Embedded Files
The process of urbanization - when large numbers of people permanently live in one place forming cities, which happens in concert with industrialization - brings with it a lot of environmental damage. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Lowell was no different. As the city grew, so did the amount of human waste. Humans produce garbage, as well as bodily waste (urine and feces). Both of these types of waste can have a negative impact on the environment, including contaminating the city's drinking water.
“The temptation to cast into moving water every form of portable refuse and filth, to be borne out of sight, is too great to be resisted.”
Garbage
Garbage
This 1944 photograph shows how Lowell residents dumped their trash out their windows and on to the frozen surface of a canal. Once the ice melted, this garbage would float through the city, eventually making its way back into the Merrimack River and out to the Atlantic Ocean.
Untreated Feces
Untreated Feces
This 1891 photograph shows an outhouse (toilet) perched over a creek that drains into the Merrimack River, part of the city's water supply. A man infected with typhoid used this outhouse and his feces contaminated the water, causing an outbreak of typhoid that last nearly a year and sickened about 700 people in Lowell and killing over 100 people.
Citizens Work for a Cleaner Environment
Citizens Work for a Cleaner Environment
Ellen Swallow Richards - Clean Water Pioneer
Ellen Swallow Richards - Clean Water Pioneer
During the late 19th century, a time when very few women held advanced degrees in science, Ellen Swallow Richards conducted groundbreaking research that established safe water-quality levels for drinking water in the state of Massachusetts. Her work also led to the construction of the state's first water treatment plant in Lowell.
Resources
Resources
All the World’s Water (video): https://www.uml.edu/Tsongas/Resources/remote-learning-resources/World-Water.aspx
What will biodegrade (activity) https://www.teachengineering.org/lessons/view/duk_landfill_music_less
Investigate and Invent Biodegradable Materials (activity) https://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/teacherCenter/lessonPlans/pdfs/6-8_Science_BiodegradableIsBest.pdf
- For more information on the Lowell Typhoid epidemic (reading): https://libguides.uml.edu/typhoid.
Quote: William Ripley Nichols and George Derby, “Sewerage; Sewage; The Pollution of Streams; The Water-Supply of Towns,” 1873.
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