Roger Stewart, Natural Resource

Roger Stewart: Thank you and RIP.

Stewart, who died recently at age 89, WAS the Environmental Protection Agency–from inception and through three decades. At a time when it was open season on air and water, Stewart fought the good, if curmudgeonly, fight for quality of life. He was, as he famously told Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes in 1974, a “purist in the environmental business.”

Indeed he was. His priorities were not subdivisions and going along with whatever go-go-growth required. His legacy was a cleaner environment, especially the bay. He was a natural resource.

You can tell a lot about a person by what adversaries he has attracted along the way. In Stewart’s case, it was phosphate mines, real estate developers and electric companies.

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