After years of discussion, local planning, piecemeal projects, and constrained budgets, there is growing consensus that there needs to be decisive action to address the existential threat of coastal flooding along Boston Harbor. This requires a government entity that can develop and implement a comprehensive Metro Boston coastal resiliency system.

The question is, what type of institution and what form of governance would best serve to protect the infrastructure and working waterfront? The answer may lie in the history of how the state addressed another grave threat to Boston Harbor.

In 1982, Boston Harbor was the nation’s most polluted harbor. As Quincy’s city solicitor, I filed a lawsuit against the Metropolitan District Commission on behalf of the city to clean up the harbor. That lawsuit eventually led to the creation of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, an agency that developed, built, and funded an effective regional infrastructure system that will protect Boston Harbor from water quality degradation for generations to come.

Today, the scale, expense, and complicated regional planning decisions necessary to move quickly and effectively to protect the 15 Boston Metro coastal communities from Hull to Winthrop from flooding require equally decisive action to establish an agency that has the institutional capacity to do the job. While the city of Boston and US Army Corps of Engineers commence a regional study to examine possible systemic options for Boston Harbor’s coastal resiliency systems, the Commonwealth should establish a Boston Harbor Coastal Resiliency Authority that has an MWRA organizational and governance structure.

Such an authority could provide revenue for the planning, development, construction, and funding necessary to implement a regional coastal resiliency system. Funding options could include state, regional, and local taxes, economic benefit zones, service fees, insurance savings-based surcharges, bonds, and other financial instrumentalities.

Urgent action on this proposal would optimize the opportunity to create shovel-ready projects that could benefit from existing federal infrastructure funds that now use tax dollars to build coastal resiliency systems in places such as California, Texas, New Jersey, and even Fargo, N.D.

With new leadership on Beacon Hill and in Boston City Hall, Massachusetts has the opportunity to act now to save the Boston Metro area communities and the working waterfront from existential coastal flooding.

Bill Golden is a former Massachusetts state senator who helped establish the US Environmental Protection Agency.