Can you imagine if the Ohio River and its tributaries had legal rights? While speculative, the idea isn’t necessarily far-fetched. This month marks the one-year anniversary of residents in Toledo, Ohio, bestowing Lake Erie with its own bill of rights. In 2014, Ohio declared a state of emergency after about […]

I live in Mount Washington, on the east side of Cincinnati, roughly the midpoint of the 981-mile Ohio River. Below us, near the mouth of the Little Miami River, marinas, barge terminals and Cincinnati Water Works’ Miller Treatment Plant line the river’s bank. The Water Works has these old red-roofed […]

The Ohio River watershed is dotted with thousands of small dams. Many are remnants of bygone days of grain mills and the steel industry, which used dams to pool water needed during production. The dams are no longer needed. And, because they can be a safety hazard to boats and […]

Looking upstream, the Kinzua Dam seems to protrude brusquely from the Allegheny River. Nestled securely between the rolling hills of Warren County, Pennsylvania, the dam holds the river back. Behind it, the resulting Allegheny Reservoir stretches 27 miles long and 120 feet deep.  The Pittsburgh District of the United States […]

Just before dawn in January 2018, 27 barges were floating like a net along the banks of the Ohio River, downstream of the city of Pittsburgh. Instead of fish, the fleet caught chunks of ice that broke off in the warming, fast-moving waters as it waited for a tow through […]

Anthony Wolkiewicz had his picture taken with Fred Rogers while working at WQED in 1977.  Rogers made a special point to ask about Wolkiewicz’s youngest son. “Who is this? I don’t remember him in my neighborhood,” Wolkiewicz remembers him saying in the same voice he used on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. […]