Watered Down

In 1972 congress enacted the Clean Water Act, bold legislation that was going to make all waters of the United States fishable (safe for fish eating) and swimmable by 1983, then end all pollution by 1985.

The law was born of frustration. Pollution control by state wasn’t working. Municipalities were resisting modernizing their sewage-treatment plants, arguing that major investment was pointless until industrial sources were controlled. And industry argued that sewage pollution would render such expenditure a waste. In 1969 at least 41 million fish (and doubtless many more that were never seen) died in a record number of fish kills. The same year Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire, providing Randy Newman with the lyrics to his memorable song “Burn On.” About 65 percent of the waters in the contiguous states were neither fishable nor swimmable.

The Clean Water Act authorized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set limits on pollution by awarding discharge “permits.” Under the “polluter pays” concept, industry was required to pick up the tab for treating its waste, but municipalities got huge grants to upgrade sewage plants from primary treatment (removing solids) to secondary (substantially reducing biological content).

Few Americans—least of all Congress, which passed the Clean Water Act over President Richard Nixon’s veto—understood water pollution in 1972, hence the law’s naive goals and, even after amendments in 1977, 1981, and 1987, its thoroughly inadequate prescriptions for “non-point sources” such as runoff from streets, animal feedlots, and cropland. Still, federal regulation and appropriations got things moving. For something like two and a half decades, successes were dramatic. The Cuyahoga, for example, ceased being a fire hazard and instead became a recreational attraction, even providing spawning and nursery habitat for steelhead trout. But sometime around the mid- or maybe late 1990s, national progress ceased. Today about 45 percent of our waters flunk federal quality standards, and as our population increases and development continues, we’re backsliding.

There is no better case study of what the Clean Water Act has and hasn’t done than the fluctuating fortunes of the Blackstone River, which rises under the streets of Worcester, Massachusetts, and runs 46 miles to Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. Because its fast current gave birth to America’s industrial revolution it became the nation’s first and worst polluted river. In 1986 Congress designated most of the watershed a national heritage corridor to be administered with federal appropriations by a commission comprised of elected officials and representatives from the National Park Service, state agencies, and communities. Since then the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, as it is ponderously called, has been effectively protecting and restoring open space, historic buildings, and other cultural and environmental resources. In 1998, after frenetic lobbying by the Massachusetts and Rhode Island congressional delegations, President Bill Clinton named the Blackstone one of 14 American Heritage Rivers.

In my November-December 1995 “Incite” column—basically a response to the House Republicans’ effort to disappear the Clean Water Act—I noted that the cleanup of the Blackstone River “isn’t finished.” But with our title, “The Blackstone Now Runs Blue,” we may have gotten a bit carried away with the law’s early success. When the sun is out and you’re not standing in or floating on the river, it looks blue. But blue doesn’t mean healthy. The Blackstone was sick in 1995, and because of increased urban runoff and inadequate sewage treatment, it’s just as sick today.

Still, the long-term recovery of this aquatic ecosystem has been astonishing. When my wife and I settled beside the river in 1970, one species of fish, the white sucker, survived in the main stem. That year our insurance agent’s dog frolicked in the Blackstone and died as a result; since 1995 our dogs have frolicked in it and only smelled worse (or occasionally, depending on previous activities, better). Where we had encountered only sludge worms in the 1970s and ’80s, we’ve been seeing crayfish and turtles since the mid-1990s. Today the main stem sustains 19 species of nonmigratory fish, and because sea-run species such as blueback herring, alewives, and American shad can finally spawn again, fish ladders are going in at the lower four dams.

But like so many other urban and suburban rivers across America, the Blackstone isn’t anywhere near swimmable, and while it offers superb angling, especially in its lower sections after it has been aerated by myriad waterfalls, you wouldn’t want to eat a resident Blackstone River fish.

I was reminded of this fact on a warm, damp morning this past November as I inhaled the ammonia fumes wafting from the outfall of the Upper Blackstone sewage treatment plant, which serves greater Worcester. Standing beside me on the Blackstone River Bikeway (a Heritage Corridor project that will connect Worcester with Providence, Rhode Island) was the leading authority on the river and its most tireless advocate: Donna Williams, the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s conservation advocacy coordinator, president of the 11-group Blackstone River Coalition, and vice chair of the Corridor Commission. Williams, a lifelong valley resident, has been probably my most reliable and certainly most accessible source on water pollution for most of the 39 years we’ve been married.

“Look at all the macrophytes,” she declared, pointing to the treatment-plant effluent entering the river to our left.