This day in history: State questioned use of road salt as it flowed into Spokane River; music prof sued orchestra leader

From 1975: Another big snowstorm hit Spokane and once again the city was spreading tons of salt on the roadways. Every winter the city dumped between 2,500 to 3,000 tons of salt on the streets to melt the ice.

Now, questions were being raised about whether all of that salt caused detrimental environmental effects. Practically all of that salt eventually ended up in the Spokane River.

City officials said they knew of no problems “to date” caused by the salt.

Yet salt was now being investigated as a type of water pollutant, and the state Ecology Department planned to study “potentially adverse effects.”

One possible issue? Salt kills bacteria, and the city was planning to use bacteria to break down organic matter in its advanced sewage treatment plant, scheduled to open in 1977.

From 1925: Music professor Francis E. Woodward of Spokane sued Ralph Pollock, orchestra leader at the Liberty Theater, for “mutilating” and “butchering” the world’s classical masterpieces.

In his suit, Woodward claimed that Pollock’s interpretations were “obnoxious to lovers of classical music and a severe shock to their feelings.”

Woodward, a former member of the Metropolitan Grand Opera Company in New York, claimed that Pollock hurt his business by so “perverting” classical music that children no longer desired a musical education. He claimed that Pollock had turned Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody into “jazz.”

Pollock responded by saying, “I have rather made an improvement on the old masters.”

Audiences, he said, loved his versions.

The Liberty Theater was in the 700-block of Riverside Avenue. It was playing the silent film “He Who Gets Slapped,” featuring actor Lon Chaney and Pollock leading the orchestra at the time of the article, according to an ad on another page of the Spokane Daily Chronicle.