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Infrastructure
Author: TriSec    Date: 08/07/2021 12:28:52

Let’s start in 1980s Boston. Our harbor was polluted. So polluted, in fact, that George H.W. Bush made a campaign issue out of it against local candidate Michael Dukakis.

Meanwhile, on land the city wasn’t doing any better. We had a vintage, 1950s elevated highway right through the heart of downtown. Always noisy and dirty, it created a barrier between downtown and that filthy harbor.

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/aerial-view-of-central-artery-with-the-fleetcenter-in-the-foreground-picture-id114791051?s=612x612



But something curious happened in 1987. Congress passed a public works bill that included the initial funding for a highway project to bury that highway in Boston. President Reagan vetoed it as “Too expensive” (sound familiar?) but Congress overrode that veto and things started to happen.

For the entire decade of the 1990s, downtown Boston was a construction zone. A lot of it was underground, but when things reached the surface in about 1997, there were places where you could literally see daily changes and the coming future.

Meanwhile, out at Deer Island, a similar project was taking place. While candidate Bush had savaged our governor in 1988, steps were already underway to fix Boston Harbor. In 1985, an agency called the MWRA (Massachusetts Water Resource Authority) was created to devise a plan to clean up the harbor and improve sewage treatment for the region.

Again it was Congress that provided the seed money – this time via a new Clean Water act that was passed into law in 1987.

The results were dramatic. Although it took nearly 15 years for both projects to be completed, the results for the city of Boston were transformative. Here is downtown today:

https://bostonducktours.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/rose-kennedy-greenway.jpg


And Boston Harbor is equally stunning.

https://fh-sites.imgix.net/sites/1122/2019/02/28194454/34774081_10155180706181741_1496716280688803840_n.jpg


Ah, but was it cheap? Certainly not.

The Big Dig project became a running joke. With cost overruns, lawsuits, contractor problems, and all the usual things associated with a massive project, things got a little out of hand. It was initially projected to cost the United States $2.56 billion. By the time it was done, that had swelled to about $15 billion in total. Across the harbor, the initial $100 million for the harbor cleanup also ran into $4.7 billion by the time we could swim at Malibu Beach again. (Yes, look it up.)

Downtown is a magnificent place to be these days – it’s clean and bright, and the ever-present smells of the ocean waft into the city on nearly every summer day. Of course, it is my livelihood now. History is always history here, but back in the day our downtown core was not really a pleasant place to visit. But no longer.

Was it worth it? By a significant long shot, the answer is yes. Perhaps no other city in the United States has benefitted by massive infrastructure projects more than Boston over the last quarter-century.

It’s time to spread that wealth.

 
 

4 comments (Latest Comment: 08/08/2021 14:20:03 by Will in Chicago)
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