Hello and thank you for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service with me Claire Bowes.

In June 1969 a hugely polluted river in the USA caught fire, inspiring new laws to protect the environment.

It wasn't actually the first time the Kyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, had caught fire,

but this time it captured the public's attention.

For decades, Cleveland had been a center of iron and steelworks,

and by the time Ben Stophantsky was a young man in the mid-1960s,

it was just really dirty. I worked part-time at the bank and it was

sweltering hot in the summer and you opened the windows. We didn't have air

conditioning then and you would get a cover of soot over the tables and the

desks. By the mid-60s people were looking for change. The local politicians

didn't seem to have an answer.

Then along came Carl Stokes.

Probably the most tangible result of his partial election is that racism lost.

Carl Stokes, a Negro, has become the first Negro mayor of a major American city, Teafland.

He defeated a liberal Republican, and he gained many white as well as Negro votes in order to win. Well, he was very charismatic.

He had a round face and very short cropped hair,

and his eyes sparkled, and he just had a positive attitude about himself and was interested in everybody that he bumped into and was just a figure that you could relate to and lose your perception of him being a black man

and just as a politician that might be able to do something in this community.

Ben Stefanski also wanted to do something in this community. Ben Stefanski also wanted to do something for Cleveland's community.

Soon he received a call from the new mayor asking him to become his utilities director,

responsible for the city's sewage and for tackling pollution.

It was a big job. Cleveland, steel and oil industry had taken its toll on the natural environment.

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