If you’ve ever been to Boston chances are you’ve tasted my back yard. My hometown of Athol Massachusettes is home to the Quabbin reservoir. The Quabbin was constructed during the great depression to supply the city of Boston with safe and local drinking water. That’s right, the same water that boiled your Fenway franks was the same water I was fishing for salmon in this summer. Sure that 7 dollar hot dog was expensive but at what price did someone pay to bring you the water? What if I told you that dirty hotdog water cost 2,000 people their homes and destroyed 39 square acres of forest?
The year was 1930, legislation in Boston had just passed the “swift river conservation act” this would mean the swift river will be dammed off and a valley located in western Massachusetts will be deconstructed to make a reservoir to provide drinking water to the 2.4 million people of Boston. The Swift valley was at the time home to 4 towns. The towns of Dana, Enfield, Prescott, and Greenwich were destroyed and it residents were to be relocated. The government took their homes and land through the 8 amendment which reserves the right of the government to exercise eminent domain. The people of the 4 towns were given the market value of their houses in the form of cash and asked to seek residence elsewhere.
Companies were hired to demolish the buildings in the swift valley and to clear the 39 square miles of pristine forest. Whole buildings were crushed and loaded into trucks and hauled to the dump. Entire cemeteries filled with the loved ones of the 2,000 people who called the swift river valley home were required to be moved after they were already put to rest.
The construction of the two massive earthen dams began in 1936. In the year 1939 water finally began to fill the valley. It wasn’t until 1946 that the Quabbin was finally filled. After the completion of the Quabbin aqueduct system water could finally be gravity fed the 100 miles to Boston.
The Price of Water 