Just a few generations ago, Boston Harbor was known as the “dirtiest harbor in America’’: It was murky and putrid-smelling, too toxic to swim in, pocked by floating garbage and so contaminated even fish got sick.
Today, the water is clear and clean, and the shoreline and beaches a magnet for swimming and other recreation. Flounder are thriving, and even whales occasionally make an appearance.
The cleanup of Boston Harbor, a multi-billion dollar effort that spanned three decades, is one of the most successful enforcements by the Environmental Protection Agency, which now, decades later, faces budget cuts so severe its supporters worry it could not maintain such vigilance again.
For veterans of environmental campaigns in New England, the harbor cleanup is a poignant reminder of what the EPA can do when it’s well-funded, has strong political backing, and is committed to confronting polluters. A weakened and underfunded EPA, they fear, won’t be so willing and instead might let long-running water quality projects, such as the cleanup of the Charles River, lapse.
“You have to have both the will and the ways to enforce the law,’’ said John DeVillars, who was the regional EPA administrator in New England in the late 1990s. “Sadly, for the next four years, it doesn’t look like we’re going to have that.’’
President Trump’s EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, has promised to slash the agency’s total spending by 65 percent, and last week it was reported that the agency’s scientific research and development office could be eliminated. The EPA did not respond to questions about what programs would be cut. However, Trump officials are almost certainly eyeing cuts to water quality and pollution control projects that were funded by congressional spending packages passed during the Biden administration.
“We don’t want the extra money, and we don’t need it,’’ Zeldin said in a recent video on social media.
In Boston, a long-held goal to make every section of local rivers clean enough for public swimming remains just out of reach, and former EPA regulators told the Globe dramatic cuts could jeopardize efforts to stop stormwater and wastewater pollution from entering Boston-area watersheds.
Despite the decades of improvements, some old and problematic sewage systems remain in place. And, when heavy rainstorms overwhelm those systems, pollution spills into rivers and streams.
“Environmental protection doesn’t come cheap, but it pays enormous dividends,’’ said DeVillars, who oversaw several major cleanups across Massachusetts.
Boston Harbor was essentially used as a sewer for more than a century before a 1983 lawsuit brought by the Conservation Law Foundation and the City of Quincy forced a cleanup. The EPA became a plaintiff in the case that forced Massachusetts to act.
At the time, hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage and 100 tons of sludge poured into the harbor every day. Oil, heavy metals, and other pollutants came with that sludge: 441 pounds of lead per day.
“It was horrific,’’ said Kathy Abbott, chief executive of Boston Harbor Now who worked as a park ranger in the Boston Harbor Islands in the early 1980s. “Imagine several million toilets worth of excrement bubbling up into the harbor.’’
When she lived on a small island working for the park, Abbott saw and smelled the effects each evening. Each morning, as Abbott made her island rounds, she would pick up hundreds of tampon applicators that had washed ashore overnight.
The cleanup, overseen by Federal Judge A. David Mazzone, required a massive, new sewage-treatment plant on Deer Island. The cost was $3.7 billion, financed by increased water rates, state funds, and federal EPA grants.
“Even though the state — and me, specifically — were on the other side of the lawsuit, it immediately became a collaborative effort to get the job done,’’ said James Hoyte, who was Massachusetts secretary of environmental affairs at the time. He later led the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, the entity ordered by Mazzone to complete the cleanup.
Cleaning up the harbor “seemed almost inconceivable,’’ Hoyte said, and “it could not have happened’’ without the EPA’s involvement.
“Where was the money going to come from?’’ Hoyte said. “The magnitude of the cost really demanded federal participation.’’
Meanwhile, further inland, the Charles River was so polluted that anyone who fell into the water was advised to immediately go to a hospital for a tetanus shot. Public beaches on the Charles have been closed since 1949.
The transformation of the harbor came about not just because of more investment, but from tighter regulations. Under Trump, the EPA is instead moving to weaken dozens of national environmental rules, including those for development in wetlands and wastewater discharges from power plants. Those rules will have to be changed through a lengthy administrative process that involves a public comment period.
Zeldin said in a statement that “we remain committed to clean air, land, and water,’’ but believes deregulation will reduce costs.
Prior to Trump taking office, the New England EPA office proposed new rules on local businesses to better control stormwater runoff that pollutes the Charles, Mystic, and Neponset River watersheds.
The Charles is now safe to swim in much of the time, thanks to regulatory crackdowns on illegal dumping and sewage overflows, and some experts believe water quality has improved enough that Boston can plan for reopening its beaches. Still, concentrations of E. coli spike after rainstorms and blue-green algae blooms sometimes occur in the summer. Reducing stormwater pollution, regulators had hoped, would prevent recurrences.
The EPA’s legacy in Boston also includes cracking down on air pollution, trash burning, and abandoned hazardous waste. It forced businesses, municipalities, and states to clean up toxic substances and often helped finance those efforts. In the last 30 years, the EPA has spent more than $200 million cleaning so-called brownfield pollution sites in Massachusetts, including more than a dozen in Boston, mostly in Roxbury and Dorchester.
Some cleanups were politically charged. When New England’s EPA office began to pressure GE to clean up the Housatonic River in Western Massachusetts in the 1990s, Jack Welch, the company’s powerful chief executive, rang DeVillars, then the EPA regional administrator.
“Before we go to war, we should talk,’’ Welch told him, DeVillars recalled.
The talk didn’t go far. Welch visited his office; DeVillars reiterated the EPA had to enforce the law. That’s when Welch apparently called friends in Washington.
US Senators John Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy called, concerned the EPA was playing too tough with the powerful GE executive, DeVillars said.
“Welch and GE put every ounce of legal and political pressure that they could,’’ DeVillars said. He told the senators: “We’re enforcing the law.’’
GE has since spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Housatonic River cleanup, removing toxic industrial chemicals called PCBs and restoring wetlands. Cleanup efforts downstream of Pittsfield continue to this day.
“This all came from strong enforcement action and holding the line against one of the most influential companies in the country,’’ DeVillars said.
Hoyte, the former state environmental secretary, also pointed out that budget cuts at the EPA could weaken state agencies such as the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, which receives one-third of its funding from the federal government.
On a recent sunny March day in downtown Boston, in a scene unfathomable before the cleanup effort, several tourists sat on benches overlooking the harbor at Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park. Unaware of the putrid smells that once came from these waters, the visitors told the Globe that the water looks “nice and welcoming.’’
Nearby, a welcome center for the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area encourages visitors to “take a dip at the beach’’ on Spectacle Island, once a rat-infested garbage dump.
“After all,’’ the promotional sign notes, “Boston has one of the cleanest urban harbors in the nation.’’
Erin Douglas can be reached at erin.douglas@globe.com. Follow her @erinmdouglas23.
