| Wastewater | Deer Island, Boston Harbor |
| “The environmental issue is the 300-year history of waste discharge from the Boston metropolitan area into the harbor. This history is punctuated by cycles of environmental degradation, public outcry, and improvements in the sewage treatment system. With each improvement, however, the continuous growth of population in greater Boston and the resulting increase in the volume of waste exceeded the capacity of the treatment system, thereby setting the stage for a new contamination crisis.” |
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Facilities on Deer Island for the discharge (and later treatment) of sewage have played key roles in both the degradation and the improvement of the waters in Boston Harbor. The island is first mentioned in connection to the disposal of wastewater in an 1875 report titled, The Sewerage of Boston. The report had been commissioned by city officials who knew they had a problem. Boston was growing rapidly in both population and size with the tidal flats all around the original peninsula being filled and developed. The original sewage system, though primitive, featured short drainage lines running off the city’s hills into the harbor. The grades were sharp and the discharge was quickly diluted by large volumes of water in the harbor. This was not the case on the on the new landfills being created to expand the size of the city. Sewers extending through those areas would not drain properly, become clogged, and back up during rainstorms and extreme high tides. Offensive odors were a problem but what concerned officials more was a steady increase in diseases such as typhoid and cholera linked to contaminated water. |
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| The mayor at the time, Samuel C. Cobb (1826-1891), selected a doctor and two civil engineers to examine the “present sewerage of the city” and submit a plan for its future needs. To his credit Cobb took the matter seriously and appointed very experienced and talented men. The doctor selected was Charles F. Folsom (1842-1907). He was the Secretary of the State Board of Health and held in high esteem for his experience in public health, psychiatry, neurology, internal medicine, and hygiene. The two engineers, Ellis S. Chesbrough (1813-1886) and Moses Lane (1823–1882), had national reputations. Chesbrough was known locally for his successful completion of the system of dams, gatehouses, and pipelines that brought fresh water to the city from the Cochituate reservoir. More recently he had laid out a drinking water and sewer system for the city of Chicago. For drinking water, he had designed a tunnel that went two miles out under Lake Michigan for the intake. Chicago had a similar problem to Boston with low-lying land preventing sewers from draining properly. Chesbrough’s solution was a radical one highlighting how serious the problem was. He proposed to raise the city, How Chicago Reversed Its River: An Animated History.. During the 1850s and 1860s, Chicago's buildings were jacked up 4 to 14 feet. To prevent to the sewers from draining into the lake and contaminating the intake he proposed reversing the course of the Chicago River so it would flow into the Mississippi watershed and not into the lake where it could reach the drinking water intake. It wouldn’t be until 1900, after Chesbrough's death, that his plan would be implemented. Moses Lane (1823–1882) had worked with Chesbrough on the design of a water and sewer system for Milwaukee, Wis. He more recently had served as the City Engineer of Brooklyn, N.Y. |
| Charged by Boston officials to develop a plan for the city, the Commission knew that raising the city was not an option, instead they proposed as almost radical a solution. A single unified sewerage for the entire Boston metropolitan area. Their design in 1875 of two branches on either side on Boston Harbor is a precursor of today’s modern MWRA system. |
| Unlike discussions about bringing fresh water from a distant reservoir, reports on sewage systems, especially in that era, were about offensive gases, putrefaction, cesspools, hidden catch-basins, and stuck tidal-gates. Those issues were addressed in the report. Some would be solved quickly; some such as combined sewer overflows (CSOs) would take years to address and today are still a problem. The report identified thirty-two independent drainage districts in the city discharging by separate outlets into the harbor and the Charles River. The need to reduce the number outlets by means of intercepting sewers was understood, but not until the report was released what there a solution offered on what to do with the combined outflow. |
| There were objections raised. It would be too costly with total projected cost of $6.5 million, $157 million in today’s dollars. The total expenditures for the city of Boston in 1875 was $15 million. Possibly a less expansive solution would be adequate. Suggestions were made to shorten the distance of the main outfall pipe and discharge the sewage off Castle Island. But that was federal land, not city, and on the same tidal flats as South Boston so unlikely to solve the problem. |
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| Another criticism accurately predicted that when in full operation pollution of water near the outlets would be a problem. Other than some screening of large objects, there was no treatment of the wastewater before it would be dumped into the harbor. An accepted way of handling sewage in cities near deep water was, “carrying the sewage out so far that its point of discharge will be remote from dwellings, and beyond the possibility of doing harm.” |
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| A prophetic-sounding criticism was that by not using the sewage as fertilizer, the system would result in a “debt to nature” in that it would remove the vitality of the land, the products farms and gardens, and flush it into the sea. The report did consider “precipitation of the solid parts, with the view of utilizing them as manure,” and it was prescient in noting that in the future there might be, “advances in our knowledge of agricultural chemistry, sewage where could profitably be used as fertilizer.” The criticism was also prescient in view of today’s problems with algae blooms caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer washing into the ocean. |
| The need was dire, and city officials moved quickly on the southern leg on the plan. Its cost was estimated to be $3.7 million. In 1876 the city quickly petitioned the General Court and won the right to take Moon Island from Quincy. Construction began on a large pumping station at was known as Calf Pasture, today’s Columbia Point. The building is still there, though abandoned and not used as part of the current system. For the outfall at Moon Island tunnels were dug and pipes constructed, a section under a new causeway to Moon Island. On the island four huge cut-granite storage tanks with 50-million-gallon capacity were built. When the system went into operation on January 1, 1884, every two hours after the tide began going out, a gatehouse released Boston’s sewage into Boston harbor out of a conduit 600 feet off the end of the island. |
| The North Metropolitan System |
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| In 1889, fourteen years after Chesbrough, Lane, and Folsom first proposed a second sewage system on the northern side of Boston Harbor, the Massachusetts State Board of Health set in motion the process of having it built. Their report, Sewerage of the Mystic and Charles River Valley, authorized the creation of the Board of Metropolitan Sewerage Commissioners with instructions that: |
| “Said board shall construct, maintain and operate for the cities of Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Maiden, Chelsea, Woburn, and the towns of Stoneham, Melrose, Winchester, Arlington, Belmont, Medford, Everett and Winthrop sewers and other works as shall be required for a system of sew age disposal for said cities and towns, and for the cities of Boston, Waltham and Newton, and the towns of Watertown and Brookline another such system, both of which systems shall be in substantial accordance with the plans reported and recommended by the state board of health in its report to the legislature of eighteen hundred and eighty-nine.” |
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To manage the project the board selected Malden resident Howard A. Carson (1842-1931) to be chief engineer. The MIT graduate (1869) had been the superintendent of construction for the Boston Main Drainage System, earlier he had been an assistant engineer on a sewage system project in Providence, R.I. He then earned acclaim as the chief engineer for Boston’s first-in-the-country subway system. After his work on the North Metropolitan system he was selected as the chief engineer for first-in-the country all-concrete East Boston tunnel (today’s Blue line tunnel under Boston harbor), and then Washington Street tunnel under downtown Boston (used by today’s Orange line). Always developing innovative solutions, his design of a machine to excavate trenches would see extensive use on the North Metropolitan project. It is thought that Carson St. and Carson Beach in South Boston are named in his honor. |
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While the original 1875 proposal envisioned that the northern system would discharge sewage into the harbor like the Boston Main Drainage system, the 1889 act instructed the board to consider two other options. The first was pumping the sewage into the Saugus marshes (today’s Rumney Marsh) with the hope that the combination of peat and sand found there would filter the effluent. Studies had been conducted a year earlier and it was determined that if implemented the whole area would soon be covered by a layer of slime limiting its effectiveness as a filter, and no filtration at all would take place during the winter months. The other option considered was to build a facility on a tidal flat next to Island End River in Everett (just opposite today’s Admiral Hill in Chelsea) to perform “chemical precipitation” on the sewage. The process separated the solids out of the stream and partially deodorized the liquid waste. Unfortunately, that liquid would still have “putrescible material” in it that would cause problems if it was discharged into the harbor at the Mystic River. Also, the sludge would be expensive to dispose. The decision was made to go with a system that discharged untreated sewage into the ocean where it would be diluted and dispersed. |
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Point Shirley not Deer Island was originally proposed as the location for the outlet of the northern system. It was thought that the strong current running through Shirley Gut would effectively disperse the sewage. Studies had been done releasing floats from the Charles River, City Point South Boston, Castle Island, and Moon Island. While, in their own words, it was very difficult to follow the course of them all, they were confident that the outgoing currents from Moon Island were adequate. When more extensive float studies were done for the 1889 report, and experiments releasing ammonia and then measuring its concentration at different points in the harbor, it was discovered that while there was a strong current running through Shirley Gut, it was too short of duration and would not carry the sewage beyond the flats directly in front of Winthrop’s beaches. |
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Though not mentioned in any of the reports, putting the final pumping station and sewage outlet on Point Shirley had an additional problem. The state’s General Court had allowed Boston to claim unoccupied Moon Island from Quincy. Point Shirley was physically part of the town of Winthrop and had been occupied since the 1700s. In that era Governor John Hancock and others had summer houses on the Point. Since the 1840s the Revere Copper Company had been operating a works there. And it was also the home of Taft’s Hotel, for more than 25 years one of the most celebrated resorts for gourmets in all New England. The Sewer Commission ultimately would have to pay the hotel’s proprietor Orray Augustus Taft (1817-1893) $22,233 ($625,000 in today’s dollars) because he was forced to close his establishment during construction. Deer Island was just across Shirley Gut, it extended further out into the harbor, and it was already owned by the city of Boston. |
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Two sites off Deer Island were studied as a possible location for the outlet, one at Great Faun Bar Beacon off the east side of Deer Island, the second at Dear Island Beacon off the southern end of the island. Great Faun Bar was nearer the open ocean, but it was discovered that tidal currents there were not consistent making it probable that some “heavier particles” would wash up on Winthrop beaches. The Deer Island Beacon was just off the deep-water main ship channel and had tidal currents more than twice as strong as those found off Moon Island. Unlike Moon Island, it was determined that the strength of the currents there would make it possible for sewage to be continuously discharged and not just on the outgoing tide. This would save the expense of building large storage tanks like those on Moon Island. |
| The final siting of the pump station on the island had to consider the quarantine hospital the city of Boston had built on the island in the 1840s and the almshouse built in the 1850s. Also, the U.S. Army had ideas about placing fortifications on the eastern side of the island. In April of 1890 the Commission reached an agreement with the City of Boston for a right-of-way to run the sewer pipe on the eastern side of the island between the hospital and the ocean to a site away from the proposed military installation. |
| The total estimated cost of the system was $4.1 million, or $115 million in today’s dollars. Some town officials complained, but when the state ruled that sewage could no longer be dumped directly into local rivers, objections faded away. Starting in 1890 work began all along the path of the new system. |
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