And nowhere were the changes more pronounced than at our family compound on the Androscoggin River in Greene, Maine. The barbecue, hosted by the family, was well attended by many members of the white working class who probably all voted for the current president. For some reason, I seem to find myself politically isolated in deep red districts. The attendees were mostly small business owners in the building trades or in agriculture. They were almost all Maine natives, with the dry wit and easy sociability that I have found to be fairly common in my new neighborhood. A Garth Brooks CD was playing, allowing us to enjoy the sound of I’ve Got Friends in Low Places as a pontoon boat slowly drifted down the Androscoggin River with a fisherman casting his line.
The Androscoggin River drops 1,500 feet in its course from the Rangeley Lakes to Merrymeeting Bay where it reaches the sea, making it an attractive source of power for industrial use. Paper mills and textile mills, established in the 1880s, used it as an open sewer for their waste, and cities along the river were not very careful about their discharges either.
Edmund Muskie grew up in Rumsford, Maine, on the Androscoggin River when it was considered to be one of the most highly polluted rivers in the country. From remarks by the Honorable Kermit V. Lipez in Rediscovering Senator Edmund Muskie:
In his 1972 book Journeys, Senator Muskie connected his commitment to this environmental agenda to his hometown of Rumford, described as “a paper mill town where pollution seemed an inevitable, if ugly, reality, ”where “the mill wastes were visible” in the Androscoggin River, and “[t]here was a tremendous stench, and the paint on houses began to peel.” Yet, Senator Muskie noted, Maine was also a place of great natural beauty. That paradox—ugly pollution surrounded by natural wonders—moved him to action:
My journey toward a place in the environmental sun began in my backyard, in the environment of the place where I was born and raised. There you were, viscerally, an outdoorsman and a conservationist. If you were born in Maine, you got interested in doing something about it when that beauty was threatened. . . . There may be no stronger motivation.
By the 1940s, the oxygen levels of the river were so low that it could not support aquatic life due not only to the industrial chemicals used in processing paper, but also the runoff from sewers, agriculture, and the logging industry. Before he was a U.S. senator, Edmund Muskie served the people of Maine in the state legislature before winning the governorship and serving two terms between 1955 and 1959. While there, he worked at improving the water and air in his home state. From What is Past is Prologue: Senator Edmund S. Muskie's Environmental Policymaking Roots as Governor of Maine, 1955-58, by Robert F. Blomquist:
Muskie learned, while Governor of Maine, that economic development was intimately related to a state's natural resources base,which was, in turn, linked to both its water quantity and water quality; economic development and natural resources were also linked in complicated ways to human resources which were determined by educational opportunities available to the citizenry.
It is sad that the Republican Party has forgotten this important relationship. Because when Ed Muskie got to the Senate, he worked with Tennessee Republican Howard Baker to pass the Clean Water Act of 1970. According to Leon Billings, who served as Sen. Muskie’s chief of staff:
Legislatively, they went where no Senator, no Member of Congress had gone before. Together, they crafted such concepts as the polluter pays, joint and several liability, statutory standards and deadlines, citizen participation and citizen suits, timely judicial review, health and welfare-based standards, funded mandates, and an enforceable legal mandate that pollution be reduced to the maximum extent technologically possible.
They weren't alone on this boat. They had creative and innovative colleagues. They had staff who knew they were staff and understood the difference.
They engaged one another from the personal perspective that each brought to the table. Each had their biases, but -- and this is perhaps the most important but -- none let his bias close his mind to other ideas. They created consensus based on their personal experience, philosophy and expertise guided by the problems they sought to solve, not the contributors or lobbyists they needed to satisfy.
The Clean Water Act of 1973 was, together with the Clean Air Act of 1970, perhaps Sen. Muskie’s greatest achievement. He spent years studying the problems, working with the tools available at every step along the way, improving existing legislation, and listening to the concerns of the people of his state. While most Americans may only remember the forged Canuck letter or Muskie’s tears in the snow during his 1972 run for the White House, he accomplished so much more. He saved the Androscoggin River which now supports fishing and swimming and, while still needing some improvement, has gotten better year after year.
This is what it looks like on a still spring morning when not a ripple disturbs its surface and the sky is reflected in the water:
This beautiful river is once again at risk thanks to the administration elected by the friends and acquaintances that so enjoyed it on Memorial Day. The cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency will hit the state hard, depriving it of much-needed funding to rehabilitate sites along Maine’s riverbanks. The proposed budget calls for the elimination of funding for Non-Point Source (NPS) pollution program, which protects our waterways from run-off pollution. The lack of any funding for beach water quality testing will put our $1.6 billion beach tourism industry at risk.
But perhaps even worse than the attempt to destroy our environmental protections is the success that the GOP has had in ending our ability to govern our land. Long gone are the days when Republicans and Democrats could work together to serve their nation, when a burning river in Ohio and a dying, stinking cesspool in Maine could both be saved by the joint efforts of statesmen from opposing parties. It may never have been easy to do the nation’s work, but it was at least possible.
The highly partisan battles in Washington have poisoned the atmosphere—not just in Congress, but even at backyard barbecues. My musical tastes were challenged by an aggressive guest who suggested that I would not like Garth Brooks, because he was a country singer. The guest did not know that Brooks went to school with a nephew, and has long been admired in our household. But apparently word had gotten round that I was a liberal, even though I uttered not a single political word, and everyone knows that liberals don’t like country music. Or something. I enjoyed listening to Garth Brooks, but when a Toby Keith album started I made my way inside, where other family members where listening to the music of Stevie Wonder.
But I can still remember a time when music was considered nonpartisan (although my preferences have often been political), and when a senator's party affiliation was not as important as the policies he fought for. How to reach the white working class remains a mystery, as does what message could be used to convince them that we only have one planet.
But it’s imperative they grasp the fact that when we destroy the Androscoggin River we will be destroying their livelihoods; that the environment and broadly-spread prosperity are inherently connected. What’s frightening is that by the time the white middle class comes to that realization (and they surely will, because they are not lacking in intelligence), it may be too late to change course.