INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 
by 
Dr. Betsy Brown 
Battelle New England Marine Research Laboratory 
Duxbury, MA 
I want to thank you, Jim, for your help and for being the Washington link in 
organizing today's workshop. We are going to try to stay on schedule today. We have 
designed the program to leave room for discussion and we purposely limited the number of 
speakers to have time for questions and comments. 
In the past few years, Massachusetts Bay and especially Boston Harbor have 
been increasingly in the media both in New England and outside New England's boundaries. 
The public has become aware that Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay are not as 
pristine as we once thought they were. Jn fact, they are considerably stressed by pollution 
and heavy use. 
Just two days ago, The Boston Globe published an editorial entitled "Fifty 
Years of Harbor Pollution," and I brought it here today to read to you. 
"Fifty years ago—it could have been just yesterday—the Massachusetts Senate 
passed a bill prohibiting the pollution of Boston Harbor. 'The bill,' said State Senator 
Edward Carrol during a brief floor debate on the afternoon of June 11th, 1935, 'was 
necessary to protect swimmers in South Boston and Dorchester.' It must have seemed an 
easy task back then. The bill was a simple one prohibiting the discharge of oils and their 
products, refuse, and other materials into the waters of the Harbor. 
"As the current generation of legislators and public officials—not to mention 
swimmers, sailors, and other users of the Harbor—has learned, the task turned out to be 
not that simple. Over the past half-century, everything that Sen. Carroll's bill sought to 
keep out of the waters has been dumped into them—as well as toxic chemical substances 
that were unknown when the bill was filed. Sewer systems were created and treatment 
plants were constructed, beaches were tended, and a park was created out upon the 
Harbor Islands, and still the pollution continued. Studies were made, suits were filed in 
courts, even more pieces of legislation were passed, and still the pollution continued. 
"Now the cost of repairing the ravages of the past half century and protecting 
the waters into the next century is calculated at well over $1 billion. The desirability of a 
clean harbor and the necessity of taking action was seen clearly that afternoon in the 
Massachusetts Senate, 50 years ago. That a half-century has passed and the task remains 
uncompleted should only strengthen the resolve to see it accomplished now." 
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