Let's talk about the Quabbin Reservoir (Boston, Worcester: transplants, homes, employment)

[MrDee12345]

As a child, my father would often take our family out to the Quabbin Reservoir for short hikes, picnics and just a nice place to spend the day. Since my father passed a few years ago, whenever I think about the reservoir I think of him and the legacy of the towns that were flooded to make it. Now that I have a daughter of my own I hope to take her there with me when she's old enough to appreciate it.

But the legacy of the reservoir and what it meant to the people who once lived there has been stuck in the back of my mind for a while. And because if that, I've thought of a few questions that I'd like to share with the group and see where we take this conversation:

1. Knowing what we know now, was it all worth it? A few thousand people lost their homes but millions were able to drink water and the Boston area was allowed to expand.

2. If the Quabbin Reservoir hadn't been built, what would the Boston area look like now? What would the Swift River Valley look like now?

3. If the Reservoir had never been built, and Boston were experiencing similar water shortages now, would you support a similar project to provide water for the Boston area?

[Amontillado]

Interesting questions. It's a good Massachusetts trivia question--what were the names of the four towns that were flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir? (Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, Prescott. And Greenwich in Connecticut may be "Grinnich" but it was "Green-witch" in Massachusetts.)

I don't feel inclined to second guess history. Was the Civil War worth it? Things could have turned out in a different way, but we'll never know what the alternatives might have been. Perhaps tapping the Connecticut River would have been possible too, but it didn't happen.

Most likely the Swift River valley would be like the rest of central MA nowadays, a pretty sleepy region with marginal employment opportunities. Dana and Enfield would probably be like Belchertown or Hatfield. I'm sure people love those places, but most of us don't find reasons to go there.

I think the era of mega-projects like Quabbin has passed, and we take a more skeptical attitude toward big changes in the landscape now. The water supply system around Boston was revamped a couple of decades ago, but it was done by deep tunneling and hardly anyone knew it was happening. Maybe the same kind of thing could happen with the original supply of the water, I don't know.

There is a Quabbin hiking group which is on Facebook, if you want to try finding it there.

[massnative71]

Originally Posted by MrDee12345

1. Knowing what we know now, was it all worth it? A few thousand people lost their homes but millions were able to drink water and the Boston area was allowed to expand.

Absolutely.

Originally Posted by MrDee12345

2. If the Quabbin Reservoir hadn't been built, what would the Boston area look like now? What would the Swift River Valley look like now?

Not sure. I imagine they'd have found additional water supply elsewhere at some point. Sebago Lake in Maine was also a consideration back then (which I believe currently supplies water to Portland.

Originally Posted by MrDee12345

3. If the Reservoir had never been built, and Boston were experiencing similar water shortages now, would you support a similar project to provide water for the Boston area?

I would, but I don't think it would be politically feasible. Just like we badly "need" to expand our roads and transit at the moment to serve the current population, the vocal minority (NIMBYs, etc.) usually wins out over the greater good. Lacking a reliable water supply, growth would be even more constrained than it is now.

[MMS02760]

[MMS02760]

[mdovell]

I'm surprised you didn't mention one of the more obvious things. You can't travel though it. When you have a divider it pretty much forced anything east and west to be either RT 2 or the Mass pike (I90). Technically the mass turnpike authority ran that.

What would the state have looked different with a 3rd road going east and west or up and down? Who knows.

The most isolated parts of the state aren't the berkshires or pioneer valley but the Quabbin area.

[in_newengland]

I don't even know where to begin , but as a lifelong WMass resident, the arrogance of treating our part of the state as a colony, disrespecting the families, homes, churches, towns, and efforts that must have gone into building those towns has yet to be acknowledged or adequately compensated.

Yes, the people were paid. They were also told by Boston that they were doing a nice thing in sacrificing their communities for fellow Mass residents who needed water.

They were promised a pristine natural recreation area that would remain untouched.

OP, there are plenty of books about this unnatural disaster, most taking a mainly positive view. Ken Burns even made a documentary about it when he was a new graduate of Hampshire College. I remember one scene of an old man sitting in a boat on Quabbin saying that now he has two beauties. He's referring to the water and forest around him as well as the memories of his long lost family hometown beneath the water.

Those romanticized versions have largely been replaced by resentment and questions like when are we going to have rail service to Boston? (never). Then there was the not to be ignored trick that some in the Boston area tried to pull a few years ago:. dump a colony of rattlesnakes on Quabbin so rattlesnakes wouldn't become extinct in Mass! (Irony...ok for towns to become extinct though.)

This time the locals stood up and said no. You promised that the land would be preserved for future generations to enjoy. (not too enjoyable taking your kids there and hoping they won't get bitten by a rattlesnake). The closest hospital is in Ware.

Speaking of Ware, I hear it's mainly a drug haven now. No wonder, since the Quabbin cuts it off from the county seat of Northampton and it probably would have developed into a nice, small city if its neighboring towns hadn't been submerged.

Probably the area between Amherst and across to Ware would have continued to develop into more populated, prosperous, desirable towns if the area hadn't been destroyed for Boston's water. Belchertown might have become a very nice suburb within a 45 minute commute of the county seat of Northampton. Maybe it could have been a place that provided jobs for the people of those beautiful lost towns. I haven't been there in years but at that time it was the end of the road, dead end, last step before you took rte 9 through the swamps caused by Quabbin or you went south to Ludlow and Springfield or you could head straight through to some woods Iin (Worcester CTY.)

Boston, get us a bridge or maybe a lol, Big Dig, you are so good at that, so we can get Hampshire Cty back together and help the few towns that are left on the eastern end.

(Well, you asked. Used to be lots of books and other info in the library in Belchertown. That would be a good resource for history.)

[massnative71]

Originally Posted by in_newengland

I don't even know where to begin , but as a lifelong WMass resident, the arrogance of treating our part of the state as a colony, disrespecting the families, homes, churches, towns, and efforts that must have gone into building those towns has yet to be acknowledged or adequately compensated.

Yes, the people were paid. They were also told by Boston that they were doing a nice thing in sacrificing their communities for fellow Mass residents who needed water.

They were promised a pristine natural recreation area that would remain untouched.

OP, there are plenty of books about this unnatural disaster, most taking a mainly positive view. Ken Burns even made a documentary about it when he was a new graduate of Hampshire College. I remember one scene of an old man sitting in a boat on Quabbin saying that now he has two beauties. He's referring to the water and forest around him as well as the memories of his long lost family hometown beneath the water.

Those romanticized versions have largely been replaced by resentment and questions like when are we going to have rail service to Boston? (never). Then there was the not to be ignored trick that some in the Boston area tried to pull a few years ago:. dump a colony of rattlesnakes on Quabbin so rattlesnakes wouldn't become extinct in Mass! (Irony...ok for towns to become extinct though.)

This time the locals stood up and said no. You promised that the land would be preserved for future generations to enjoy. (not too enjoyable taking your kids there and hoping they won't get bitten by a rattlesnake). The closest hospital is in Ware.

Speaking of Ware, I hear it's mainly a drug haven now. No wonder, since the Quabbin cuts it off from the county seat of Northampton and it probably would have developed into a nice, small city if its neighboring towns hadn't been submerged.

Probably the area between Amherst and across to Ware would have continued to develop into more populated, prosperous, desirable towns if the area hadn't been destroyed for Boston's water. Belchertown might have become a very nice suburb within a 45 minute commute of the county seat of Northampton. Maybe it could have been a place that provided jobs for the people of those beautiful lost towns. I haven't been there in years but at that time it was the end of the road, dead end, last step before you took rte 9 through the swamps caused by Quabbin or you went south to Ludlow and Springfield or you could head straight through to some woods Iin (Worcester CTY.)

Boston, get us a bridge or maybe a lol, Big Dig, you are so good at that, so we can get Hampshire Cty back together and help the few towns that are left on the eastern end.

(Well, you asked. Used to be lots of books and other info in the library in Belchertown. That would be a good resource for history.)

I'm just not seeing it. Ware and Belchertown are both south of the reservoir, not east or west. The reservoir does not cut them off from Amherst/Northampton, there just don't happen to be any good roads connecting them (I imagine the state could do that if there was the political will). As for the rural towns just east and west of the Quabbin, I am OK with them being the way they are. The whole state doesn't need to be overrun with monotonous sprawl and snotty transplants.

[tovarisch]

Route 9, a perfectly good road, connects them. Belchertown has evolved/is evolving into a "suburb" of Amherst; it's very fast-growing so there must be something people want there. As for the rattlesnakes, I think that was a GOOD idea. There's much more I could say, but the wild generalizations are the main problem.

[mdovell]

Like I said if you take any form of land and make it next to impossible to develop it's going to create some poverty and isolation around it. Look at southern Vermont. Brattleboro is maybe 30% of Windham county. Population density is 380 in town and in the county 58, that's a huge difference. Why? Bennington county is even less at 55 per sq mile. 75% of the state is forest and much of that is in state and federal hands. It makes it much harder to develop. Redevelopment is much easier than new development (water/sewer lines, electricity, broadband, roads etc).

RT 2 is much slower than the pike and frankly it means that communities on the rt 2 side are harder to develop. Highways are faster than state routes. You can go from Springfield to Greenfield faster than North Adams to Greenfield even though it's nine more miles.