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

by Eric Jay Dolin

Boston Harbor has always been America’s harbor. It served as a colonial gateway to the world, witnessed the Boston Tea Party, and helped Boston 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, Eric Jay Dolin points out, 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 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.

Genres: History

Hardcover

First published June 1, 2004

About the author

BELOW ARE TWO VERSIONS OF MY BIOGRAPHY: THE SHORT ONE I USE FOR INTRODUCTIONS TO MY BOOK TALKS, AND THE LONGER VERSION, WHICH GOES A BIT DEEPER ON MY BACKGROUND, AND HOW I BECAME A WRITER. 

SHORT

Eric Jay Dolin is the author of seventeen books, including Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America; A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes; Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates; and Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. His forthcoming book (June 2, 2026), is The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail. Dolin's books have won many awards including the John Lyman Award for U.S. Maritime History; Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award; National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Excellence in American History Book Award for Adult Nonfiction; Samuel Eliot Morison Book Award for Naval Literature; L. Byrne Waterman Book Award for Outstanding Contributions to Research and Pedagogy in the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences; James P. Hanlan Book Award; and the Outdoor Writers Association of America Book Award. Many of his books have been chosen as “must reads” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Other honors include being chosen as a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and as one of the best books of the year by The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, the Library Journal, and Booklist. Dolin lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with his family.

LONGER

I grew up near the coasts of New York and Connecticut, and since an early age I was fascinated by the natural world, especially the ocean. I spent many days wandering the beaches on the edge of Long Island Sound and the Atlantic, collecting seashells and exploring tidepools. When I left for college I wanted to become a marine biologist or more specifically a malacologist (seashell scientist). At Brown University I quickly realized that although I loved learning about science, I wasn't cut out for a career in science, mainly because I wasn't very good in the lab, and I didn't particularly enjoy reading or writing scientific research papers. So, after taking a year off and exploring a range of career options, I shifted course turning toward the field of environmental policy, first earning a double-major in biology and environmental studies, then getting a masters degree in environmental management from Yale, and a Ph.D. in environmental policy and planning from MIT, where my dissertation focused on the role of the courts in the cleanup of Boston Harbor.

I have held a variety of jobs, including stints as a fisheries policy analyst at the National Marine Fisheries Service, a program manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, an environmental consultant stateside and in London, an American Association for the Advancement of Science writing fellow at Business Week, a curatorial assistant in the Mollusk Department at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, and an intern at the National Wildlife Federation, the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, and the U.S. Senate.

Throughout my career, one thing remained constant--I enjoyed writing and telling stories. And that's why I started writing books--to share the stories that I find most intriguing (I have also published more than 60 articles for magazines, newspapers, and professional journals). My most recent books include:

***The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail (Liveright, June 2, 2026).

***Left For Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World (Liveright, 2024), which was selected by the editors at Amazon as one of the best history books of the year. 

***Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution (Liveright, 2022), which was winner of the 2023 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature, the Nation

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dolin looked at the very flawed Boston sewer and waste management system over the entire course of its history. While he notes that, like much of Boston’s history, it started as ad-hoc sewers dug by home owners, by the 19th century, demand for a way to deal with the growing problem of disease, fire, and strong odors pushed Boston to build more coordinated sewers. By 1885, a sewer system which dumped waste into the Boston Harbor had come to formation, where the idea was that the harbor would dissipate the waste and therefore dispose of it properly. The place of discharge was near Deer Island and Moon Island, where secondary treatment plants were later built. Unfortunately, the system quickly led to Boston Harbor becoming horribly polluted, and by the mid-20th century, the treatment facilities on Deer and Moon were becoming outdated. Sewage regularly washed up on beaches in the area and made them unusable for swimming or for even being on the beach because of the odor. In 1966, the Massachusetts Clean Water Act, followed by the federal Clean Water Act required Boston to clean up, build new treatment centers on the islands, and replace the antiquated pipe systems. After a series of lawsuits, Massachusetts and Boston opened the Boston Harbor Project, and in 2000, a new pipe opened which took sewage further out into the Massachusetts Bay where it could more properly dissipate. Deer Island waste treatment was at the same time shutdown. Though Dolin is skeptical about the long-term reliability of the sewage system, he stresses that it has made major progress.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a long detailed account of the transformation of Boston Harbor from a polluted open sewer to a harbor with beaches clean enough for swimming.
The first chapters are particularly interesting because they describe how the early city handled its sewage. Most people had an outhouse, a hand-dug pit, in the backyard or basement. That might be OK in a rural area where houses are widely spaced, but it didn't work so well as the city grew. Or when that city is on the water.
When the tide rolled in, the water table was so high in parts of Boston that polluted ground water and sewage seeped up through the floor into basements. In some cases, residents regularly had three feet of sewage and sludge in their cellar. Various municipal projects improved the situation for homeowners, but by the 1960s, the harbor was a cesspool.

Dolin recounts the policy fights, lawsuits and court action that led to the clean up. It took the federal Clean Water Act, EPA regulations and compromise on all sides. It's amazing to read of a time when government and politicians managed to make compromises and get something done even when they disagreed.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of local Boston history tells the story of the centuries long degradation of the Boston Harbor and the equally decades long effort to clean it up. The State of Massachusetts, the governor, state legislators all stalled and blamed someone else for not getting this job done. Finally, a local judge and later a federal judge pushed and pulled the State, the Federal EPA, local communities, and various lawsuits to the finish line on this project. The taxpayers weren't happy about all the inconveniences of years long construction and finally the very high ratepayer costs to fund all that. But it got done and Boston is now a model city for handling its sewage and water needs.