Polluter Versus Polluter: The Pennsylvania Railroad and the Manufacturing of Pollution Policies in the 1920s

Abstract

In 1920 the Pennsylvania Railroad sued several small coal companies over water pollution. The lawsuit, ultimately decided in the railroad's favor, overturned an earlier Pennsylvania court decision that granted a property right to pollute, and, more important, now represents a major transitional period in American water policy history. The period marked the end of water policy generated from court decisions and case law, and the beginning of an era dominated by legislative statute and agency interpretation. With the Pennsylvania case, the impacts of nineteenth-century court decisions that sanctioned pollution to encourage business waned as concern for the nation's public health demanded more expansive attention, and industry itself began to experience excessive costs from corrupted water resources. In Pennsylvania and elsewhere, lawmakers attempted to institute a new strategy for economic interest in harmony with efforts to improve environmental quality.The history of water pollution and policy is generally well developed. The U.S. Public Health Service, as well as several state agencies, investigated and published reports concerning the issue in the first years of this century. 1 More recently, historian Joel Tarr examined the complex nature of pollution in the development of urban and industrial infrastructure as it stimulated the implementation of policy formation. In addition, Christine Rosen's historical, legal analysis of nineteenth-century attempts to "balance" economic growth and environmental concerns through court decisions offers a basis for understanding policy foundations. This attempted balance, which favored expansion, resonates beyond the era of court decisions and into the legal framework of legislative statutes. 2 Analysis in this essay follows such thinking. Contaminated effluents required the expansion of infrastructure, and people developed policy through JOURNAL