For years the Interstate Sanitation Commission had declared that the waters of Raritan Bay, a sizable hunk of New York Harbor, were fit for swimming, boating and fishing. When the New Republic's new reporter, James Ridgeway, took a look at Raritan in 1963, he came to an opposite conclusion. "Not unlike the environs of the River Styx," he wrote, "a foul-smelling sewer feeds the accumulated filth from 1,200,000 people into this bay every 24 hours. This mass of putrefaction oozes about New Jersey and Staten Island shores for several days, washing the...
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