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McFlyParadox t1_j5oj0df wrote

Reply to comment by swap_catz in Long Wharf Submerged 1/23/23 by TuggieBoi420

The main issue with this is that it would severely impede water changes in the bay. It would effectively be a sewer in fairly short order, if you tried to build sea walls between the harbor islands. You could maybe build a lock system between Castle Island and the Airport, and that would be small enough that you could submerge the whole system except during storms (like the Thames River, and the Venice Lagoon) and it would protect the waterfront in downtown, but you couldn't do that to the entire bay.

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swap_catz t1_j5othpq wrote

Not exactly. The Nederlands is mostly locked and without it, Amsterdam would be underwater. Humans have done this before and it's not a huge issue. No one is swimming in Boston Bay anyways. Note this proposal was supposed to be for Long Island to Deer Island, then Deer to Moon if I'm not mistaken. It could've been all the way to Hull too. The body of water would be so large it would likely be fine.

Also, the alternative is we just let South Boston, Charlestown, and chunks of downtown sink over the next 30 years. As much as I totally think most of South Boston is a scam and just yuppie fast luxury homes for dumb transplants that dont know any better, I doubt we'll just let it become an intertidal zone. We're between a rock and a hard place here. Keep in mind this has been done before the Dredging Act. Back Bay was a Bay. We've rerouted and moved large bodies of water with no issues just making them artificial lakes.

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swap_catz t1_j5piny3 wrote

Just found it. So they wanted to do the whole bay, with gated sea walls. Look I know you believe it would be gross but this has been done before. The Dutch seriously do this all the time. We're kind of at the point where if we don't we'll be almost assured the yuppie folks in South Boston waterfront will be taking water taxis to work.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/p7rg01/175mile_seawall_sea_gates_proposed_to_protect/

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