On an August afternoon in the summer of 1996, Massachusetts Governor William Weld made a surprise dive into the Charles River, moments after he signed the Rivers Protection Act into law. The act was created to combat river pollution, and Weld’s stunt was meant to demonstrate his commitment to cleaning up the same river that just a year before had received a D from the EPA—deeming it safe for some boating, but certainly not for swimming. Despite its subpar grade, the Charles River in 1996 was still in better shape than it had been in for much of the twentieth century after decades of industrial, military, and urban pollution; the passage of the Rivers Protection Act was just a small part of a larger turn-of-the-millennium effort to revitalize the Charles River. Today, the river regularly receives A- or B+ grades from the EPA, and in 2011 it received the Thiess International Riverprize, a designation for the cleanest international urban river. Current recreational, urban, and environmental advocates still see room for improvement, especially in the face of continuing land development and a changing climate, but they have met challenges in balancing their aspirations with the infrastructure needs of the city and its institutions.
“Our River”
“One of the great attractions of Boston is that the [Charles] River is sort of the visual heart of the metropolitan area,” says Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) project manager and author of the book Inventing the Charles River Karl Haglund. “All of us think of it as our river.” Charles River Conservancy founder and executive director Renata von Tscharner agrees: “We are so lucky to have the river right in the center of the city. It’s a place where the breeze comes along the river, it’s cool along the river. Open space, open air, greenspace—it’s a major lung for Cambridge.”
Historically, the river has been valued much more for its industrial utility than its recreational utility. By the mid-19th century, textile magnates like Francis Cabot Lowell had redirected much of the river into mills to power their factories. The last decade of the 1800s saw a push to make the Charles the centerpiece of the Boston cityscape. Under the leadership of architects like Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles Eliot, and Guy Lowell––some nineteen miles of Boston’s waterways were altered with the objective of creating an “Emerald Necklace” of parks for Boston. But by the mid-twentieth century, industry and a burgeoning population had taken its toll on the river: urban and industrial runoff had so contaminated the Charles that in 1965, the Charles River Watershed Association was formed to advocate for the river’s remediation and continued protection.
Yet true progress was difficult at a time when the U.S. Army was still operating the Watertown Arsenal, which during the Cold War functioned as a nuclear reactor and research center. According to the EPA, the Arsenal was originally established in 1816 “for the storage, cleaning, and issuance of small arms,” evolving into “ammunition and pyrotechnics production; materials testing and experimentation” by the mid-1800s. “All the ordinance that was used in the Civil War was manufactured at the Watertown Arsenal,” says CRWA Executive Director Robert Zimmerman, Jr., “and that legacy still lives on in the bottom of the river.” By 1994, the EPA had designated the Arsenal’s 131 acres as a Superfund site, necessitating remediation of the groundwater that had been “contaminated with volatile organic compounds.” The site was only taken off the National Priorities List in 2016 and continues to undergo periodic reviews by the EPA.
Many of these locations have been rejuvenated in the present day as multi-functional sites: the remediated Arsenal area is both on the National Register of Historical Places and serves as the national headquarters of the software company athenahealth, and the Emerald Necklace of parks created at the turn of the twentieth century lives on in a collection of reservations and parks known as the Metropolitan Parks System of Greater Boston. But many river advocates today wish to see active investment in the future of the river, and remediating the damage from the past is just one part of actively maintaining and improving the Charles’s urban presence.
Coexistence on the Charles River
Current advocacy efforts require a balancing act between myriad interests and institutional and bureaucratic hurdles, and advocates have found that forging partnerships across organizational interests is often mutually beneficial. This is often the case for water quality and recreation advocates—much of the agenda to raise the Charles’s daily recreational profile is rendered moot if the river is not healthy enough.
The Charles River Conservancy, an organization founded in 2002 with the mission of creating “a world-class urban riverfront enjoyed by all,” envisions expanding the river’s use to what von Tscharner call “a four-season recreational facility for everybody.” The river is “much more than just the host of the Head of the Charles,” an annual Regatta which attracts spectators and rowers from across the country. One of the Conservancy’s largest ongoing projects is to re-establish swimming in the Charles, which is only feasible because of the river’s improving water quality. The EPA gave the Charles a B grade in 2016, a drastic improvement in water quality from just two decades ago when the Clean Charles Initiative was first launched, and one that designates the river safe for boating 86% of the time and safe for swimming 55% of the time. “Eventually we want to see several swim locations where it’s safe to swim, [and] obviously the water quality now allows us to do that,” says von Tscharner.
Improving and maintaining the river’s water quality is an obvious prerequisite for the Conservancy’s recreational aspirations, and it happens to be an integral part of the Charles River Watershed Association’s mission. The latter’s website outlines their objectives to “promote sustainable watershed management practices” and to “advocate for the protection, revitalization, and expansion of public parklands along the Charles,” typically supported by their own scientific research. This blend of research and advocacy, says CRWA Director of Blue Cities Pallavi Mande, gives the organization unique leverage in the Boston area. “Historically, we’ve been able to be very effective because of cultural and people relationships that we’ve had with different bodies and [because of] the credibility of having our own science.” Mande cites stormwater management as an exemplum of the CRWA’s advocacy strategy. Around 2007, with its own team of scientists, the CRWA “set production targets for safe phosphorus and nutrient loading for the river [from stormwater],” which “gave us [CRWA] a very strong tool to advocate for infrastructure to retrofit” to achieve these targets. An outgrowth of the stormwater management success was the CRWA’s Blue Cities program that Mande directs, which today focuses on what she calls “water-centric urban design,” and advocates for the implementation of greener infrastructure and parklands supported by the CRWA’s own research.
I-90 and the Harvard Allston Expansion
Areas slated for significant development are of particular interest to urban designers and advocates like von Tscharner, Mande, and Haglund; such sites are prime opportunities for investment in the future of the river through implementation of sustainable infrastructure and deliberate placement of greenspaces. One such area of development, Harvard’s expansion from Cambridge into neighboring Allston, will span a hundred acres that, according to von Tscharner, were historically allocated for industrial and railroad use. The expansion has been characterized by Harvard President Drew Faust as “an extraordinarily exciting opportunity in the Greater Boston region for collaboration, discovery, and innovation,” but river advocates strike a more fearful tone.
Some river advocates involved in the expansion’s planning have faced challenges in campaigning for the river and its health. When asked about the experience of urban planning with Harvard instead of with a conventional real estate developer, Mande laughed and diplomatically said, “I would say there is a lot of risk-averseness and [a] conventional planning and engineering mindset that we are dealing with.” She would like to see more enthusiastic support of green infrastructure and green urban planning that would effectively and efficiently maintain the river’s presence in the area, especially since the university does not necessarily have the same constraints as a commercial real estate developer might. Haglund agrees that Harvard is in a unique position to set an example for future urban development: “One of the advantages that Harvard has that a real estate developer doesn’t have is they can take their time because they’re not paying interest on the land.”
Von Tscharner also anticipates the needs of the new community after the expansion, seeing a parallel with the recent development of Boston’s Seaport District. “We feel it’s crucial that as this new neighborhood is being prepared with infrastructure there be a decent-sized greenspace,” he asserts. “The Seaport District has also seen a lot of development, but suddenly they realized people are going to live here but we forgot to put [any] greenspace.” Speaking from his experience in watching the development of the Esplanade, Haglund notes that communities might not even realize they need a greenspace until one is made available to them. Advocates view their responsibility to the river and Boston’s citizens to campaign for cutting-edge urban development in infrastructure and greenspace, which could be led by major local stakeholders like Harvard if it can overcome its institutional inertia.
Looking to the Future
Advocates for the river today must juggle a number of accommodating interests ranging from boating to water quality to safe pedestrian crossings, but Haglund and his colleagues remain optimistic that local government like the DCR, stakeholders, and the multitude of advocacy groups “will continue to improve the investment” that has already been made in the river. “We definitely feel like [the river is] a resource that has to be joined with equity and it’s for everyone as a resource to be enjoyed,” says Mande. In the face of weakening federal environmental protections, future progress is not necessarily guaranteed, but Boston’s strong history of citizen advocacy and involvement surrounding the river, sustained by organizations like the CRWA and the Conservancy, will facilitate progress. “We are standing on the cusp of this change that is going to have a trickle-down effect very soon,” says Mande. “I feel like this might be a good time for us…to focus on strengthening our advocacy locally and with institutional partners that we know at least still have the commitment that we in the region have made.”
Image Credit: George Banis/Wikimedia Commons