Boston Ends Discharge of Sewer Sludge into Harbor
On this day in 1991, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority ended an age-old practice of dumping sewer sludge directly into Boston Harbor. Proponents of the Boston Harbor Project celebrated this milestone in an 11-year, $3.6 billion effort to clean up the nation's dirtiest harbor. It had taken several centuries for Boston's harbor to reach its nadir as a "Harbor of Shame." Conservation activists had feared it might take just as long for various government agencies to agree on how to address the problem. But in the early 1980s, two landmark lawsuits produced a timeline for a mandated solution to be paid for by water bill surcharges. The Boston Harbor Project is now an international model of environmental restoration.
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