coverage, which results in more solar radiation hitting the lake. Higher water temperatures are amplifying negative effects on the lake’s ecosystem, especially the all-important fishery. Water levels are increasing, too, which is eroding shorelines. Satellite imagery shows one hundred feet of shoreline has been lost near Chicago in just the past six years.

Climate change is also responsible for extreme weather events such as unusually high temperatures and humidity, severe storms, flooding, and wildfires. While man-made air pollution has decreased in Chicago, overall air pollution is sometimes in the danger zone, due to smoke from wildfires. In June 2023, for example, Chicago had the worst air quality in the world, the direct result of more than four hundred fires that were burning across Canada at the time.

Despite the obvious risks to America’s improved air and water quality from climate change in regions like the Great Lakes, Lee Zeldin, the current Republican administrator of the EPA, has proposed to repeal the landmark 2009 scientific principle known as the “endangerment finding” that enables the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. If adopted, the proposal would effectively eliminate the EPA’s own authority to combat climate change.

In defense of his proposal, Zeldin claimed without proof that regulations “were strangulating [sic] our economy” and he intended to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home, and running a business.” Zeldin’s statement is a far cry from those made by Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the EPA, who was also a Republican. Ruckelshaus said the EPA had “no obligation to promote commerce or agriculture” and positioned himself as the governmental advocate of environmental progress, not merely a mediator between industry and the public. In fact, he envisioned the EPA as playing a crucial role in the “development of an environmental ethic” among businesses and citizens alike.

After a period of public comment, Zeldin’s proposal will probably be finalized next year (2026), effectively ending the federal government’s role in fighting climate change as well as its history of sound environmental policy dating back to President Richard Nixon.

While Lake Michigan faces new threats from climate change and a hostile EPA administrator, the lessons from the 1970s are clear: it is possible to protect and even restore polluted land, air, and water through effective environmental regulations.

Under these new conditions, Lake Michigan carries on, but Al Unser and Speedway Park in Albuquerque are both gone now. The racetrack was closed in the early 1980s as the city encroached on it. Noisy racecars don’t make good neighbors.  Unser died in 2021 at the age of 82 at his home in Chama, a small village in northern New Mexico where he lived out his retirement. He was one of the greatest racecar drivers of all time and was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1998.

Because of what I witnessed on my family’s great American road trip from Albuquerque to Indianapolis more than fifty years ago, I will always remember Unser, Speedway Park, and Lake Michigan. I will also always remember the environmental damage caused by America’s unconstrained and unregulated growth capitalism, as well as America’s wisdom in moving to protect and restore the country’s irreplaceable natural resources.

I still watch the Indy 500 every Memorial Day weekend and remember.

 

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