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Comment by ilamont | Hacker News Reader

Boston Harbor was a dumping ground in living memory. There were industrial sites along the Charles, which empties into the harbor. Sewage went right into the water. Trash was dumped there. It was toxic.

You can now catch bluefish, see harbor seals, and even spot whales within sight of skyscrapers. https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2022/08/01/humpback-w...

One of my favorite transformations: Spectacle Island, which doubled in size after being used as a city dump from the 1920s until 1959, is now a national park.

https://www.bostonharborislands.org/spectacle-island/

https://www.nps.gov/places/spectacle-island.htm

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> One of my favorite transformations: Spectacle Island, which doubled in size after being used as a city dump from the 1920s until 1959, is now a national park.

Nitpick: it's a National Recreation Area, not a (capital) National Park. I suppose in lowercase it carries a different meaning :-)

The naming scheme used by the National Park Service is so confusing. My only contribution is that "National Park" means funding has been designated via Congress; "National Monument" means designated via the executive branch.

A nice page with all the various NPS designations:

https://www.nps.gov/articles/nps-designations.htm

TIL of National Preserves and National Reserves, which are different....

The parkways are also somewhat odd. I didn't know NPS operated so many miles of urban roadway.

Boston's 'Big Dig' downtown highway deletion project gets a lot of coverage but the history of the Deer Island water treatment plant is just as fascinating -- In my eyes it's substantially more of a contributor to Boston's overall cultural urbanism pivot than the Big Dig.

It's also a lovely place to walk and cycle, with sweeping views of the harbor. No, it doesn't smell.

Fun fact: byproducts from the sewage treatment process are piped across the harbor to Quincy and processed into various industrial chemicals, including pelletized plant fertilizer that is sold to the public under the brand 'Bay State Fertilizer.'

Sewage still goes in the river during heavy rains at the numerous sewage outflows

I think it’s technically a combined sewer system that has both street water and sewage so when it rains, the system gets overloaded.

Fixing the sewer system is a massive project

More info on the MWRA website about Combined Sewer Overflows:

https://www.mwra.com/03sewer/html/sewcso.htm

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