WATER AS THE ULTIMATE SINK: LINKING FRESH AND SALTWATER HISTORY

Abstract

This article draws marine and freshwater historiographies together through the narration of the anti-water-dumping movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Our research concerns the disposal of substances-pollution-into bodies of water and the growing public concern about the ecological and human consequences of those substances. One of us comes to the study of water from the perspective of river history, the other from that of ocean history. We follow scientific and policy debates, as well as public outrage over dredge spoil disposal in the Great Lakes and the disposal of chemical weapons, sewage and industrial waste in the Atlantic Ocean, linking both examples to the history of open-water dumping generally. Two fundamental qualities of water on earth-its tendency toward liquidity and opacity-are essential to the stories we tell. For the actors in our stories, these two qualities helped define water and influenced how they interacted with the ecosystems for which they expressed concern. We conclude, then, that these are stories that should be told together, that the presence of salt in one story matters much less than the presence of water in both. Our goal here is to explain why water historiography has been bifurcated and to make a plea for its unification.