Environmental activism has most often been credited to grassroots protesters, but much early progress in environmental protection originated in the halls of Congress. As Paul Milazzo shows, a coterie of unlikely environmentalists placed water quality issues on the national agenda as early as the 1950s and continued to shape governmental policy through the early 1970s, both outpacing public concern and predating the environmental movement.

Milazzo examines a two-decade crusade to clean up the nation's water supply led by development boosters, pork barrel politicians, and the Army Corps of...