History of Narragansett Bay
Why the Bays Are Important | What Makes the Bays Unique
6500 BC During the Pleistocene era, primitive man is believed to have arrived in the Narragansett basin. Up until English settlers came, Narragansett Bay was used for fishing, hunting, and water transportation.
1524 Earliest written account of Indians on Narragansett Bay by Giovanni da Verrazano. As seen by Verrazano, the Indians were expert fishermen, by fishing from canoes, the shore, and from nets. They used shells from quahogs for gifts and valuable trading.
1620 From 1620 onward, settlers from nearby Plymouth Colony and the colony of Massachusetts Bay (established 1628) ventured into the Narragansett region to trade with Indian tribes.
1643 Roger Williams came to Rhode Island after he was banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony for being found guilty of expressing corrupt opinions against the King of England. He tried to organize followers to establish a new colony in Narragansett Bay. He obtained a charter from England which made his area known as the colony of "Providence Plantations in Narragansett Bay" which included Providence, Newport and Portsmouth.
1675-1676 The Indian Wars were fought by Indian tribes in the northeast in an effort to preserve their freedom and land. The wars lasted 88 years, starting in 1675 and ending in 1763. Of these wars, the King Phillip's War was the most damaging, taking place between 1675-1676 in parts of Rhode Island. Large numbers of Narragansett Indians were slain. Most of the Indians that survived were sold into slavery with the others forced to relocate to a small plot of land in Charlestown.
1749 In 1749, Beavertail Light became America's third lighthouse and the first in Rhode Island. It is located in Beavertail State Park in Jamestown on the tip of Conanicut Island. The original tower burned down a few years later and was replaced by a stone tower in 1753. Beavertail light served as a guide to shipping traffic bound for Newport.
1772 On July 9th, 1772, the burning of the HMS Gaspee took place. The Gaspee was a British tax ship sent by King George III to Rhode Island to enforce the Stamp Act and prevent the smuggling of goods on the ship, the Hannah. The Gaspee was lured close to shore by the Hannah and hit a sandbar, which grounded the ship until the morning tide. During the night, Rhode Islanders set fire to the HMS Gaspee in Narragansett Bay.
1787 In 1787, John Brown was captain of the first ship from Providence to reach China, the General Washington. The purpose of the voyage was to start a trade with China. The voyage took 10 months and in 1789, the General Washington reached Providence again after 32,000 miles of sailing. The ship contained approximately $100,000 worth of goods. Over the next 6 decades, more than 75 voyages were made from Narragansett Bay to China for trading purposes.
1810 Pt. Judith Light and Coast Guard Station sit on the western entrance to the Narragansett Bay. The original wooden tower was built in 1810, but was blown over during a storm in 1816. A replacement stone tower was built which lasted until 1857, when the existing octagonal tower was built.
1817 The first steam boat appeared on Narragansett Bay on May 28, 1817 named the Firefly. It traveled regular runs between Providence and Newport.
1851 The introduction of the propeller boat to Narragansett Bay took place in 1851.
       
1854 The city of Providence, the seventh largest community in the United States, reels under its second cholera epidemic in five years. Daily new deaths are reported, with three out of every five occurring in a section of Providence bordering the Moshassuck River, a branch of the Providence River. Dr. Edwin Snow, the Superintendent of Health for the city described the river as “filthy as any common sewer, and the stench arising from it at times pervades the whole neighborhood...At any time, dogs, cats, and hogs may be seen in the water in every stage of decomposition....”
1861 In 1861, the US Naval Academy was moved from Annapolis, Maryland to Newport, Rhode Island for four years.
1869 A Naval torpedo station on Goat Island in Newport was built, which became the Navy's first laboratory.
1870 Rose Island Light was built in 1870 to guide ships around Newport Harbor. The light served until its deactivation in 1971, after the construction of the Newport Bridge which sits directly over Rose Island.
 
The City of Providence constructs a sewer system which conveys the City’s waste through a series of 65 sewer outfalls directly into Providence’s urban rivers and harbor.
1883 The establishment of a Naval Training Station, the first shore-based recruit training facility in America on Coasters Harbor Island.
1884 The establishment of the Newport Naval War College. 

Recognizing the need for a system to treat the waste, the City Council sends City Engineer Samuel M. Gray to Europe to study the latest methods of treating household and industrial waste. His recommendation: a system of interceptors by which sewage would be collected from neighborhood sewage lines and conveyed to Field's Point, a small peninsula on the west bank of the Providence River. There, sewage would be processed by the chemical precipitation method, already in wide use in England.
1890 Castle Hill Light was built in 1890
to mark the eastern passage of Narragansett Bay.
1901 The Providence Sewage Treatment System is put into operation (now known as the Field’s Point Wastewater Treatment Facility). The chemical precipitation plant, the third of its kind in the United States, is the largest of its type ever built. The system consists of a pumping station at Ernest Street to lift sewage to Field's Point for treatment.
1910 Providence's sewage treatment plant begins to run into problems due to inadequacies of the chemical precipitation process and the continuing growth of the City. Providence begins barging and dumping large volumes of sludge into Narragansett Bay, east of Prudence Island, about 14 miles south of Providence.
1911 Between 1911 and 1934 vessels of the Fabre Line, a transatlantic steamship company of French registry, brought immigrants from Eastern Europe to a port in Providence.
1925 The Providence City Council tours eight US cities to learn more about treatment methods that might prevent, or at the very least, decrease pollution into the harbor and Bay.
1929

 

 

The Mount Hope Bridge was built, becoming the largest suspension bridge of its time.

1930-1934 Despite the law suit before the US Supreme Court over the patent rights to the activated sludge process, the City undertakes the task of converting the Field's Point plant to an activated sludge process plant.
1938 On September 21, 1938, the Hurricane of '38 came and stories of terror were created along Narragansett Bay. A school bus carrying 8 students from Clarke Elementary School in Jamestown was devoured by a killer wave and pulled into Mackerel Cove. In addition to the driver, only one of the eight children survived. A twenty-foot storm surge drove up Narragansett Bay and into the Sakonnet River with seven people killed from the high swells. With winds of 120 miles per hour, waves charged up the Providence River and in less than an hour, the water level in Downtown Providence was a record 13 feet. In Rhode Island 262 people died and thousands were badly injured because of the hurricane.
 

Pictures from the Hurricane of 1938

 

 

Stone Bridge in Tiverton

Market Square in Providence
1940 The Jamestown bridge was built to connect North Kingstown to Conanicut Island.
1941 The Newport Naval Base was created on Narragansett Bay with facilities including the Quonset Point Naval Air Station.
1946-1949 Modern vacuum filters replace the old sludge presses; a multiple-hearth incinerator is built; and the facilities for chlorination of the final effluent are installed.
1950 A new grit building, two new primary settling tanks and a primary sludge pumping station are completed and substantial remodeling is completed to keep Field’s Point functioning optimally.
1959 A large addition to the laboratory building is completed---the last major addition or maintenance work on Field’s Point for two decades.
1969 The Newport Bridge was built to connect Newport with Jamestown to replace a long run ferry.
1970's In the absence of a continuous maintenance program, the condition of the Field’s Point plant declines to the point where nearly 65 million gallons of untreated or partially treated sewage flow into Rhode Island’s waters everyday, jeopardizing the state’s and region’s environmental and economic well-being. Once bountiful shellfishing beds close due to pollution, and travelers of the Bay report seeing grease deposits the size of soccer balls floating on the water surface.
1972 Congress enacts the Clean Water Act, comprehensive national legislation that sets the basic structure for regulating polluted discharges from industries and sewer treatment plants to national waterways. The Clean Water Act also sets national standards for pollution reduction and defines limits that must be achieved by the public’s wastewater treatment plants. 
1973 Quonset Point Naval Air Station was closed.

The US EPA orders the City of Providence to address the chronic pollution problem associated with the aged Field’s Point WWTF and CSO discharges, which violate the Clean Water Act.
1979 Governor Garrahy creates a Governor's Sewerage Facilities Task Force to address the EPA mandates. The Task Force recommends the creation of a quasi-public commission to take over and rehabilitate the Field’s Point facility.
1980

 


The Narragansett Bay Water Quality District Commission is formed, and the voters of Rhode Island vote overwhelmingly in favor of an $87.7 million bond issue to fund much-needed improvements at Field’s Point.
1989 In 1989, the World Prodigy, a 560-foot tanker went off course and ran aground on Brenton Reef near Newport spilling a million gallons of fuel oil, causing considerable environmental damage.
1992 $100 million upgrade of Field’s Point is complete. By order of the State of Rhode Island, the Narragansett Bay Commission takes over operation of the state’s second largest sewage treatment plant, the Bucklin Point Wastewater Treatment Facility in East Providence.

The Jamestown-Verrazzano Bridge was built to replace the existing Jamestown bridge.
1995 Just fifteen years after the USEPA singled out Field’s Point as one of the worst treatment plants in the United States, Field’s Point receives the EPA’s award for Best Large Secondary Treatment Facility in the Country.
1996 On January 19, 1996, the tank barge, the North Cape and the tug Scandia grounded on Moonstone Beach in southern Rhode Island after the tug caught fire, spilling an estimated 828,000 gallons of home heating oil.
1998 Narragansett Bay Commission Pretreatment Program receives US EPA's National Pretreatment Excellence Award in the Large Significant Industrial Users category. This award honors those organizations that are demonstrating their commitment to the protection and improvement of the nation's waters through their operation and exemplary pretreatment programs.
1999-2001 RIDEM reviews and approves the NBC’s Combined Sewer Overflow Abatement Plan, a 3-phase, 20-year comprehensive project to end CSO discharges into Upper Narragansett Bay. 
2000 USEPA chooses NBC to participate in Project XL, an innovative new program for providing regulatory flexibility to environmentally responsible companies. NBC is only one of five WWTFs nationwide chosen as a Project XL partner.
2001 NBC breaks ground on Phase 1 of the CSO Plan, tackling the largest remaining point source of pollution into Narragansett Bay and the urban rivers.

Pictures and information courtesy of:
- Hale, Stuart, Narragansett Bay: A Friend's Perspective, Rhode Island Sea Grant, 1988 http://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/riseagrant/
- Wood, Linda P., What a Difference a Bay Makes, Rhode Island Historical Society and the Rhode Island Department of State  
  Library Services, 1993. http://www.rihs.org/

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