THE VALUE OF THE FEDERAL Clean Water Act of 1972, which just marked its 40th birthday, for this region’s Etowah/Oostanaula/Coosa rivers was recently reviewed in this newspaper. As Joe Cook, executive director of the Coosa River Basin Initiative correctly summed it up: “Our rivers are much healthier than they were 40 years ago.”

Sure are, but this success can be described more plainly than by chronicling all the millions of dollars spent in wastewater treatment plants, cleanups and so forth.

Coinciding with this environmental news, but not associated with it, this paper’s “100 years ago” column on Sunday last reported that in 1912 John Camp netted a 60-pound catfish “in the Oostanaula just above Rome.” Elsewhere it also reported that in 2012 Clyde Craig of Rome had just caught a 60-to-70-pound blue catfish on the Oostanaula River near Chieftains Museum.

That sounds like pretty much at exactly the same spot. Thus 100 years apart, in river waters of sufficient quality to allow such aquatic life to exist and persist, the great-great-grandgill of the original catfish (they live 20-25 years on average) became the trophy catch of yet another Roman.

That’s what not only the Clean Water Act but all vigilance regarding things environmental is truly all about. And it works. Well, at least “in the Oostanaula just above Rome.”