THE MYSTIC RIVER MONSTER - NEW ENGLAND GAS & COKE AND THE BOSTON ENERGY ECONOMY, 1894-1962

The New England Gas and Coke byproduct coking plant operated in Everett, Massachusetts from 1899 through the early 1960s. When the plant opened, it was the largest and most modern facility of its type in the world.

Coking plants are typically located either at steel mills or near coal mines, but Boston had neither. Instead, the NEGC plant played a unique role in the energy economy of New England during the first half of the 20^th Century, as a source of industrial and domestic fuel and byproduct chemicals, and as a crucial asset to several successive vertically-integrated energy companies. The facility was also an outgrowth of the 19^th-century trade in Canadian bituminous coal from Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island to New England.

This presentation will discuss the origins, location and operational history of the coking plant using primary sources, as an example of using historical research methods for geoscience questions focusing on the Anthropocene.

This presentation is based in part on the presenters’ 2018 book Manufactured Gas Plant Remediation: A Case Study, published by CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, which the GSA awarded the Burwell Award for 2021.