When you witness the Nashua River polluted by red and yellow dyes dumped from the paper and textile mills from the Industrial revolution to the 1960’s, you’d question what progress looks like. One ‘water woman’, Marion Stoddart, lamented, ‘no longer do we have a river, it’s a stinking, smelly sewer. But it wasn’t always this way’.
This environmental steward with will and vision, convinced that ‘one person can do the work of 1,000’ looked for meaning beyond her role as housewife and mother and dedicated her life to restoring this river pronounced ‘dead’- in fact, one of the most 10 polluted in the country. Described as a 56 mile long wound where water should have run, its toxic sludge was so thick with cellulose that squirrels and birds could run across it.
This ‘one woman warrior’ had a simple philosophy. If, according to the song, ‘this river’s made for you and me’, then it’s up to us to preserve it. ‘I’ll choose the greatest challenge I can accomplish during my lifetime and commit to that…restoring the Nashua River’. Today, at 98 years old, hiking and canoeing along it remain two of her favorite activities. ‘It’s like being in paradise…you wouldn’t find a more beautiful spot’.
In the early 60’s, no laws existed for regulating the disposal of industrial waste on either state or federal level. Stoddart enlisted the support of thousands of ordinary people to form the women-led Nashua River Clean Up Committee who met city and state officials, circulated petitions to get 6,000 signatures and hand delivered desk top mementos, namely, bottles of polluted river water, to the Governor and Senators. Result: Massachusetts was the first state to get an anti water pollution bill enacted, the 1965 Massachusetts Clean Water Act.
Stoddart’s plan was progressive. Her vision was not only to keep waste out; for the Nashua to be truly healthy, it needed a stable watershed involving protecting its riparian banks and its tributaries, the Squannacook and Nissitissit Rivers. She envisioned a river of blue flanked by green banks forming a Nashua River Greenway to connect areas of undeveloped land, provide recreational opportunities, keep water cool for fish, support wildlife and vegetation, protect against shoreline erosion, filter groundwater and sequester carbon.
Today, 200 miles of Greenway are protected.
In 2012 legislation designated the Nashua River as a ‘Scenic and Wild River’ entitling it to federal funds to continue conservation efforts. In contrast to the children living so close to its shore they could smell its toxic fumes, the Nashua River Watershed Association offers its River Classroom- a canoe based program bringing youth onto the river and Greenway resulting in one girl’s exclamation after her paddle, ‘This has been the best day of my entire life!’ Currently, Lynne Cherry’s children’s story based on Marion’s life entitled, A River Ran Wild’, is read by every NH 4th grader.
‘Marion Stoddart serves alongside Rachel Carson as a powerful example of an individual’s capacity to muster vast environmental change even in the face of industrial and political inertia’ (C. Boyle). An ordinary person can do extraordinary things when they refuse to give up. Stoddart continues to inspire the work of our Clean River Project. We honor with gratitude Marion Stoddart and Chief Weeawa who called the Nash-a-way ‘the river with pebbled bottom’. We want to make sure we can always see the ‘Nash-a-way’ that same way!
Ann Podlipny,
Chester member, Clean River Project and Third Act, NH