Political Waters: The Long, Dirty, Contentious, Incredibly Expensive but Eventually Triumphant History of Boston Harbor-A Unique Environmental Success Story

by Eric Jay Dolin

Overview

Boston Harbor served as a colonial gateway to the world, witnessed the Boston Tea Party, and helped the community transform itself from an outpost of a few hardy settlers into a bustling metropolis and self-proclaimed hub of the universe. Yet for hundreds of years Boston Harbor was also a cesspool. Long before Bostonians dumped tea into the harbor to protest English taxes, they dumped sewage there.

As the Boston area grew and prospered, its sewage problems worsened, as did the harbor's health, to the point where in the 1980s it was considered the most polluted harbor in the country and ridiculed as the "harbor of shame." Then, in one of the most impressive environmental comebacks in American history, Boston Harbor was dramatically cleaned up. All it took was two lawsuits, two courts, dozens of lawyers, the creation of a powerful sewage authority, thousands of workers, millions of labor hours, and billions of dollars.

Sewage management is rarely as compelling and exciting as higher profile environmental issues such as global climate change, preserving endangered species, or protecting tropical rainforests. But it can be, as Eric Jay Dolin shows in this engaging narrative account. Boston's struggle to deal with its sewage is an epic story of failure and success, replete with colorful characters, political, bureaucratic, and legal twists and turns, engineering feats, and massive amounts of money. In the end, success hinged on the often overlooked yet monumentally important act of responsibly disposing of the waste people produce every day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558496415
Publisher:	University of Massachusetts Press
Publication date:	04/02/2008
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

An independent scholar and freelance writer, Eric Jay Dolin studied environmental policy at Brown, Yale, and MIT, where he received his PhD. His most recent book is Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America.

What People are Saying About This

Michael R. Deland

An extremely well researched and comprehensive overview of the cleanup of Boston Harbor. Dolin's work will be of valuable assistance for researchers and numerous others for years to come.

Thomas M. Menino

The Boston Harbor Project is a rare environmental success story that proves the power of a few committed, courageous individuals. Mr. Dolin's work shows the political history of how our harbor went from beautiful to polluted and then back to the clean, sparkling, natural resource that is our children's legacy.

Editorial Reviews

"Dolin, with a clear eye for the unreliable assertions and unfounded conclusions of the various players, provides a lasting contribution to the historical record."—The Boston Globe

"Boston Harbor is America's harbor,' says environmental author Dolin in this sprightly account of its history and cleanup. . . . Drawing on extensive quotes from a variety of primary sources, Dolin details how in one of the most impressive environmental cleanups in U.S. history, the harbor was restored."—Library Journal

"The Boston Harbor Project is a rare environmental success story that proves the power of a few committed, courageous individuals. Mr. Dolin's work shows the political history of how our harbor went from beautiful to polluted and then back to the clean, sparkling, natural resource that is our children's legacy."—Thomas M. Menino, Mayor of Boston

"An extremely well researched and comprehensive overview of the cleanup of Boston Harbor. Dolin's work will be of valuable assistance for researchers and numerous others for years to come."—Michael R. Deland, former regional administrator,

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, New England Region

"'Political Waters' recounts the roller-coaster of events that brought one of America's best-known harbors into and then, remarkably, out of envioronmental despair. . . .Dolin successfully paints the picture of the public's ignorance of a pending environmental crisis"—Architecture Boston

From the Publisher

An exemplary short architectual monograph: succinct, elequent, contextual, and copiously illustrated.

Choice

'Political Waters' recounts the roller-coaster of events that brought one of America's best-known harbors into and then, remarkably, out of envioronmental despair....Dolin successfully paints the picture of the public's ignorance of a pending environmental crisis

Architecture Boston

Dolin, with a clear eye for the unreliable assertions and unfounded conclusions of the various players, provides a lasting contribution to the historical record.

The Boston Globe