Miami Can Still Save Biscayne Bay. Boston Harbor Shows the Way.

I hope you will take a few minutes to read this opinion piece on a strategy to Save Biscayne Bay by my friend Paul Grogan, CEO Emeritus of The Boston Foundation and me, which ran in the online edition of the Miami Herald on August 15 and in the print edition on September 10. 

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Miami Can Still Save Biscayne Bay. Boston Harbor Shows the Way.

If government can't or won’t invest today, Miami’s foundations and billionaires should.

By
Paul S. Grogan
President & CEO Emeritus, The Boston Foundation

E. Bruce Berman, Jr.
Director of Strategy & Communications Emeritus, 
Save the Harbor/Save the Bay

 

In the 1980s, Boston Harbor was a national disgrace. Sewage from 43 communities poured into the water, fouling beaches, fueling algae blooms and fish kills that festered in the summer heat.

 

Today, Boston Harbor is home to the cleanest urban beaches in the nation. Flounder and striped bass have returned. Herring runs are thriving. Clam beds have reopened. Public beaches once written off as polluted are now civic assets. The recovery drove billions of dollars in investment to Boston’s waterfront neighborhoods and coastal communities.

 

That transformation happened because citizens organized, nonprofits advocated, lawyers litigated, courts compelled action and government ultimately invested more than $4 billion in modern wastewater infrastructure.

Philanthropy did not pay for the Boston Harbor cleanup. It supported the advocacy, research, coalition-building and public engagement that connected community outrage to legal strategy and political action.

 

Today, Biscayne Bay is flashing the same warning signs as Boston Harbor in the 1980s...

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E. Bruce Berman, Jr. is an environmental advocate and communications strategist best known for his long leadership role with Save the Harbor/Save the Bay in Boston, where he served as Director of Strategy & Communications from 1990 to 2022. 

He played a central role in building the public awareness, political support, and cross‑sector partnerships that sustained the multi‑decade effort to transform Boston Harbor from a polluted “Harbor of Shame” into one of the cleanest urban waterfronts in the nation.

 

In addition to his advocacy work, Berman taught public policy and marine science at Boston University, helping connect environmental science with civic leadership and public decision‑making. Today, Berman leads the Miami Beach Cupid Splash, raising funds to help jump‑start restoration efforts for Biscayne Bay, reflecting his continued commitment to clean water and resilient coastal communities.

 

Paul S. Grogan is an American civic and philanthropic leader best known for serving as President and CEO of The Boston Foundation from 2001 to 2021.

During his tenure, he helped expand the Foundation’s role as one of the nation’s leading community foundations, advancing work in urban and regional economic development, education reform, workforce development, public policy, and environmental initiatives — including support for the transformation of Boston Harbor.

Before joining The Boston Foundation, Grogan served as Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs at Harvard University, where he oversaw government relations, community partnerships with Boston and Cambridge, and external communications. He also served as President of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and a Trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, contributing to its national work in civic engagement, and community vitality.

He is widely recognized for advancing “civic leadership philanthropy” — using foundation resources not only for grantmaking, but to drive systemic change through research, public policy engagement, and cross-sector partnerships.

Tall Ships Bring a Lesson for American Democracy

The USS Constitution and the former Chilean prison ship Esmeralda participated 
in Sail Boston's Parade of Sail in Boston Harbor on Saturday, July 11, 2026.

  

Tall Ships Bring a Lesson for American Democracy
by Bruce Berman
First published in Portside Magazine on July 16, 2026.

 

In 1976, I was a student at Columbia University when Operation Sail brought 16 tall ships from around the world into New York Harbor. Among them was the Chilean naval training vessel Esmeralda.

 

To many, she was simply spectacular. To us, she was something sinister.

 

Three years earlier, Gen. Augusto Pinochet had seized power in a violent coup. The Esmeralda had been used as a detention and torture site in the regime’s early days. Just a few months earlier, a young Chilean woman, Michelle Peña Herrera, had been admitted to Columbia to study engineering. She was a labor organizer. Before she could leave Chile, she disappeared. It was widely believed she had been detained and tortured and killed on the Esmeralda.

 

Though I never met her my classmates and I had worked to secure her admission. When the Esmeralda docked in New York, we protested around the clock to focus attention on her disappearance and the Pinochet regime's human rights abuses.

 

Four decades later, in 2017, I was working on Boston Harbor as Director of Strategy and Communications for Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, a position I held for more than 30 years. My office was on the Fish Pier, and when Sail Boston brought the Esmeralda back to our harbor, I could see her masts from my desk.

 

Chile was no longer a dictatorship. Pinochet had left power after losing a national plebiscite. Civilian rule had returned. The country had held decades of competitive elections and built democratic institutions that, while imperfect, were real.

 

I walked over to the ship early one morning and spoke with members of the crew. It was a thoughtful conversation about history and responsibility. The vessel had not changed. The nation she represented had.

 

I left believing that countries, like ships, can be restored.

 

But history is not a straight line. In recent years, Chile has experienced intense political polarization, waves of protest met at times with heavy police response, and fierce debate over constitutional reform. On March 11, 2026, far‑right candidate José Antonio Kast — who has defended elements of the Pinochet era and whose father served in the German army during World War II — was sworn in as President of Chile. His election is a reminder that even countries that have suffered dictatorship are not immune to its echoes.

 

On July 11, tall ships returned to Boston again. The Esmeralda was among them. So was the USS Constitution, berthed a short distance from my home port at Constitution Marina in Charlestown.

 

I love the Constitution, the sound of her cannons every day at 8 AM and again at sunset and the continuity she represents. And yet, lately, when I look at her, I feel something new. Unease.

 

In recent years, we have seen families separated at the border, some children still not reunited. We have witnessed political violence and efforts to revise history and suppress dissent. We have seen retribution against perceived adversaries and disdain for longstanding democratic norms. Our president has been openly hostile toward traditional allies while expressing admiration for authoritarian leaders abroad. 

 

The United States is not Chile in 1973. We are not under military rule. But I recognize warning signs from my youth: contempt for institutions, language that casts political opponents as enemies, the testing of legal and constitutional boundaries to see how far they bend.

 

The histories are not identical. But they rhyme.

 

When I was 20, I knew why I was protesting. The injustice was visible. The stakes were clear.

 

Today the danger is no less visible though it is wrapped in patriotic language and asks us to confuse loyalty to a person with loyalty to the Constitution.

 

The arc of history is long. But it is not smooth. And it does not bend on its own.

 

Ships are preserved through constant maintenance. They are sanded, sealed, and repaired before rot spreads. Republics demand the same care and attention.

 

When I stood on the pier in New York Harbor in 1976, I felt compelled to speak because silence felt like complicity. I feel compelled to speak again today — not because I doubt what the Constitution stands for, but because I believe in it.

Our Constitution, like the USS Constitution, will endure only if we work to preserve it.

Bruce Berman served as Director of Strategy & Communications for Save the Harbor/Save the Bay for more than 30 years. He lives, works, writes and fishes aboard his trawler at Constitution Marina on Boston Harbor from April - November. From November - April he serves as lead organizer of the Miami Beach Cupid Splash to raise funds to heal Biscayne Bay.