Stewardship

As one of the busiest recreational rivers in the world, the Charles River is considered by many to be a jewel of an urban river. While the water quality is good today, it has not always been that way. Almost as soon a European settlers arrived in the 1630's, the Charles was used as a convenient place to dump the waste of human activity. As early as 1640, water from the Charles was diverted in a man-made ditch [Mother Brook] toward the Neponset River to power mills to grind corn. As the first industrial canal in North America, this diversion canal became the site of "a second corn mill, a fulling mill, a saw mill, and a leather mill."

As the Industrial Revolution spread to America, 20 dams were built on the Charles to power mills and factories. The banks of the Charles became one of the most industrialized areas in the United States, with 43 mills between the Watertown dam and Boston Harbor in 1875. That these mills and factories treated the Charles as a dumping ground is typified by the Watertown Arsenal, a munitions factory for the US Army. Established in 1816 as a storage depot of munitions, the Arsenal grew to become a large manufacturing complex, supplying arms and munitions for the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. In the late 1950's, the Arsenal became the home of a significant materials research laboratory of the US Army until 1995 when the site was converted to civilian use. Over its history, the Arsenal left a legacy of pollution that led it being classified as a US Superfund site.

At the same time as the burst of industrial growth along the Charles, the surrounding communities grew to house the workers. Boston built it's sewer system in between 1877 and 1884, and it's first regional system in the 1890's. While these were recognized as some of the best in the country, they did nothing more than collect the sewage so that it could be discharged in the outgoing tide of Boston Harbor. Along the Charles, there were many sewage drains and stormwater runoff culverts that contributed to "that dirty water." Pollution of the river and the harbor was a persistant problem for most of the 1900's, but it took decades before any sewage treatment plant was built: Nut Island Primary Wastewater Treatment Plant in 1952, followed by the Deer Island Primary Treatment Plant in 1968.

While some sections of the shoreline were being industrialized, other portions of the river and shoreline were developed to provide recreational opportunites. One of the first was made possible by the construction of the Moody Street Dam in 1814. By the turn of the 20th century, the resulting 200-acre millpond had become one of the most popular social and recreational destinations in New England with the creation of Norembega Park in 1897. In the early 1900's, more than 5000 canoes were berthed in the Lakes District of the Charles.

In the beginning of the 20th century, the lower Charles was transformed from a tidal estuary to the dam-enclosed basin we see today. At the same time, industry was pushed back from the edge of the river and replaced by parkland using conceptual plans promoted by Charles Eliot, designs by Guy Lowell and Aurthur Schurcliff, and a generous donation of $1,000,000 from Mrs. James Jackson Storrow. The resulting Esplanade, as well as a necklace of parks stretching between the Watertown and Charles River Dam, became the new home of many sailing and rowing boathouses. In the 1950s, after the death of Mrs. Storrow, a slice of the Esplanade was taken to create a parkway, named after Mr. Storrow even though both Storrows had opposed it.

As the 1960s and '70s arrived across the country, there was much change in the wind. In response to a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, CA, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisconsin) proposed the first Earth Day, an environmental teach-in, on April 22, 1970. This grassroots effort demonstrated that there was broad and lasting support for environmental legislation. This legislation included the National Environmental Policy Act (1970) establishing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality, a substaintially strengthened Clean Air Act (1970), the Federal Water Polution Control Amendments (1972), the Endangered Species Act (1973), the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (1976), the Clean Water Act (1977), and the Superfund Act (1980).

In Massachusetts, the Charles River Watershed Association was formed in 1965 in "response to increasing public concern about the environment and the declining condition" of the river. The CRWA was instrumental in encouraging the construction of modern wastewater treatment plants being built for the upper Charles River basin, in greatly limiting industrial discharges in the river, and in increasing enforcement of environmental laws along the Charles. In 1982, the city of Quincy sued the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) and the Boston Water and Sewer Commission for unchecked pollution of Quincy's waterfront. In 1983, the Conservation Law Foundation sued the MDC and the EPA to stop the chronic and massive discharges of untreated sewage and force the clean-up of Boston Harbor. The eventual settlement of these cases led to the creation of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), the construction of a modern centralized water treatment plant on Deer Island, and a significant improvement in the water quality of Boston Harbor. The river greatly benefitted by the effort to clean the harbor since there was now a regional approach to collect and treat all sewage and wastewater. It was clear that the harbor could not be reclaimed unless the Charles was also reclaimed.

While there has been a tremendous improvement in the water quality of both the river and the harbor, there is work yet to be done. To learn more, visit the web sites of the government and non-government agencies on the right.

Useful Information