| Wastewater | Deer Island, Boston Harbor - Page 6 |
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Problems with the prevalent use of the MDC for patronage jobs had arisen in the fall of 1950 highlighted when three of the MDC’s top engineers resigned. The three were not forced to resign because they had padded their payroll, they had resigned to protest that their payrolls were being padded with people that had been hired only to pay off political debts. Karl R. Kennison was the Chief Engineer of the MDC’s important Construction Division, and had been Chief Engineer of the Quabbin Reservoir project; Stanley M. Dore was his Deputy Chief Engineer and was in charge of construction of the Nut Island sewage treatment plant; Lawrence M. Gentleman was an Associate Civil Engineer in charge of detail work on design and contract and working drawings for the MDC. A noble effort by the three of the Commission’s top engineers, but it would do nothing to stop or even slow the growing use of the MDC for political patronage. |
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One description of the difference between payroll padding and patronage is that with payroll padding you don’t have to show up for work. The MDC was headed by a Commissioner and four Associate Commissioners, all appointed by the Governor to what was supposed to be a five-year term. The Governor of Massachusetts had only a two-year term between 1918 and 1966, and during the key period when important decisions needed to be made to end pollution in the harbor the party affiliation of the winning candidate regularly flipped between Democratic and Republican. Both parties were happy to use the MDC as a home for patronage positions, and both would complain loudly when they thought the other party was abusing the privilege. With $65 million approved by the Legislature for sewage projects by 1951, the MDC was fertile ground for both patronage and payroll padding. |
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1951 marks the untimely death of MDC Commissioner William Morrissey. In the fall of the year he suffered a heart attack and died aged 54. It was under his leadership that the MDC received funding for the initial massive harbor cleanup effort. Also gone from the group of early supporters of the cleanup was Arthur D. Weston, Chief Engineer of the State Department of Health. In 1950, after a distinguished 40-year career as one of the country’s leading sanitation engineers, Weston retired and went to work for Charles A. Maguire Assoc., an engineering consulting firm, still in existence today, that would play a part in many major Boston civil engineering projects, including the DITP. After the resignation of Kennison in 1950, Frederick W. Gow was named Chief Engineer of the MDC’s Construction Division. His expertise was in tunneling having served as the lead engineer for the 24-mile long deep-rock tunnel bringing fresh water to Boston from the Quabbin Reservoir. Replacing Morrissey as the MDC Commissioner was Edgar F. Copell, he had been the Chief Traffic Engineer of the state’s Public Works Department. Clarence I. Sterling followed Weston as the Chief Sanitary Engineer State’s Public Health Department. He was an expert of water resources and would deal with issues such as stream and river pollution, flood control, water shortages, fluoridation, dangers of insecticides and, given the era, radiation risks in case of atomic disaster, but would not be deeply involved in efforts to clean up the harbor. After two years, in 1953 Republican Governor Christian A. Herter replaced Copell as MDC Commissioner with Charles W. Greenough. He was the former state Budget Commissioner. None of the new cast of characters had been part of the influential Special Commission that had investigated the condition of Boston Harbor in 1936 or 1939. |
| Now with only one more sewage treatment plant to build, albeit a larger one, the MDC could have taken a major step towards eliminating the discharge of raw sewage into Boston Harbor. But, after starting initial engineering plans further work on the DITP was shelved until later in the decade. Instead through the mid-1950’s the MDC focused on pollution in rivers feeding the harbor. |
| The need was there for improving the sewers that led to Deer Island. Population growth and new towns and cities being added to the system had pushed the existing sewage pipes beyond their capacity. At a 1950 meeting of the Federation of Sewage Works Associations (today’s Water Environment Federation), Thomas A. Berrigan, Director and Chief Engineer of the MDC’s Sewer Division, described the North Metropolitan System as, |
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| “…completely inadequate for handling the wet weather flow… with the result that mixed storm water and sewage escape through local and metropolitan overflows into the inland waterways during rainfall.” |
| Unfortunately, not immediately starting the construction of a sewage treatment plant on Deer Island would only lengthen the amount of time raw sewage would continue to be discharged into the harbor. MDC Construction Division head Karl R. Kennison, at the same meeting Berrigan had spoken, provided the 1950 figure of 275 million gallons a day as the average discharge of raw sewage into the harbor. The Nut Island treatment plant when it when into operation would lower the number to 175 mgd, but the MDC’s focus on constructing new relief sewers would do nothing to reduce it further. The cycle was now towards increasing environmental degradation of the harbor, with the possibility of serious degradation likely if there were further delays beyond what the MDC initially proposed. Circumstances would lead to that exact situation. |
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Why the MDC put plans for a new treatment plant on Deer Island on hold is not clear. The MDC Commissioner Greenough at the time was a budget expert and would have known that the Nut Island Treatment Plant had cost $8 million and that the DITP, with twice the capacity needed, would likely cost more than twice as much (it would end up costing $28.3 million) eating up much of the available money the legislature provided. He also was a political appointee and would have considered that working on cleaning up polluted rivers in multiple north and west suburban cities and towns would show the effectiveness of his organization to more constituents than a sewage plant on a distant peninsula. MDC Chief Construction Engineer Gow’s expertise was in tunnel building, so his preference on what to build first was clear. Giving MDC officials the benefit of the doubt, there was limited space on Deer Island for a major sewage treatment plant. The Boston House of Correction was located there as was a U.S. military installation. Additionally, the existing MDC sewage pumping station had to be kept in operation during construction of the treatment plant. |
| At the end of 1956 the Massachusetts Legislature created a new Special Commission to study the sewage and water systems in the Boston metropolitan area. The focus of investigation this time was not the pollution in the harbor, rather it was how to pay for projects that had been approved to clean up the harbor. A “treatment works of mammoth portions” on Deer Island is described as “being designed” in the report. Two years later, in the fall of 1958 the Commission produced another report this time titled, “Apportionment of Construction Costs,” again dealing with who was going to pay for the projects. In this report the Deer Island treatment plant is described as “proposed.” |
| The hope of MDC Commissioner Morrissey at the beginning at the 1950’s that a sewage treatment plant could be operating on Deer Island by the end of the decade would not be met. Minutes of the MDC Commissioners’ meetings during this timeframe provide a record of progress, and of delay. The early confidence of the plan can be seen in a January 1950 meeting where approvement of employing the engineering firm Metcalf & Eddy for “services on the design of the Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant and its appurtenant structures” is sought. But no action is taken with the item “Referred to the Commissioner.” Further mention of any work on a new plant doesn’t appear in the minutes until the fall of 1957 when a contract was signed for site preparation work on the new plant. That work was deemed completed in January of 1959. A contract for a new outfall for the plant was signed in the Spring of the same year. But through the rest of 1959 and all of 1960 there is no reference to any more work on the plant. |
| The completion of the Nut Island Sewage Treatment Plant in the early 1950s had gone a long way in restoring the public’s confidence that the MDC could complete as massive an effort as modernizing the Boston metropolitan sewage system, and cleaning up Boston Harbor. Now with the completion date for the Deer Island treatment slipping into the early 1960s, that trust was evaporating. The expression “scandal ridden” was beginning to be more regularly used to describe MDC. Sometimes the scandals were just political in nature. In 1959, in what appeared a mutually agreed up arrangement, then governor J. Foster Furcolo, a Democrat, replaced MDC Commissioner Greenough with, John E Maloney, a registered Republican. The infuriated Democratic Lt. Governor Robert F. Murphy, who fought the move. Greenough, who turns out was also a Republican, took a position as an MDC Associate Commissioner. He died in May of 1964. |
| In the summer of 1960, the Massachusetts Senate began a probe looking at irregularities at the MDC. Moving quickly, a report was ready by October. There were again charges of patronage and payroll padding, but these took a backseat to more important accusations, one was contract splitting. If an MDC contract was for less than $1,000 it could be assigned without the normal bidding process. The investigation turned up a construction company that had received more than $76,000 over two years from no-bid sub-$1,000 contracts. Former head of the MDC Greenough was forced to defend the practice saying that, in the case of a swimming pool the MDC was constructing, splitting contracts allowed it built more quickly. Then recently named Commissioner Maloney came under special scrutiny by the Senate. He would be forced out as Commissioner in 1961 for steering MDC business to an insurance company that he was part owner. Lt. Governor Robert Murphy would be named MDC Commissioner. |
| There was one issue the Senate investigators uncovered that would have a direct impact on Deer Island. They called it “rigged specifications.” It’s when a bidding contractor’s specifications limited the design to single supplier’s product. In the case of Deer Island, the specifications were for the primary pumps that were to be used at the plant. Only the Nordberg engine meet the specifications. They cost almost $3 million, and would become a major problem. |
| Massachusetts Senate President John E. Powers’ pressure on the MDC continued into 1961, including his holding up of a $40 million bond issue the MDC needed to continue work on the Deer Island treatment plant. Not helping the impression that the MDC was competent to handle such an enormous project was coverage of the completion of the two deep-rock tunnels to Deer Island. The impressive engineering feat were designed to bring all the sewage from the Boston Main Drainage System and North Metropolitan System to an equally impressive new sewage treatment plant on Deer Island. Unfortunately, there was new no new sewage treatment plant on Deer Island. With the MDC running out of money to continue to build the plant, and with dire warnings on endangering the health and safety of people in the Greater Boston area, Powers withdrew his opposition and the money was released. |
| In the early 1960’s complaints about pollution in the harbor shifted from south shore off Quincy to the north shore off the town of Winthrop. Hydrogen sulfide gas from rotting sea lettuce was producing a sickening odor, closing beaches, and in some cases resulting in fumes that caused paint to peel off houses. When it was pointed out that a similar problem had disappeared by itself in 1890, Winthrop paid for a helicopter to drop dye into the harbor at the Deer Island sewage outlet and took pictures as the sewage plume flowed back in along the Winthrop harbor shoreline. Spreading lime over the tidal flats was tried with limited success. The only real solution was to stop pumping untreated sewage into the harbor and that wouldn’t happen until the Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant was completed. |
| Reports in the spring of 1964 that construction of the new plant was on schedule fed optimism that a solution to pollution in the harbor was imminent. In the summer MDC Chief Construction engineer Gow touted progress on the new North Charles and South Charles Relief Sewer tunnels, with their and the Deer Island treatment plant completion expected by 1966. MDC Commissioner Murphy’s legislative recommendations for 1965 were more qualified saying that the DITP would be in “partial operation” by the end the year, 1965, “with some construction to be completed beyond the date.” He also requested that in order to complete the work, the MDC’s authority to sell bonds be extended to 1968. |
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| Along with interest on the state level in the mid-1960s to reduce pollution, there was also action on the national level. In the fall of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the “Water Quality Act of 1965.” Sponsored by Maine Senator Edmund Muskie, the law authorized the federal government to set water standards for interstate waters. While this primarily pertained to rivers running between states and not the waters of Boston Harbor, Muskie’s continuing legislative efforts, culminating with the 1972 Clean Water Control Act, would have a direct impact on the harbor, and Deer Island. |
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Also on that local level, 1966 is year some Boston radio stations were playing a new song by the band, The Standells. Their hit with the lyric, “Love That Dirty Water,” and its pointed commentary on the condition of Charles River, would become an unofficial Boston theme song. Ironically, The Standells were a Los Angeles-based band. The song was written by their producer, Ed Cobb. He also wrote the popular song, “Tainted Love,” originally sung by Gloria Jones, and popularized by the band Soft Cell. Cobb had been mugged while on a visit to Boston, leading to the line, "lovers, muggers, and thiefs." |
| The year 1966 came and went with no announcement from the MDC that the long-awaited and expensive DITP was in operation. The MDC legislative recommendations for the year were given by the new Commissioner, Howard J. Whitmore, Jr. The governorship had flipped parties again with John A. Volpe, a Republican, elected as governor. Murphy, a Democrat, was out as MDC Commissioner, and Whitmore, a former State Representative and mayor of Newton, a Republican, was in. His recommendations for the legislature in 1966 included a request for an additional $6.5 million to complete other sewage projects without mentioning Deer Island. The MDC received the money. |
| For 1967, MDC Commissioner Whitmore was back asking the Legislature for, and receiving, another $9 million to complete sewage projects in the metropolitan area. There was no mention of the DITP in his request. An update on the status of the key component to MDC’s solution to ending pollution in the harbor was limited to a comment in March of 1967 that testing of the new plant was underway and that full-time operation was expected by the summer. But the silence about the new treatment plant, and the MDC’s role in its construction and operation, was about to end dramatically. |
| On Nov. 6, 1967, the Boston Globe ran a page 36 story about a face off at the DITP construction site between MDC officials and a representative of a contractor named Floyd R. Blue, driving coincidently a blue pickup truck. According to the MDC officials the company representative was threatening to shut down his company's operations at the plant. Unicon is not identified in the article, but Floyd Blue was the construction superintendent for the company, and it was Unicon that had the contract to install the machinery and pumps at DITP. |
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Three days later, on Nov. 9, 1967, the Boston Globe ran a page one story titled, Despite $20 Million New Plant, Raw Sewage Floods Harbor. Unicon was suing the MDC charging that they had not been paid for pumps they had installed despite the fact that the MDC was using the new machinery to pump 300 million gallons of raw untreated sewage daily in the Boston Harbor. The accusation was that the treatment portion of the plant had been completed earlier in the year but was sitting idle because the MDC had been unable to acquire trained personnel to operate the machinery. The MDC was also accused of staging an event using seawater instead of sewage to demonstrate that the plant was in operation. The MDC denied the allegations pertaining to using seawater for a demonstration but had to acknowledge the shortage of trained personnel was keeping them from running the plant. |
| Much later the minutes from the Nov. 7, 1967 MDC Commissioners meeting were made available online and they confirm the incident. On that day, the Commissioners had voted to hold Unicom in breach on contract. The MDC had constructed a new treatment plant on Deer Island, but they didn’t have enough people to run it. |
| A hint of what was happening behind the scenes had appeared in February 1966 when the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare announced a $43,000 project to train unemployed and under-employed Winthrop residents for occupations at the new DITP. Though it is not clear that Winthrop had a significant unemployment problem at the time. In the fall the issue of training people to work at DITP again made the news. This time it’s an MDC program to retrain “lower bracket waged commission workers” to operate machinery at the new plant. |
| After the story broke that the MDC could not operate its new treatment because of a shortage of workers, the Boston Globe's writers had a field day eviscerating the MDC. Stories included, $20 Million Sewage Treatment Plant Pumps Filth into Harbor, The White Elephant on Deer Island, Non-treating Treatment Plant, MDC Challenged on Sewer Snafu, A Filth-Filled Harbor, Deer Island Follies, and the alarming, Sewage Plant Breakdown Threatens Boston. Though not mentioned was the fact that discharging raw sewage from Deer Island was nothing new and had been going on for more than 150 years. |
| The dispute between the MDC and the contractor would get resolved as similar disputes do, between lawyers and a judge in a courthouse. The uproar over the shortage of workers resulted in accusations flying in every direction. There were claims that the plant was too distant and difficult to get to, possibly not realizing that Deer Island was not really on an island and could reached by car over a causeway. Other said that there was a shortage of the skilled workers needed to run such a sophisticated plant, despite the fact that the Boston Metropolitan area was home to numerous sophisticated manufacturing and chemical companies. |
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| The training classes in 1966 had only netted 56 men when 250 were needed to operate the plant. Winthrop clearly had not been a great source of under- and unemployed workers. The union representing existing MDC workers at existing sewage facilities had their say in the matter accusing the MDC of creating an artificial shortage by preventing their members from getting trained to operate equipment at the plant. Instead, existing MDC employees could only transfer on a temporary basis, subject to a competitive Civil Service exam. The union contended that MDC was actively recruiting “politically selected outsiders” for training at the new plant. The training programs that the union said they had helped create, were meant to upgrade the skills of existing personnel to be capable of manning the new equipment. |
| That the MDC would have problems recruiting a large, well-trained, sophisticated workforce is not a surprise. The MDC as an organization was capable of completing major infrastructure projects such as the impressive engineering feat of bringing fresh water to the Boston Metropolitan area from the Quabbin Reservoir. It could build highways, bridges, tunnels, dams, parks, swimming pools, hockey rinks. All which, after they have been built, do not require a sophisticated workforce to operate and maintain. On the other hand, a modern complicated sewage treatment plan requires motivated workers lead by an engaged and supportive management. The patronage ridden top management at the MDC was ill suited for the task, as were the restrictions of a Civil Service-based employment system. In order to get the plant operating the MDC would enlist the help of the Water and Wastewater Technical School in Neosho, Missouri to take over temporary management, operation, and training for the plant. |
| Quietly, without great fanfare, in May of 1968 the MDC announced that the DITP had started operations. After 72 years the Deer Island pumping station stopped discharging raw sewage in Boston Harbor. The fact that it was pumping millions of gallons of wastewater into the harbor was problematic, but that it functioned for that many years is a testament to the engineers in the late-1800s that designed it and the people who maintained it for so long. |
| In the cycle of increased environmental degradation, public outcry, followed by improvements, the opening of DITP in 1968 should have marked a significant move towards a reduction of pollution in Boston Harbor. The MDC’s vision for the metropolitan sewerage system was now complete. Wastewater from south of city had been getting treated since 1952 at a plant on Nut Island. Then in 1968, headworks on the new tunnels for the Boston Main Drainage and North Metropolitan Relief systems began pumping the rest of the metropolitan area’s wastewater to Deer Island for treatment. There were still major issues with storm overflows, stuck tidal gates, and rogue sewage discharges, but MDC officials were hoping they were on the way to a solution to the pollution in Boston Harbor. Unfortunately, it would not work out that way. The MDC had built a plant on Deer Island that would soon be obsolete. and prove to be unreliable. |
| During the mid-1960s while MDC officials were struggling to bring the DITP online, and with the federal government looking over their shoulders, another proposal for cleaning up Boston Harbor was released, a big ambitious proposal. Since the 1930s the primary thrust of MDC and state officials’ efforts had been to add treatment plants at the sewage system’s outlets in the harbor. The new plan looked at another serious problem, combined sewer overflows (CSO). The report was written by Charles Parthum, a consulting environmental engineer with Camp, Dresser & McKee, an engineering firm the MWRA would hire years later to help lead the construction of the new Deer Island treatment plant. The 1960s plan had been commissioned not by the MDC, instead by the Sewer Division of the Boston Public Works Department using a $222,000 interest-free loan from federal Housing and Urban Development Department. It is not clear how or who approved spending $1.75 million in 2020 dollars on the study. Also unclear was why a Boston-only solution was considered when the existing sewage system served the whole metropolitan area. |
| The premise of the Camp, Dresser & McKee report was that the existing Nut Island and soon-to-be completed Deer Island treatment plants could successfully collect and treat wastewater during dry weather. What was needed was a way to collect and treat the combination of mixed wastewater and stormwater that overflowed into the harbor from combined sewers during rainstorms. Three solutions were considered. The first logical option was to completely separate the sanitary and stormwater collection systems in a city where most of the sewers were combined. Needless to say, a considerable and costly undertaking. The second option considered was to construct combination detention and chlorination tanks for each or most of the 90 CSO outlets in the city. Also dismissed as impractical because of the cost and limited space available for the tanks. |
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The third option was the Deep tunnel plan. It was a bold, ambitious plan. During rainstorms the overflow from combined sewers would be channeled to five points around the city. There shafts would drop the storm overflow into underground reservoirs consisting of a system of 33-feet diameter storage tunnels dug out of deep rock almost 300 feet underground. The radial pattern of the five tunnels would slope to a central chamber located at Columbus Park. Another 33-ft. diameter tunnel would further slope under Boston Harbor to a rock chamber located deep under Deer Island where it would be chlorinates. Pumps in the chamber would lift the now partially treated wastewater to another tunnel, this one 20-feet in diameter extending 9.5 miles to diffusers under the Massachusetts Bay. A bold plan with an estimated cost of $430 million, or $3.2 billion in today’s dollars. And it was the least expensive of the three options. |
| Much is unclear on how seriously the proposal was considered. It was an extraordinarily large amount of money. The MDC had spent just over $100 million over twenty years to build its system for the whole Metropolitan area. The deep-tunnel proposal would only solve the storm overflow problem for Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, and Somerville. And was it a Boston Public Works project, and not one undertaken by the MDC? Likely most detrimental to the possibility of the deep-tunnel plan every getting built was the FWPCA saying they weren’t going to pay for any portion of it, and suggested that local officials should look to their congressional representatives to request authorization for a federal civil works project to cover a portion of the cost. Solving the problem of CSO would be important to ending pollution in Boston Harbor, but the solution would not be a grand plan, rather a series steps that fit the needs of each of the outfalls. Still, it interesting that the outfall of the present-day sewage system is a 9.5-mile tunnel from Deer Island to a set of diffusers in Massachusetts Bay. |
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