Thinking back to when I read Reason Magazine, they never pointed out that government regulation, effectively implemented, can stop crap like this:
As downpours intensified on 23 April on the outskirts of Bogotá, Colombia, toxic foam from an adjacent river started engulfing the Los Puentes neighbourhood.
Fluffy white froth emerged from the water and was whisked up by the wind until it reached a height of 5 metres and blanketed cars and roads, says restaurant manager María Morales. Eventually, it crept through the windows of her kitchen, forcing her to close the business.
Though the scenes may resemble a harmless giant bubble bath, the residents know better.
“If it were normal foam, the kids would love it,” says Maria Chacue, who has had a hard time stopping her 22-month-old son from playing in the toxic chemicals, which include compounds from soaps and detergents. “But it’s not normal. It’s so polluted.”
Environmental officials blame the heavy rains driven by the La Niña weather phenomenon, which have flooded much of Colombia in recent weeks. As the Bojacá and Subachoque rivers converge in the lower river basin near Los Puentes at high speeds and volumes, they churn up the underlying contaminants. [“Toxic foam from polluted rivers causes health problems in Colombia,” Luke Taylor, NewScientist (14 May 2022, paywall)]
The Cuyahoga River fire, aka, if inaccurately, the Lake Erie Fire.
Image: Cleveland State University Library via WYSO.
Of course, the United States has seen such abuse, although with different manifestations. In 1969, the heavily polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire; the link on the right has a story on the resulting Clean Water Act.
But the point is, if you consider yourself to be anti-regulation, that picture on the right is what you’re enabling.
