Topographic map of Boston Harbor
is a natural harbor located adjacent to the city of
Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the
Port of Boston, a major shipping facility in the northeast.
History
Since its discovery by
John Smith in 1614,
Boston Harbor has been an important port in American history. It was the site of the
Boston Tea Party as well as almost continuous backfilling of the harbor until the 1800s.
More recently, the harbor was the site of the $4.5 billion dollar Boston Harbor Project. Failures at Nut Island
sewage treatment plant in
Quincy and the companion
Deer Island plant adjacent to
Winthrop had far-reaching
environmental and political effects.
Fecal coliform bacteria levels forced frequent swimming prohibitions along the harbor beaches and the
Charles River for many years. The City of Quincy sued the
Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) and the separate
Boston Water and Sewer Commission in 1982 charging unchecked systemic pollution of the city’s waterfront. That suit was followed by one by the
Conservation Law Foundation and finally by the
United States Government, resulting in the landmark court-ordered cleanup of Boston Harbor.
The lawsuits forced then Massachusetts Governor
Michael Dukakis to propose separating the water and sewer treatment divisions from the MDC, resulting in the creation of the
Massachusetts Water Resources Authority in 1985. The slow progress of the cleanup became a key theme of the
1988 U.S. presidential election as
George H.W. Bush defeated Dukakis partly through campaign speeches casting doubt on the governor’s environmental record, which Dukakis himself had claimed was better than that of Bush. The court ordered cleanup continued throughout the next two decades and is still ongoing.
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Before the project the water was so polluted that
The Standells made a song called
Dirty Water about the sorry state of the Charles River, which is still popular with Red Sox Fans, and played regularly at Fenway Park.
Since the writing of the song, the water quality in both the Harbor and the Charles River has significantly improved, and the project has dramatically transformed Boston Harbor from one of the filthiest in the nation to one of the cleanest. Today Boston Harbor is safe for fishing and for swimming nearly every day, though there are still beach closings after even small rainstorms, caused by bacteria laden storm water and the occasional combined sewer overflow.
Geography
Boston Harbor is a large
harbor which constitutes the western extremity of
Massachusetts Bay. The harbor is sheltered from Massachusetts Bay and the open
Atlantic Ocean by a combination of the
Winthrop Peninsula and
Deer Island to the north, the hooked
Nantasket Peninsula and
Point Allerton to the south, and the harbor islands in the middle. The harbor is often described as being split into an inner harbor and an outer harbor.
[. NOAA Office of Coast Survey. 35th Edition. May 15, 2005.]Outer harbor
The outer harbor stretches to the south and east of the inner harbor. To its landward side, and moving in an
anti-clockwise direction, the harbor is made up of the three small bays of
Dorchester Bay,
Quincy Bay and
Hingham Bay. To seaward, the two deep water anchorages of
President Roads and
Nantasket Roads are separated by
Long Island. The outer harbor is fed by several rivers, including the
Neponset River, the
Weymouth Fore River, the
Weymouth Back River and the
Weir River.
[. NOAA Office of Coast Survey. 35th Edition. May 15, 2005.]Dredged deep water channels stretch from President Roads to the inner harbor, and from Nantasket Roads to the Weymouth Fore River. Some commercial port facilities are located in the Fore River area, an area which has a history of
shipbuilding including the notable
Fore River Shipyard.
[. NOAA Office of Coast Survey. 35th Edition. May 15, 2005.]Harbor islands
Boston Harbor contains a considerable number of islands, 34 of which are part of the
Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. The following islands exist within the harbor:
Two former islands,
Castle Island and
Deer Island, still exist in a recognizable form. Castle Island was joined to the mainland by
land reclamation, whilst Deer Island ceased to be an island when the channel which formerly separated it from the mainland was filled in by the
New England Hurricane of 1938.
Nut Island is a small former island in Boston Harbor that was joined by landfill to the
Hough's Neck peninsula in northeastern Quincy by the 1940s for use as the site of a sewage treatment facility.
Two other former islands,
Apple Island and
Governors Island, have been subsumed into land reclamation for
Logan International Airport.
Aquaculture
In 1996, the Boston Globe reported that Mayor
Tom Menino and
MIT engineer Clifford Goudey were planning a program to use the great tanks on Moon Island as a fish farm or a temporary home for tuna or lobster in an attempt to implement a recirculating
aquaculture system in Boston Harbor. The prices of both these fish types vary by season. The plan was to collect and store fish in the tanks and sell the fish at higher prices when they were out of season. Nothing has come of this plan to date.
See also
