While Back in Boston...

By Eugene Linden/Boston

As Michael Dukakis visited New Jersey in late July and castigated the Reagan Administration for its failure to deal with ocean pollution, downpours in Massachusetts caused raw sewage to spill into Boston harbor. Beaches had to be closed, underscoring an issue the Republicans may soon be raising: the state's continued failure to clean up what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls the "most contaminated area we have found." Dukakis insists that he has been working hard to cope with a mess he inherited. "I didn't pollute Boston harbor, but I'm the guy cleaning it up," he has said. Yet environmentalists charge that he resisted complying with the Clean Water Act for so long that costs skyrocketed and federal funds dried up. Mike Deland, the Environmental Protection Agency's tough administrator for New England, says that by stalling, Massachusetts has made "the most expensive public-policy mistake in the history of New England."

Even Dukakis' adversaries do not claim that the harbor fiasco is the result of his insensitivity to the environment. "Dukakis is decent, honest, intelligent, and he believes in process," says former State Judge Paul Garrity, whose rulings eventually spurred the state to begin cleaning up. "But if the process isn't there, he won't act." Alden Raine, Dukakis' director of economic development, excuses this lack of leadership: "To place the blame on the Governor is to assume that the other pieces were in place to clean up the harbor, which they were not."

The Boston harbor mess indeed predates Dukakis. A system largely designed in the 1950s to give rudimentary treatment to sewage simply could not cope with rapid growth in the Boston area, and the Metropolitan District Commission, charged with maintaining the sewage system, was a nest of political cronies. "It was a place that employed everybody's cousin," recalls former Republican Governor Francis Sargent. As early as 1972, Sargent had committed the state to cleaning up the harbor, but had to fight a recalcitrant MDC every step of the way.

When Dukakis began his first term in 1975, there was little pressure to continue Sargent's efforts. The EPA, which turned the screws on other cities, was lax about Boston. It waited nearly five years before rejecting an application by the Dukakis administration for a waiver from the Clean Water Act. "Dukakis wasn't there, but no one else was either," recalls Judge Garrity. As a result, the proportion of adequately treated sewage dropped from 4% to 2% between 1976 and 1980; in contrast, Illinois took advantage of 90% federal funding so that Chicago could increase its treated sewage from 8% to 100%.

After four years of inactivity during Democrat Edward King's administration, Dukakis aides say, their boss began to turn the situation around when he returned to office in 1983. The legislature gave responsibility for sewers and water to a newly created water-resources authority. Although his supporters give Dukakis credit for pushing that legislation, others say the bill was going nowhere until Judge Garrity threatened a ban on new construction unless sewage treatment was upgraded. Says Douglas Foy, of the Conservation Law Foundation: "Dukakis was discreet to the point of being invisible."

Instead of pushing hard for a cleanup, the Dukakis administration in 1984 requested a second waiver from the EPA. Dukakis' secretary of environmental affairs, James Hoyte, defends this action, claiming that EPA hinted that additional studies might change the agency's mind. But according to EPA Administrator Deland, this application was a stalling device. "The waiver was designed for West Coast cities that discharged sewage into thousands of feet of water, and not for East Coast cities discharging into 30 or 40 feet," he says. The EPA denied the request. "Those were the critical years when time was lost," says Deland.

Massachusetts has finally begun construction of sewage-treatment facilities to be completed in 1999. Estimated costs: $3 billion to $6 billion, to be financed largely by a quadrupling of the fees households payfor water. It didn't have to be this way, according to former Governor Sargent. Had Dukakis pursued a cleanup effort during his first term, Sargent asserts, the cost would have been under $1 billion, the burden would have been borne by the Federal Government, and Boston would today be complying with the law today.