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.