ABSTRACT
The story about the sludge monster told in the prologue to this book illustrates (among other things) the absence of any firmly held, long-term human concern for the well-being of coastal/estuarine waters. In that example, at one very sensitive location — the New York Bight, virtual front yard for millions of quarrelsome, presumably intelligent, and always vocal people — coastal waters were reduced in status, beginning late in the 19th century, to that of a convenient dump for sewer sludge, as well as toxic industrial chemicals, radioactive wastes, construction rubble, and even “cellar dirt” (the descriptor borrowed from an official U.S. Army Corps of Engineers classification). These were the noxious wastes of an uncaring growth-oriented industrial society.
