pristine

Efforts by governors to require low-density towns and suburbs to pull their weight faced intense pushback from local governments and suburban lawmakers who didn't want to be forced to do anything, or heard from constituents who wanted to maintain their high-value, pristine neighborhoods.

"You'd think as a country we would be able to look after our most pristine landscapes", says cold water swimmer Jo Broughton.

Knowing that the formerly pristine waters are so contaminated that you can’t eat many types of fish from there hurts tourism, a major source of the economy in the Great Lakes Region, he added, and “there’s nobody that supports that kind of thing.”

The incident — which revived memories of a massive 3-million-gallon spill almost 50 years earlier — sullied some of the state’s most pristine beaches and a rare stretch of undeveloped coastline.

It starts at South Lake and winds for nearly six miles along a string of pristine alpine lakes, ending on a 12,000-foot ridge that marks the boundary between the eastern and western slopes of the Sierra.