People often forget how important recreational boating was to passage of the Pure Waters Act in 1965 and the federal Clean Water Act in 1970. In the early 1960s recreational power boats became popular thanks to advances in engineering and mass production, along with a strong economy that put power boats in the range of affordability for middle class families. The millions of new boaters were disgusted to find the water they were boating in appeared dirty, smelled bad, and the fish they caught tasted oily and like petrochemicals.

New York State like many other states and federal government had passed laws trying to clean up the rivers. In the 1920s, NY banned untreated discharges in the Hudson River with a goal of zero untreated discharges by 1939. The Great Depression and enormous cost of piping and  building sewage plants lead to this goal to be unattainable. The second World War lead the Conservation Department to largely set aside this effort. That said, the zero discharge law forced municipalities to segregate out storm water from sewage for developments built after mid 1930s, and to treat sewage from these new developments. But few new  developments were built in the 1930s and 1940s. Most developments were older, especially in the cities.

The 1950s came and went. New developments had their sewage treated but not the old cities, mainly because of enormous cost to treat sewage especially with combined sewers. The fifties weren’t kind to cities, with suburban development drying up their taxes. They could hardly afford a major public works projects, especially at the scale of millions.

Many Americans would have agreed with the conclusion that an important part of urban rivers were sewage and waste disposal in the 1950s and early 1960s. Rivers typically weren’t that polluted after you got a dozen or so miles away from urban areas, as sewage got diluted and attacked by bacteria.

But everything changed in the 1960s with recreational boaters. It would take decades to fully fix the problem – and it’s still bad in urban areas after heavy rains but it has gotten a lot better, especially in the past twenty years.