According to tales from old Lawrence residents, when they were children, their parents knew they had been swimming in the river because of the color wore on their skin that day. The color was the same as the dye used by the textile industry for over 100 years to dye pieces in factories that stood along the mighty Merrimack River and later discarded in its waters, ignorant perhaps of the damage they were doing to the environment.
After the closure of the factories, it took more than 40 years and thanks to strong measures implemented by the Department of Environmental Protection to declared that the river was clean enough to swim in it, although at the same time, it became the favorite of unscrupulous people who used it to get rid of what hinders them, including cars.
“In this state, with its great tradition of pushing cars in the river and insurance fraud, it will be difficult to find a better place to make a car disappear. So far divers have found about 80 of them on the river bottom. Although the rates of car theft have been reduced, they can be found in the mud of the Merrimack calcified reminder of the mid-70s as the capital of car theft in America,” according to an article by Billy Baker in the Boston Globe.
Now, besides the constant pollution dumped, the danger comes from progress. In its list of the 10 rivers most endangered of the United States, our beloved Merrimack occupies the 8th place. The pavement is rapidly replacing the trees throughout the Merrimack River basin. The impact of unsustainable development on land, forests, habitat and water quality is the biggest threat facing the Merrimack River watershed today.
We have been abusing our river to a limit. It’s time to advocate for the salvation of the source of drinking water that serves more than half a million inhabitants and home to brook trout and other fish and wildlife, the Merrimack River is one of the treasures of New England. However, forests are disappearing, cut down to make way for developments, roads and parking lots.
We must demand that EPA act now to protect sensitive lands and implement green infrastructure solutions, or the river and its communities will be drowned out by the increasingly polluted runoff.
