Customer Reviews

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

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For those of you who are interested in Boston's history, there are other books better written for the non-academic. This book tends to (heavily) focus on the beurocratic and statistical info behind the public health issue and the sewer problem that plauged the city for centuries. I was disapointed that there was really only on chapter(8)in the entire book which detailed the eniginiering feats of this tedious project.

I found this over-view of the history of colonization of Boston and it's ensuing water and sewage problems very interesting as a classic example of a city growing by leaps and bounds without any common sense consideration of how to safely dispose of sewage without contaminating the environment. This study leads right up to the current situation that author Dolin considers "successful" considering the wrenching history of the sewage problems Bostonians had to live with for most of that city's history up until the late 1970's when movements to finally mitigate the harbor pollution finally got off to a slow, but steady start towards secondary sewage treatment. Dolin relates that the current water quality in Boston Harbor is not perfect, but the efforts to clean it up are in full swing and the difference from just 5 to 10 years ago is dramatic.

The legal battles to force mitigation of the harbor pollution are gone over in clinical/ academic detail and become burdensome at points, but the general historical view of causation and remedy are fascinating and extend on to comparisons of other large cities such as London, et al. and how they dealt with the same problems. A few Bostonians used these comparisons in ongoing attempts to nudge the powers-at-be in Boston to copy their examples of clean-up, usually to limited degrees, but after 300 years of haphazard attempts, Bostonians demanded better and finally got it. A good, academic read on sewage mitigation.

Another book on the subject of water pollution and the attempts to clean it up is "The Rivers Keepers" by John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This is the story of efforts to clean up the Hudson River and the establishment of the Waterkeepers movement which has spread to just about all bodies of water in the U.S.- excellent read.

I found this book to be very dry and difficult to read. It does a very poor job at explaining and portraying one of the most contentious periods in Boston history and does an equally poor job of explaining why this project was such an amazing engineering feat. I was also disappointed by the jarring and ramshackle writing style and how the book moves from first person to detached writing and back again.

Basically this is a great story but this book doesn't do a good job at all in telling it. This one is only for hardcore engineers or environmental students, not for those interested in Boston history.

It's hard to conveniently peg Political Waters: The Long, Dirty, Contentious, Incredibly Expensive, But Eventually Triumphant History Of Boston Harbor: A Unique Environmental Success Story is at once a political history of Boston and its harbor, as well as a story of urban planning and environmental success. Political Waters charts some stormy seas indeed as Boston spent literally centuries working to clean up its reputation as having one of the nation's most polluted bodies of water. Political Waters presents a semi-scholarly assessment of this process and is a highly recommended addition to Environmental Studies reference collections and reading lists.