Cleaning a storm drain
The storm drain at the end of our street needs to have its catch basin mucked out. My son pointed out the smell weeks ago, and I agree—something’s not right.
The smell is overpowering, and we had to hold our breath to take this photo. There is a small restaurant on the corner which suffers from being directly downwind of the drain. The husband and wife who run the place are always kind to us. No doubt their business is being driven away.
Let’s see if we can get this fixed.
Steps
[2008.09.23] We went in for a closer look and took a photo through the grating. The blur in the image is caused by steam that is emitting from somewhere in the drain. There is an oil-slicked, debris-filled pool of fetid water at the bottom of the catch basin.
We did a little background research. (Here’s a great book: The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher, and here’s the entry for “storm drain” on wikipedia.) Based on what we learned, we offer this speculative drawing of the situation underground. It seems that the answer is to request that the basin be cleared out.
The Boston Water and Sewer Commission (BWSC) has a “citywide catch basin preventative maintenance program” which they describe here. They state: “[t]he Commission cleans catch basins throughout the city, scheduling the work based upon sediment accumulation rates, identified areas prone to flooding and customer complaints.”
We called BWSC (contact list) There was one quick transfer from the switchboard to a person who took down our first name, phone number, and the location of the drain. She said that a “call would be put in today.”
[2:30AM] Strangely, we got a call in the middle of the night from the BWSC (according to caller ID). We didn’t reach the phone in time, and they left no message.
[2008.09.23 6:30AM] The sidewalk near another drain on the street is stained with black residue, suggesting work was done overnight. But the drain that concerned us seems untouched. And the smell remains. Continue Reading »
We live near a narrow, fenced-in, overgrown lot in the heart of downtown Boston. A section of the chain link fence regularly collapses onto the sidewalk, allowing you to walk inside. Under the shrubs, you can see how the lot has absorbed bottles, takeout containers, and illegally dumped restaurant grease for years. (On a recent trip inside, I found a sun-bleached beer can with a removable pull tab.) The vacant lot poses no real threat to the neighborhood, but its lack of purpose (or perhaps subtlety of purpose) seems to invite abuse by visitors and residents alike.
[2008.09.01] On a three mile hike in Southern New Hampshire, we gathered seeds from the fields and forest on our way—blackberries, blueberries, acorns, pine cones, and wildflowers. The bag weighed nearly three pounds at the end of the trail. We called a biologist friend who, acknowledging there would be dissenting opinions, said that tossing the seeds into the vacant lot would be interesting and probably less disruptive to the “natural” ecosystem behind the fence than what generally gets tossed in. So, we emptied the bag into the lot this morning. Let’s see what grows.
This week, something else is blooming in the lot: an art installation called small things 2. Children in the Red Oak Summer Program at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center made 500 plastic flowers out of recycled plastic bottles. The flowers are suspended over the lot on mesh netting. Visit the 
Films at the Gate
On May 21, 2008, the City of Boston calendar (
