The People’s Harbor

Metropolitan College’s Bruce Berman Charts the Boston Harbor Cleanup

by Brian Fitzgerald

	Several of the Boston Harbor islands, with Georges Island in the center foreground. Photograph courtesy of MWRA

Bruce Berman, aboard a ferry from Boston’s Long Wharf to Georges Island, poses an important question to his students: “How clean is clean enough?”

He’s talking about the water below.

It’s a brilliant July day, with the smell of salt spray in the air. The sky is clear, and so is the ocean. But there was a time when Boston Harbor wasn’t so clean, when the stench of sewage assaulted the nostrils of anyone who went near it.

Berman is communications director for Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, a public-interest environmental advocacy organization pledged to help restore and protect the harbor and Massachusetts Bay. He also teaches a Metropolitan College summer course called Politics, Public Relations, and Public Policy: The Boston Harbor Cleanup.

“The Boston Harbor Cleanup is an amazing success story, and I just love to share it with students,” says Berman, noting that the harbor’s “bad old days” weren’t that long ago. In 1988, Vice President George Bush, during a campaign stop boat tour in Boston, branded it the “harbor of shame,” seeking to embarrass Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, his opponent in the presidential race, on his environmental record.

Those were the days when untreated human waste, syringes, condoms, and tampon applicators routinely washed ashore. The antiquated sewage treatment plants on Deer Island and Nut Island were so poorly designed and maintained that they flooded during even mild rainstorms, sending millions of gallons of untreated waste directly into the harbor.

Since then, bacteria counts in the water have decreased by more than two-thirds. Now the harbor teems with plants and animals. Seals can be seen there, as well as porpoises. To the right, a cormorant, a member of the pelican family, dives for fish. Humpback whales are sighted from time to time. And people can legally dig for clams on Carson Beach in South Boston, which was unheard of in the 1980s.

“It was one of the filthiest harbors in America, and now it’s one of the cleanest,” says Berman. “It’s fair to say that the cleanup is the most dramatic success in environmental history in terms of water quality. What I’m trying to impress upon students is how this incredible comeback occurred, and how business, advocacy groups, environmentalists, and government can affect the outcome of large projects such as the Boston Harbor Cleanup through negotiation.”

Berman points to the left as the boat cruises by the cleanup’s centerpiece: the gargantuan white egglike tanks of the Deer Island waste treatment plant, which in 1995 replaced the antiquated facility. The plant treats an average of 350 million gallons of sewage a day.

“And what comes out of the Deer Island treatment plant?” he asks. Berman, his booming baritone competing with the roar of planes taking off from Logan Airport, puts students on the spot to see if they’ve been paying attention — to make sure that the lectures and readings are truly sinking in.

“The outfall pipe,” say several of them simultaneously. “Treated water,” chime in a few more.

“That’s right,” he says with a smile. “The plant separates the solid and liquid waste, and pumps the treated water through the 9.5-mile outfall pipe, which empties into Massachusetts Bay. The resulting sludge is converted to high-grade fertilizer.”

But now Berman returns to his original question: “How clean is clean enough?” There’s no quick and clear answer to this one. “At the end of the day the federal courts have to decide. How clean should Boston Harbor be, and when? And who should pay for it?”

The $4.5 billion Boston Harbor Cleanup was spurred by a lawsuit filed by Quincy City Solicitor Bill Golden in 1982 after he jogged through grease and sewage debris that had washed up onto Wollaston Beach. It was the first of several lawsuits aimed at forcing the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC), which ran the region’s sewer system before the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority (MWRA) was created, to stop dumping raw sewage into the harbor.

The litigation was effective: a 1985 landmark federal court case required that the harbor’s beaches be made swimmable and fishable by 2000. In 1986, Golden, along with the late State Superior Court Judge Paul Garrity (the “Sludge Judge”), newspaper reporter Ian Menzies, and Beth Nicholson, a young mother from Brookline, Massachusetts, founded Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, dedicated to advancing the harbor cleanup and raising public awareness of the project.

The cleanup was a massive undertaking that naysayers, much like the skeptics of Boston’s Big Dig highway project, said couldn’t be done because of its hefty price tag. Sewer ratepayers in the forty-three MWRA cities and towns financing the project cried foul over the prospect of astronomically rising bills.

However, thanks to the determination of environmental advocacy groups such as Berman’s organization and judges such as Garrity and David Mazzone, senior judge of the U.S. District Court in Boston, the cleanup was largely completed on schedule. On September 6, 2000, with hundreds of politicians, special guests, and Boston Harbor cleanup workers looking on, several gates were opened and wastewater first flowed through the new subterranean outfall pipe at Deer Island.

“In 1986, when Judge Mazzone ordered the construction of the new primary and secondary wastewater treatment plants, established a timetable for the cleanup, and gave an indication of where it would be by 2000, I knew it was going to be a reality,” says Berman. “I was absolutely confident he would get this done.”

Nonetheless, the project faced stormy seas. In the early 1990s, several sewer ratepayer revolts — including a “tea party” demonstration, with sewer bills tossed into Boston Harbor — threatened to derail the cleanup, or at least downsize it. Berman praises Mazzone for sticking with the project and its schedule, and the state helped defray rising bills by giving financial support to low-income ratepayers.

Not a Race for the Short-Winded

On Georges Island, Bruce Berman talks with his students about the Boston Harbor Cleanup. Photograph by Vernon Doucette

Berman, a Springfield, Massachusetts, native, was a political consultant and contributing editor to the Phoenix newspaper before coming to Save the Harbor/Save the Bay nearly ten years ago. He has remained undaunted in his quest for a clean harbor, even when it seemed at times that the MWRA was backing down on its commitment. “Judge Mazzone once said that the Harbor Cleanup ‘is not a race for the short-winded,’” he says, “and he was right. You have to keep fighting.”

Berman points out that the cleanup isn’t finished yet. There are still frequent beach closures when the counts of Enterococcus bacteria in swimming areas exceed the federal and state standard for swimming. “ Carson Beach has been closed on average one out of every five days since 2000 during the summer season,” he says. Indeed, Save the Harbor/Save the Bay’s annual Grand Circle Swim for Boston Harbor had to be canceled last year, as it had been in 2001. The culprit: filthy stormwater and sewage, much of it from leaky pipes and illegal hookups emptying into storm sewers and then into the harbor.

This problem brings the class, once again, back to Berman’s original question. How clean is clean enough? It’s the most fundamental aspect of every debate about pollution. “The federal and state Departments of Health say that if Enterococcus counts exceed 104 per 100 milliliters, the beaches should be closed,” Berman tells his students. “So is the harbor clean enough when you can’t swim in it one out of five days in the summer?”

The solution, he says, finally came in July, after “tireless negotiation and consensus-building, processes that are at the core of environmental advocacy.” After four years of deliberations, the state approved one of the last parts of the cleanup. To treat stormwater and sewage that has historically flowed onto beaches when it rains, the MWRA had originally proposed an enormous pumping station on the South Boston shoreline. Residents said it would be “unsightly.” After much discussion, the agency agreed to a $285 million project creating a 2.1-mile tunnel near the Dorchester and South Boston shorelines to hold the sewage water until after a storm ends. It will then be pumped to Deer Island for treatment. The tunnel, which will be seventeen feet in diameter, is scheduled to be completed in 2011.

Berman is obviously ecstatic over this development. “After 2011, we’re looking at beach closings once every five years, when there is a major storm, instead of once every five days,” he says.

But he is not about to let his guard down. To say that he is a man obsessed with the harbor cleanup — and reconnecting Boston citizens to their waterfront — would be an understatement. Along with his communications director title, Berman is also Save the Harbor/Save the Bay’s “harbor monitor,” and “Baywatcher,” often trolling around in The Shamrock, his twenty-four-foot green powerboat. Indeed, his home is literally on the harbor: he lives on his forty-foot trawler Verandah. So he is not only the organization’s mouthpiece, but also its eyes and ears. Polluters beware: if you’re discharging oil or sewage into Boston Harbor, the Baywatcher just might be watching. As for the unknown culprits who have shot several harbor seals in the past year, if Berman catches you in the act, God help you.

He is quick to point out that his zeal is not just on behalf of the harbor’s flora and fauna. “The harbor is for everyone,” he says. “It’s the people’s harbor. We want to make it possible for people of every income to enjoy it. If you’re from a working class or poor family in Boston, and you can’t afford a Cape Cod getaway in the summer, a clean harbor is important. The same is true if you’re a tourist vacationing in Boston or you live in a pricey waterfront condo.”

Accordingly, Berman also teaches his students about the harbor’s role in the city’s economy. Earlier this summer, he split the class into teams to visit waterfront attractions, including the frigate U.S.S. Constitution in Charlestown, the New England Aquarium, and the Boston Children’s Museum. Their mission: to gather information. “How many people visit these sites in the course of a year?” he asked them. “I want you to find out and report back to me in two hours.”

Island Paradise

	Boston Light on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor. Photograph courtesy of MWRA

Right now, however, the ferry is docking at another destination frequented by tourists as well as Boston residents: Georges Island, which serves as the central point of the Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area. The thirty-four harbor islands were once a recreational mecca, but over the years, as the water around them became more and more polluted, they were basically abandoned. Now the islands, like the harbor, are making a comeback. Wooded trails lead to scenic vistas, beaches, picnic sites, and centuries-old foundations and forts.

“I’ve lived in Boston for seven years, but I had never been to the waterfront until this class,” says Trevor Kosmolsick (MET’05). “I’ve also wanted to go camping in the area, but I never knew that you could camp on a few of the islands. Bruce Berman is not only a great professor, but the ultimate tour guide.”

He is also the consummate ambassador for recreation on Boston Harbor. An incurable chatterbox when it comes to the cleanup, he backs up his words with actions. Sometimes he takes off his shirt and dives in the water from The Shamrock to demonstrate to passing boaters that it’s safe to swim. To show people on ferries that fishing is safe, he’s been known to grab one of the bluefish he’s caught and plant a sloppy wet kiss on it.

“What I want everyone — and especially my students — to understand is that investment in the environment really does pay off,” Berman says. “There have been unexpected economic benefits in a cleaner Boston Harbor.” He notes that a study released in July by Save the Harbor/Save the Bay found that during the 1990s, the population of the waterfront areas grew at four times the rate of the entire city, the value of real estate there skyrocketed, and employment was up 29 percent in nearby neighborhoods.

“I think clean air and clean water are core family values in Massachusetts,” he says. “We’re willing to pay for a clean Boston Harbor, so we should enjoy it.”