I live on a river, and have lived near this river my whole life.
This is the same story across the US. In 2012 when I took up fishing, I had a fellow tell me he had not seen a smallmouth bass caught out of the river in 30 years! Now it is trivial. Hard not to catch one.
Just in the last 5 years the variety of birds showing up has changed. Many bald eagles and other raptors. 100+ strong flocks of pelicans. Pelicans! Apparently inland pelicans were normal 100 years go.
I left in the Chesapeake Bay and it’s the same story. It was never as industrial as New York Harbor, but suffered from tons of run off and other pollution in the 1970s. Now you can see bald eagles fishing in the early morning.
Boston Harbor was a dumping ground in living memory. There were industrial sites along the Charles, which empties into the harbor. Sewage went right into the water. Trash was dumped there. It was toxic.
One of my favorite transformations: Spectacle Island, which doubled in size after being used as a city dump from the 1920s until 1959, is now a national park.
> One of my favorite transformations: Spectacle Island, which doubled in size after being used as a city dump from the 1920s until 1959, is now a national park.
Nitpick: it's a National Recreation Area, not a (capital) National Park. I suppose in lowercase it carries a different meaning :-)
The naming scheme used by the National Park Service is so confusing. My only contribution is that "National Park" means funding has been designated via Congress; "National Monument" means designated via the executive branch.
Boston's 'Big Dig' downtown highway deletion project gets a lot of coverage but the history of the Deer Island water treatment plant is just as fascinating -- In my eyes it's substantially more of a contributor to Boston's overall cultural urbanism pivot than the Big Dig.
It's also a lovely place to walk and cycle, with sweeping views of the harbor. No, it doesn't smell.
Fun fact: byproducts from the sewage treatment process are piped across the harbor to Quincy and processed into various industrial chemicals, including pelletized plant fertilizer that is sold to the public under the brand 'Bay State Fertilizer.'
A lot of this goes back go the Clean Water Act from the early 70s, and how it’s precedent enabled more local laws and bodies to focus on water quality (like the Delaware River Basin Commission near me protecting the Delaware River watershed).
These laws and orgs can be overly bureaucratic, and need constant monitoring to make sure they don’t halt all progress in a given area, but it is a vast improvement to earlier times when the government cares not a whit about water quality. We have the same story here on the Delaware - a river you would not want to dip a single toe into 20 years ago is now beautiful, serves as drinking water to millions, and supports all sorts of hunting, fishing and tourism industries.
The Billion Oyster Project [1] has great educational and volunteer opportunities. Their annual fundraiser in New York is also bomb (if you like to eat oysters).
Why not? If there's one tried and true way to ensure an animal or plant species survives and thrives despite the damage humanity does to the entire ecosystems, it's to make that animal or plant a food for humans.
The most successful land animals today are... cows, pigs and chicken.
(Compare with horses, which were successful because they were useful... until they weren't anymore, and their population dropped. And yes, this also implies that lab-grown meat is an extinction-level threat for aforementioned farm animals.)
Counter-examples: the passenger pigeon, the moa, and Mauritius blue pigeon are extinct, primarily due to hunting as a food source.
Other human food species are extinct due to a combination of being a human food source and a food source for invasive species introduced by humans (eg, the Domed Rodrigues giant tortoise).
Famously the American buffalo went from 60 million in the late 1700s to 541 a century later. It was a cheap meat, provided cheap leather, and in order to deprive Plains Indians from a food source, the US government decided not to protect it earlier.
Then there's the collapse of many marine species due to overfishing, most recently the king and snow crab population collapse which canceled the season in Alaska, and the continuing question of the role humans played in the Quaternary extinction event.
Therefore, I suspect your claim isn't so clear-cut.
Given the life cows, pigs and chicken have, I'd object to the term successful.
They are being reproduced (not a mistake here, they don't actually fuck/reproduce on their own) a lot that's true, but using the word 'successful' to describe their fate seems a bit too cynical.
> this is a volunteer opportunity where people restore the oyster population. while also simultaneously eating... oysters?
Pretty neat, right? Turns out oyster larvae can’t just attach to anything. And one of the best materials for them to take root on is oyster shells. So you fly in oysters from around North America, charge a ticket price, have a good time; and then load the dried shells into chicken-wire crates (volunteers build them), lower them into reefs [1] and then innoculate them with larvae. After a few seasons, the water around the reef becomes clean enough to allow for doing it again. (Oysters are filter feeders. You don’t want to eat ones growing in dirty water.)
Growing oysters is one of the few farming/aquaculture type operations I can think of that has very POSITIVE externalities on its surrounding ecosystem in terms of improving water quality/flood reactance etc.
Of course! Besides being delicious and nutritious to begin with, it's important to increase familiarity/popularity because amazingly, NIMBY happens to oyster farms, too. Ruins the viewscape, the waterfront landowners say. Even though these farms improve the quality of the water they sit in.
I've eaten many dozens of raw oysters at just about every coast I've ever visited (EU/MX/Gulf of MX, Pacific & Atlantic US), and have never gotten sick. I'm pretty careful with Gulf oysters though.
> Oyster farms travel to the Billion Oyster Party from across the country, bringing their unique oysters for you to try — and pair with your favorite beverages.
You don’t eat them until after water quality has improved if it’s that bad. You also test for certain types of bacteria certain times of year depending on location.
The biggest pollution is usually from run off and oysters eat nitrogen and phosphorus. Nitrogen causes algae growth, like red tide, which deals all kinds of havoc to ecosystems.
Every summer, my dad and I used to sail the Intracoastal Waterway from St. Augustine down to Marathon in the Keys (and back) and I’d fish the whole way. Once we took the motor off the boat and sailed into the Banana River No Motor Zone near NASA to spend the night. They were doing a night launch of something and a helicopter flew over us and shined a light on us before the launch. I guess we looked harmless enough!
One of my favorite places was Eau Gallie with the big concrete dragon — which now is long gone as well.
Bitter Southerner is a great site and worth supporting with a membership or one-time donation. I like a lot of their merch too and proudly wear my Yoknapatawpha t-shirt.
According to this contemporary article he thought it was too expensive and could result in inflation and higher taxes [1]
My take: Arguments never change in politics. I'll never understand why spending lots of money on military or company profits (aka the economy) is always prudent but improving the live of ordinary joe through quite cheap measures needs to be evaluated in great detail to not waste a single cent.
One of the really interesting things is how people can personally see the benefits but still repeat those arguments. I have some relatives who are classic Orange County Republicans. They personally remember when the air quality in Los Angeles was so bad that they couldn’t see their neighbors’ houses across the street, and they definitely were around for all of the people arguing that emissions laws were going to destroy California’s economy.
You can have these surreal conversations where they acknowledge that the opposite happened, but any further improvements will definitely destroy the economy. This is especially weird when it comes to fire prevention which is the actual biggest threat to property values where they live.
It's quite sad that people (including me obviously) everywhere tend to be very set in their ways because every once in a while we, as a society, achieve amazing things in some areas due to the circumstances being really bad or because the political machine is focusing elsewhere.
Not every problem can be solved this way (sometimes the 'big discussions' are really needed) but many smaller, more technical issues, can be attacked successfully if there is no immediate political gain.
Should be noted the 1970s were marred with economic turmoil and inflation shocks. This would have been essentially just before the 1973 oil crisis.
The United States in general and New York City in particular wasn't doing too hot in the 1970s. I think it's hard to understate quite how bad things were[1].
Well, I guess he was sorta right. Inflation in the 70’s averaged around 8% per year. A big chunk of it was energy prices starting with the Oil embargo.
Inflation last year wasn’t evenly distributed: it affected things like new cars and fuel especially badly so it affected middle class households more than poor people using transit who’d never been able to lock themselves into a gas-dependent lifestyle or afford inefficient vanity vehicles.
A surprising percentage of these arguments go like that where something is billed as uneconomical because it reduces waste, and the people pushing against it are backed the industries which benefit from that waste.
We shouldn’t be cavalier about inflation but we really have to keep in mind that pollution is often related to highly-profitable externalities which might be the most cheapest option because under true cost is being subsidized by everyone else (for example, reducing emissions has usually correlated with huge reductions in healthcare costs).
Food costs have increased dramatically for a number of people, so the idea that car-free people were largely unaffected doesn’t really play out. While you could blame a lot of this on externalities like an ‘inefficient’ food supply, or people just not being happy enough with beans and rice, the situation is a real challenge for lower income earners.
Also, dismissing cars as ‘vanity’ items is likely not to resonate broadly. While self-branding is a thing, some people just genuinely like the cars they can and aspire to buy. I love the inefficient cars I own, and the vast majority of people who know me have no idea or interest that I own them. If anything, vanity dictates humility in my circles. I also get negative responses on HN for owning ~500hp ICE cars (although my cumulative emissions are lower than ever due to reduced driving.)
> Food costs have increased dramatically for a number of people, so the idea that car-free people were largely unaffected doesn’t really play out.
This not a claim I made. Fuel costs are obviously going to affect most of the economy but note that I said “especially badly” — that’s because many Americans live in areas which were designed only for car travel, and if you live in one of those areas you don’t have a choice about buying a car when your current one dies because you can’t function without one. When cars are selling way above the previous market rates, that means your costs are either unaffected (driving a car with plenty of life left) or massively inflated (when the dealer is telling you it’ll be 18 months unless you’re paying 20% over).
This shows up in other areas but with different outcomes: for example, beef production is dependent on fuel costs. When that goes up, many people will switch to a different protein because there’s almost no cost to doing so. Same underlying problem, completely different level of impact.
> Also, dismissing cars as ‘vanity’ items is likely not to resonate broadly. While self-branding is a thing, some people just genuinely like the cars they can and aspire to buy.
I grew up in Southern California suburbs, you don’t need to explain car culture to me. If you note, however, my comment referred to “inefficient vanity vehicles”. If you really like having a sports car, that’s fine as long as you treat it like a hobby and can afford it (a friend of mine joked that he had a BMW M3 habit and should’ve saved money by switching to illegal drugs).
I was referring to the much larger group of people who make financial stretches to have a late model SUV or luxury sedan because that’s the image they’re aiming for, even if they’re leasing it to make the numbers work at all. If you remember over the summer when the local TV News couldn’t run enough stories about gas prices, notice how it was always some dude putting 20 gallons of premium into a huge truck or SUV. People who are actually poor don’t buy those because everything about them costs more than they can spend, which is why I mentioned that distinction.
I don't think you realize how many people who you'd consider "poor" drive a car including in the periphery of urban areas that are theoretically served by good transit but in practice almost every trip at the periphery comes with an additional bus transfer that adds a ton of time and is a huge drag on your employment prospects, for example the I95 area around Boston or the I495 area around DC.
If you are starting from scratch a personal car is literally the 3rd thing you seek out (shelter and employment are tied for #1) because of the massive freedom it affords you to be more selective in your choices of shelter and employment letting you "level up" from there.
These people who are just on/over the cusp of the transition between those two living standards got kneecapped by inflation (mostly food/fuel initially and then kicked while down by the rent a little later) way harder than the middle class who's got more room to trim fat.
Oh, I’m aware of that - but how many of those people are driving the gas guzzlers I mentioned? Paying a premium for a large vehicle which costs more to operate is a middle class habit.
"Nixon won by just 1 percent of the popular vote. “Once in office he escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia, with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives, before finally settling for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968,” says the BBC."
The South didn't need any help walking away from a peace deal in '68. Hell, they walked away from the peace deal in '72 and only signed because Nixon told them the US was leaving regardless.
And there was no peace deal in '68 with the North. The North wasn't even interested in negotiating until a couple years after Nixon got into office.
And funny how Nixon gets blamed for "prolonging" a war he never started. How about blame JFK and LBJ for starting and escalating it into a massive conflict?
Perhaps it's easier to believe this about Nixon given his other documented crimes. Or you can just browse the transcripts here to get an idea of what he was willing to do and what his motivations were for making decisions. https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/watergate-trial-tapes
> Nixon did tell the South that he could get them a better deal if they waited until after the election
So whether a more immediate peace deal was likely or not, he made an effort to postpone it. And he had specific personal reasons for wanting it postponed.
Given the other actions he took for personal gain, why should we believe this was any different?
But at this point, we're way outside HN boundaries. So I'll leave it alone.
While that's true for some bills, it's a strange comment on an article showing how the "Clean Water Act" has apparently been wildly successful cleaning up waterways around New York and causing a huge improvement in the health of these ecosystems and a massive resurgence in marine life...
Not sure what displeased him about this law, but last I checked, he was one of the most environment-minded US presidents, famously creating the Environment Protection Agency ?
What’s the big deal about 10 feet of poop in the East River? How many chemical workers should lose their livelihood for some oysters? Coastal elites eat oysters, real men eat steak.
Reminds me of a Terry Pratchett quip about looking at the microbes in the drinking water in Ankh Morpork, along the lines of anything that could support that much life had to be healthy
Something similar happened close by my old neighborhood. The river was highly contaminated by close by industry. In the 80s a new initiative started to improve the quality of the river.
Nowadays, there is promenade along the river and it is easy to see many birds around. People goes there to do jogging or cycle. The river is creating as much economic value as natural one.
But it is nor inviting nor healthy to swim in the river, there is much more work to be done.
How much of that is actually due to the Clean Water Act (nation-wide)? Moving industries away to SEA/China/India probably had a bigger impact, now it's their problem.
The gowanus canal is the last great Frontier of pollution to be cleaned.
Rainstorm overflows are being reduced using rainwater gardens also known as "green" infrastructure, basically absorbable surfaces in sidewalk areas.
Probably the biggest solution could have been to better regulate Rainstorm runoff from private properties. But the city did not pass such legislation except for larger properties.
> Probably the biggest solution could have been to better regulate Rainstorm runoff from private properties. But the city did not pass such legislation except for larger properties.
This is a huge gripe of mine. I live in south Queens where the majority of homes are single family detached and so many have had their yards paved to 100% coverage. It infuriates me when I see water pouring down their driveways running into the streets. I don't know why but people seem to prefer hideous barren concrete to life supporting dirt. It pains me when I see a home sold and the property is cleansed vegetation and paved. Looking around my neighborhood on 1940s.nyc is depressing.
It's fantastic to see. Nice that there are success stories like this, and others like the phaseout of leaded gasoline (last country in 2021 for land vehicles, hopefully general aviation soon). It's great that we finally seem to be making progress on PFAS too, but still many more substances to tackle (I hope things like phthalates will be the next ones to be eliminated).
I can vouch for RADIUS silk unscented (no mint flavor or any other flavor). Even comes in a plastic-free container made only of cardboard and a small metal edge to cut the floss.
The website does not mention what these toothpicks are made from, but they look like some kind of plastic. They could very well have PFAS coatings - but we simply don't know since there's no information.
Every time I read about PFAS I assume we'll end up like Case in Neuromancer, with extra organelles or organs that filter extra things out because we can't remove it from our environment for a good long while.
I can still buy 110 octane leaded racing gas at the pump in Washington State, USA. It's illegal to dispense into a vehicle, you have to pump it into a jerrycan.
> At its worst, 10 feet of raw human waste blanketed portions of the harbor bottom, and certain reaches held little or no oxygen to sustain the life of its fishery.
There is anaerobic life but much less of it there aerobic life. So it seems fair to argue that it wasn’t teeming at all.
http://web.archive.org/web/20230101184445/https://www.nytime...