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Clean Water Game Board

Richard H. Rosen1972

Science History Institute

Science History Institute
Philadelphia, United States

A white game box decorated with a stylized illustration of the game title. The box contains gameplay instructions, 1 game board, a stack of paper play money, 4 plastic player tokens, 1 plastic die, 1 overpopulation chart, 1 pollution result chart card, 1 source of pollution chart card, 40 abatement cards, 1 organism exchange chart, and 208 unpunched organism pieces.

According to the rulebook, to play the game "each player assumes the role of a water pollution control official who is responsible for stocking his lake. [They do] so by collecting appropriate organisms as he moves around the game board, confronting the problems of water pollution each time he lands on a 'pollution' triangle. Throughout the game, [they] must learn to anticipate possible pollution of his lake, attempt to avoid the problem of overpopulation, manage his finances efficiently, and consider the problem of possible pollution coming from upstream. A player wins the game by controlling water pollution successfully and thereby being the first to completely stock [their] lake."

Urban Systems, Inc. was a consulting and research firm, whose president, Richard H. Rosen, was an ecologist and environmental engineer. While teaching undergraduate air pollution classes at Harvard, Rosen produced a number of anti-pollution board games for educational purposes.

Overhead view of game board

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  • Title: Clean Water Game Board
  • Creator: Richard H. Rosen, Urban Systems, Inc.
  • Date Created: 1972, 1972
  • Location Created: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Physical Dimensions: Physical Object, Physical Object
  • Provenance: Science History Institute
  • Subject Keywords: Water Quality, Pollution, Watersheds, Environmental Protection
  • Type: Artifact, Artifact
  • Publisher: Urban Systems, Inc.
  • Rights: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
  • External Link: View our digital collections
  • Medium: cardboard, paper, plastic
Science History Institute

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