Changes in international markets along with skyrocketing processing costs have thrown the industry into a tailspin.

This story was originally published on July 22, 2019.

Editor's Note: This story was originally published on December 20, 2017

When the Cuyahoga River caught fire 50 years ago it helped spark an environmental movement in America. However, there was little coverage at the time and no known photographic evidence of the actual blaze.

Over the past 50 years, freight traffic on the lower Cuyahoga River has increasingly competed with smaller watercraft as the river has rebounded to become a recreation channel. Watershed is a series looking at our waterways and what the future holds for them. This installment looks at one river, competing interests.

The Cuyahoga River and many other Northern Ohio streams and rivers are part of the Lake Erie Watershed, which encompasses 33 of Ohio's 88 counties, or more than one-third of the state. The lake provides drinking water to millions of people.

In the early 1970s there was a cooperative effort between the United States and Canada to lower the amount of pollutants entering the Great Lakes.

Rivers in northern Ohio have long been conduits of industry, linking onshore factories to Great Lakes shipping and beyond. This industrial legacy spurred economic growth, but it also left the region’s waterways poisoned by unregulated pollution. And one of the hardest hit rivers was the Ashtabula, in Ohio’s far northeast corner. In this installment of our series Watershed, WKSU’s Jeff St. Clair reports the cleanup of the Ashtabula took decades of dedication by citizens and became a model for

Ohio’s urban waterways were once seen as common sewers for industry and growing populations. But a fire in 1969 on the Cuyahoga River sparked new ideas of how a river can serve its region. In kicking off our series, Watershed, WKSU is examining three Northeast Ohio rivers, and the relationships they have with the communities that rely on them.

Fifty years ago, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. And it really didn’t become a big deal nationally until more than a month later when Time magazine ran an article on the fire.