Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon is on the mound. He winds up and throws a 98mph fastball by the batter. Strike 3 and the Red Sox win. The next sound you are likely to hear at Fenway Park aside from the crowd cheering is the first guitar lick of the classic song by the Standells "Dirty Water" with its familiar refrain "I love that dirty water, Boston you’re my home." The dirty water in referenced in the song is of course The Charles River.

Both the house I grew up in and my current home are less then a half a mile from The Charles River. Over the course of my life I have spent countless hours riding my bike along the river, going for runs, playing basketball at courts adjacent to the river, feeding the ducks when I was a child, participated in river clean up days, and taking photos of the Charles River and its wildlife (some of those photos can be seen after the Works Cited part of this essay). As a child I remember the days when the river reeked with a pungent and putrid smell. Over the years I witnessed first hand the slow environmentally recovery of the river and the return of some of its wildlife. How did the river become such an environmental disaster that its pollution became the river and the city’s defining characteristic to the point that the song that is most associated with the city of Boston is "Dirty Water"? What has been done over the course of the last couple of decades to improve the environmental health of the river? In the following paragraphs I am going to detail the history of the Charles River and discuss how the lessons of the Charles River can be applied to other environmental issues whether they are other polluted rivers or global warming.

Before we look at the Charles River specifically, let’s briefly look at how River Systems work in general. When participation falls onto the ground, what is left either goes into soaks into the ground or becomes run off which goes into rivers and streams. (Wright 174) Rivers have low levels of dissolved solids and high levels of dissolved oxygen. They form in areas where gravity pulls the aforementioned runoff and groundwater towards lakes and oceans. (30) When forests are cleared, the amount of water that can infiltrate the soil lessens; thus, more water runs off into streams of rivers which can lead to potential flooding. (176) In addition, many times humans dam rivers for a variety of uses such as irrigation, flood control, and hydroelectricity.

Despite how famous it is, the Charles River is relatively small. About 80 brooks and streams flow into the river which is about 80 miles long starting in the town of Hopkinton and winding its way through many communities until it empties out into the Boston Harbor. Its twisting and turning nature has always been one the distinguishing characteristics of the river which is evident from its Native American name Quinobequin which means meandering river. Before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans used the river as a fishing source and for transportation. (CRWA) The first European settlers to live around the river where around 1630 and it was during that time when my home town of Watertown, Cambridge, and Boston where founded. (Marchione P.7)

Starting in 1640 dams where built along the river to generate power for industry. (CRWA) The building of these dams can be looked at as the opening salvo of humans creating environmental problems for the river. The Dams slowed down the rivers flow and hurt its ability to clean itself. In addition the dams cut off path ways for some migratory fish. (CRWA) One of the biggest dams was the Moody Street Dam built in 1814. Dams like the Moody Street Dam help grow industry and eventually residences near the river. This led to waste from the residences near the river and by-products of industry being dumped into the Charles River. A government report in 1875 was so pessimistic about the amount of pollution in the river and the disappearing fish population that it recommended abandoning the idea of cleaning up some parts of the river. In addition projects where already under way in 1875 with the "Goal to eliminate stench from poorly flushed tidal flats: results in reduced esturine environment, limits assimililative capacity of basin." (http://www.epa.gov/ne/charles/history.html )

Beginning in the early 1900s the communities around the river and many of the surrounding universities began to see the potential for recreation around the river. Landscape architect Charles Eliot helped design and create the landscape of the river that we now know today such as the man made Charles River basin. (CRWA) This led to more development around the Charles River such as the current location of the BU campus along Commonwealth Avenue. (Hadlund p.217) Add in the creation of the Quabbin-to-Boston water supply system to the increased development around the river and the population of the communities around the river began to explode in the early 1930s. Wherever there is more industrial development and wherever there are more residences, more waste accrues. The increase of waste going into the river after the increase of development and population in the first half of the last century led to huge increases in pollution in the river because the river could not cleanse itself fast enough. Lower then usually rain falls during that time added to the problem. (CRWA)

However, much of the major progress that the Charles River has made has occurred since 1995; that was the year that the environmental protection agency began The Clean Charles River Initiative. (http://www.epa.gov/ne/charles/initiative.html ) The goal of the initiative was to make the River fishable and swimmable. And they have succeeded in getting closer to that goal all of the time. Using new technologies and techniques the EPA has reduced the pollutants in the River and improved its over all health. (see chart below) Anecdotally, as I ride my bike along the Charles River to work every morning I no longer ever smell the stench emanating from the river that I did in my youth. In fact, every year I see an increase in the amount and variety of wildlife in and along the river.

Below Are Pictures I Have Taken Of The River