In Europe, in the 1600’s, there was no real sewage system.  When the population grew, the problem grew worse and illness was common because of the deplorable conditions.  Which is why when, around that time, settlers started coming over to America, they did not know to take precautions to preserve the environment and how to responsibly take care of their waste.  The earth was plentiful and seemingly never-ending, and the life span was short; there was no reason to care about how their actions effected the environment.

Before the settlers came, nature was relatively untouched. The Native Americans were respectful when it came to their waste and never killed in excess.  As it says in City at the Water’s Edge by Betsy McCully, “All this wonderful abundance was threatened as soon as the Europeans began to colonize the region” (80). The mantra of the settlers was that undomesticated land was wasted land.  Swamps were not useful, and therefore had to go.  To some extent, the settlers changed the land to survive.  They needed somewhere to make food the only way they knew how: by planting.  Surviving was their first goal, anything after that was secondary and unimportant.

Restraint was a concept the colonist should have learned from the Native Americans. By not exercising some restraint, ecosystems and entire species were destroyed and demolished. Pollution was another big cause for the permanent disturbance of salt marshes. In New York, the pollution was not handled responsibly; in 1929, a report stated that from a population of ten million, one billion gallons of sewage was dumped in the waterways, reducing the oxygen in the water and thereby killing the sea life that requires a certain level of oxygen to survive. Dead fish were a common sight, and an incredible waste of both a food source, and nature.  In 1877, an article in the New York Times stated: “…The fishing too. Which was formerly excellent, has been irreparably destroyed.”

Sadly, it was not until the 1880’s that some legislation was passed to attempt to overturn the massive destruction of the environment that had been getting progressively worse since the arrival of the Dutch. Even this act, the New York Harbor Act, did very little to prevent accidental oil spills or monitor people with disregard to the little. By this time, science and the law had both understood the consequences of the irreparable damage that was being done.  Unfortunately, the majority of the population refused to care or do much about it.  Still today there are people who have a complete disregard to the effect they have on the environment.  The people had an excuse to abuse their environment when their only real goal was to survive harsh conditions, and later when they did not know better.  However, it became apparent in later years, when the technology and the knowledge of what they were doing were available, that the people simply could not be bothered to change their ways.  At a result, we are now faced with the consequences of callously causing irreparable damage to our environment.