the expansion of the suburbs meant that Boston would still receive its neighbors’ wastes even if it successfully disposed of its own. The scale of the solution had to be municipal, extending beyond Boston’s boundaries. Neither Boston nor its neighbors, however, were willing to do this; nor did they have a political mechanism for doing so. The environmental crisis continued to demand expansions of government powers, and it could not be remedied until those powers increased. As with so many other things, the environmental improvements initiated during the Gilded Age would not bear fruit until
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