Michael Ambrosino's Show; 118; Boston Harbor

This is the way we like to think of our rivers and harbors quaintly with visions of Rocky Woods lazy clean rivers tourist poster stuff. Well this quaint little lazy river is the Charles like others that empty into the harbor. It rises in our surrounding suburbs in full view of the downtown towers. It's a delightful little polluted river on its way to a delightful big polluted Harbor. Crossed and crisscrossed by bridges bordered hemmed in and sealed off by roads. It's used for pleasure and many get pleasure from it. As long as they don't fall in. The Charles River and Basin is a small model of the great Boston Harbor. Teasing us with

its possibilities but filthy misused and accessible. This film is about Boston Harbor and its 30 islands. What's out there and what's happened to it. And how you can change it. At these dimensions of our city the Harbor opens wide like a broad proud veranda offering beauty of refreshment and pleasure. And what do we do with it. We use it as a toilet. You know I think you see the harbor when you cross the Mystic River Bridge but that's only the inner harbor. A home for shipping and business not so busy now. That's your 1963 Ford down there being shipped to Taiwan by next your neighbor's Chevy. Oil pumping out up the Chelsea river. A lot of oil comes up to Chelsea

and some ends up in it. You'd think the Navy and the army own bust of the harbor and a lot of it is used to spruce up the fleet. Not just today's modern navy either. They say about 12 percent of the Constitution is original. I just don't know which is 12 percent. This portion of East Boston will soon be a city waterside recreation area. Now most days Boston Piers grow grass. A few freighters come in and oil is distributed by small coastal tankers. In the future. You guessed it right there on board a street high rise apartments and office buildings the Old North Church looks out on a lonely road half used wharves with ancient and romantic names along Lewis. Union housing a comfortably rundown collection of apartments and small firms soon to shine again in the new waterfront

redevelopment project. Hope to leave room for Dick not kase Ians Baystate one of the few good ways to see the harbor. Castle islands horizontal forest is always moving. But the container crane finished in 1966 stands still and unused like a giant Calder immobile. Castle island's also good for catching Sunday dinner for the fire lieutenant John Jay McCorkle fishing pier. We don't have many beaches in the city but Pleasure Bay and South Boston is a big one.

Deep in Sally James Michael Curly's legacy is the L Street bathhouse. Just the thing for a skinny dip. But the Inner Harbor is only part of the story out there are 30 islands. Moon Island. Mostly carved into a new settling basins for raw sewage. Flows down now that the Deer Island treatment plant is keeping company with a prison there. Long Island. It houses a hospital for the chronically ill. Beyond that a vast plain of rubble and trash. That resembles a closing scene of a Fellini movie. The Brewster's have a light. And we found these stately old empty army quarters as one of the few islands with real live Bostonians on it.

We can't visit all the islands down on three to tell our story. First Georges with historic Fort Warren that's a story with a past and spectacle. Two small bumps in the sea connected by 47 years of trash. That's a symbol for the dumping and filling and burning that ruins most of the harmony and love of a charming place. We just have a picnic this summer. Georges Island most of its 28 acres is taken up with Florida a once proud part of American coastal defense and wars were considered with pride. It's now slowly falling apart. The broken windows left broken during the long winters have allowed the Sierra to tear loose most of the

interior. The NBC owns the island makes a makeshift repairs and maintains a big new dock. It's still worth a trip though and the best guide is a little gross no. He's intimate with every ghost from Hatteras to Nova Scotia or Warren on George's Island is a far cry today from when the ancient Puritans had to plan their own protection. The first man to come here was Pemberton in 16 28. He was followed by John George the man for whom the island is named. This particular location is known as the Gibraltar of America because of its perfect location with all of Massachusetts around it. This is the very center of thirty five islands and ledges in the bay.

This particular massive fortification is the result partly of Quincy granite and cape and granite. In the later days of the four cement was used for the giant disappearing as the first gun was named for a civil war heroes. And then later we had battery Stevenson and still other. Great guns which shot out their 600 pound shells. Twenty four miles into the bay. The guns of the Civil War which was perhaps the most active period of Fort Warren history numbered two hundred and forty eight. They also sending out a kind of

involved two or three miles into the harbor. And during the revolution thought Warren had its first and only battle and that was fought between men who were training here and two British warships which came in not knowing that the British had left Boston. Four of us and two American craft one of which was the war and that battle was an American victory although few people in the wing Glen have ever heard of it. The lady in black is perhaps New England's most unusual ghost story. It all began in the civil law in 1861 when a young Confederate captain

was captured and taken to Fort Warren where he was lodged in the corridor of dungeon. His wife found out landed at the sport on a rainy night came up whistled to him he answered and a rope was lowered and she was taken into the foyer at one of the long musketry members who was here. They met. They planned. Not to escape from the fort but to capture the four turn the guns of the fort against Boston and change the entire course of the war. But it was not to be because they were detected and in the battle which followed. The husband was mortally wounded after his funeral. She was told that she must be executed as a spy and they gave her a final request. And she asked. That she be given a lady's dress that way. They gave her the lady's dress and wearing it.

She was flung out into eternity and after that after she was buried by the side of a husband. Seven weeks went by. And then the first ghost like appearance again. A group of offices after a fresh snow storm were crossing. The beautiful parade ground. They got about halfway across and the leader. Looking down into the snow. Noticed traps. Of the ladies. Going. Nobody. Here at this fort you can step into the past of one two and three centuries ago. And I would like to look forward to the time when the young people and the old people can come down before water and put our radio on the spot.

History lesson a. Style and spectacle used to be two islands the little hills left by the gracious spot for goals to rest a quiet spot spectacle glistens in the sun a mile or two from pleasure bathhouse. Spectacle glistens. Because it's made of garbage. Spectacle also smokes and burn. It's burning now 12 feet underground smoldering fires that weren't set. They just started spontaneously. The city hasn't dumped there since

1959 spectacle just sits and listens and. The inhabitants don't mind. Besides the goals the population is composed of a large family of rats. Spectacle symbolizes the harbour's you saw over the last 50 years. Don't fail and burn. That's what we've done with it. All the dumping is not solid by any means. On many days the flow of sewage and industrial waste into the harbor exceeds that of fresh water. You can look for it next time you're out in a boat. But unless you climb to 3000 feet you may not notice that your haul is slicing through what is politely called effluent. It's some of the 60 billion gallons of treated sewage pumped into the harbor from the deer and nut Island plants each year.

The MDC tells us that their planted Deer Island pumps only on the outgoing tide. You sailors can check on you know tickle tables for Sunday April 26 1970. 10:30 a.m.. Eastern Daylight Time. The tide is coming in. Fill and burn. We fill in the harbor for very useful purposes. To make and expand airports to build massive docking facilities to make clear level land for housing developments. Massive fill has its price. The tide's flushing actions are very subtle. Who checks on the rest of the harbor when you make two thousand acres of new land at the airport. Do you remember Columbia Point. They used to be a title large. The project as

it's known is built on the rubbish of the fifties. The University of Massachusetts in town branch will be built on the rubbish of the sixties. Right next to the old Columbia Point sewage pumping station. It may be an unsettling experience. Well even the folks at its quantum have a question. Right next to sacred ground the sole surviving original Indian site that known. The sea to the sea. Lost with to sit comic for which our Commonwealth has named. A new sewer lines going to be installed right there why they're 30 feet from the road. Why not next to it. Could someone be thinking of doubling or tripling the road. Well it's only marshland. What's so important about marshland.

They are used as flood planes in to protect us from storms and erosion. The patina grass that grows there is food for the harbor fish and the fish that spawn there to provide lunch for those big ones you pull in. Not everyone wants to fill the harbor. Many sand and gravel companies want to dredge great groups to spit. It's just a useless stretch of sand doesn't it. If we listen to the ecologist we'd better not tamper with nature till we know the results. What storms beat themselves out of this useless land. What sea life spawns on its kelp ledges on either side. Dump fill and burn.

It would be nice to spend a clear day on the water. But if you have followed the tons of smoke and ash from Boston Edison South Boston plant. Gently shield the Pleasure Bay. Protecting Thompson's island from the sun hiding moon Island. Drifting lays only over hangman dialing. And covering west headed paddocks. And creating a pall of a Hingham Harbor. And the citizens of hang and think pollution is Boston's problem. Multiply the sound and smoke by about 15 hour almost 900 a day. Three hundred and twenty thousand a year you get a small sense of the

sound and air pollution created by the airport alone. About now far out to the great Brewster islands. That's it. That's your city burning. The odds and ends of urban renewal and other construction. About two barges a week are towed out anchored and set afire to bird out of the westerly breeze not bothering anything except great Brewster. When a storm or thermal inversion or sea breeze comes up. Well that plume is one more addition to the air pollution of our harbor and our city. Fill and burn. And we do them all not just on spectacle.

Boston light on little Brewster our nation's oldest lighthouse would be a more pleasant symbol looking like a magazine cover but spectacle in the airport. Deer Island sewerage and the burning barges more than a half mile south of hypocrite channel. Well they must take precedence. Across the old channel from Georgia is Lovell's Island. It was also used for fortifications in the past and maybe the future of our harbors linked closely to that 62 acres of beach and scrub sumac. A unique experiment will go on there and who knows it just might work. Isn't it a larger island I thought it was one of the three or four miles long. I'm not sure that it's quite that large but it is rather large for the Highlands and lowlands and here you can see almost the

entire island it's it's a much larger piece of land that I thought was in the. That's right well it's it is one of the larger islands I believe it's there are larger pieces of the harbor but we figured that it was a really fine one to adopt. What do you mean adopt an island. Well what we wanted to do and when I say we I mean the Sierra Club the Sierra Club has become interested in the harbor really since last September. We were very interested in seeing that the Harbor Islands get what we feel is proper use. We are interested right here on Lovell's island in trying to figure out how the islands could be adopted their recreational potential can be realized. All right now it's an NBC owned island. It is in public lands but it hasn't really been used it hasn't been opened for public use. Certainly the way we would like to see it use what we have to do to make the island usable. We'll have to start with some cleanup. There's a necessity really to

pick up some of the trash on the island. Then we're planning to do that in May and June of this year. We've got to help provide a way for people to get out onto the island conveniently. We have to help figure out ways that they can spend their time once they're here. And provide for safety there are a number of hazards on the island that we're going to have to work on. Well it's a great place has fantastic potential that really don't look at it. He got a clean beach and polluted water all then six miles of city hall. Right Mike I think this is right where we'll start it's already set up to bring people out here tomorrow and I could really use the beach and it's really close and people drive miles and miles just to get out to the Cape for something like this and here it is.

It's rare to find a beach just this thick. Well there are actually several of them I think out here not only on levels but there are some nice beaches over on Gallup's I'm sure some of the others paddocks for instance Long Island. Quite a few of them. Have water seems on polluted now. One of the. Summer's I don't know that it would be any more polluted in the summer. I'm sure that test could be taken here to check on the quality of the water it's far enough out that it's probably fairly good. See the largest piece of real estate in the area that doesn't belong. To. The rifle it's beautifully clear and would be a great place to do a ball field football field or football things like stuff. Like this. May not look like a recreation area but really it would be a fantastic recreation

area. There are tidal pools here and there's lots of life in those pools. Someone with a knowledge of that biology could really do a very nice job of taking people around and showing them what what the intertidal zone really means. Here's an old gun pit. It looks like you're making a natural barbecue its loans to the guys that obviously somebody's already done that. The benches on the side right we could put a door on that store charcoal down there this is exactly what we like to do take what could be hazards and make creative use of them instead of putting a fence around them. It's unnatural. Was this a first or second world war. Puzzles are sort of a gun emplacement right.

If this were a natural chasm it would be a has it that it would be so much trouble to you that it probably would. No because people would view it quite the same one. But this is a dangerous part of a group that we use and it could be yes. Is that what you think you do with it. Well one thing that can be done is say hands off no one nearer. We like I think to come in and actually utilize these things that Walt could be a hand-ball court. There's a natural alpha Theater here in a sense I could cover over the actual pit to make use of it for BTs of some sort. We might want to put canvas over part of the tunnel. And use it as a protective tent for Iran right. Let's begin with the bottom. When the barge is going to travel right I think it is at low tide. You certainly can get out

to it right. It's too much of a hazard I think to let people frolic on looking you do just mark it off as an area to stay away from. I'm afraid we might have to do that it would be really rough to try to move it I'm afraid. Where'd it come from. Oh it probably came it's one of the burning barges I would guess that that has just been left abandoned. Well this is somewhat a symbol of the whole area. A. Lot of us ruin all of the old mistakes and build right lots of bricks tumbled down middle hearing a tree growing up coming through nature taking over again. We hope that it will be a little bit more than a symbol when we're done. There's an awful lot of work that has to be done on the island but boy the potential is really here. There are beaches for people to play on their fields that they can play and there's a lot of historical interest obviously. Really some great potential. So many things have potential It's a shame they don't work. It makes a difference. First. Go see for yourself what the harbor is like. See

Carson beach and pleasure drive out to Long Island or Deer Island and take the Bay State out to Georgia and see if it fills you with pride. Second join up with a group to put your muscle your mind and your money to work for the harbor. Try the Sierra Club. Save our shores. The Boston waterfront Residents Association the mass payoff Clubs Association the Scranton Woman's Club and the League of Women Voters. And third that's the city the legislature and the MDC know how you feel. The Moakley bill in the mayor's plan need study and action. The MDC talks about buying even more islands. Well they've owned Georgeson levels for years. You can tell them what kind of job you think they're doing. Remember. It's your harbor and mine. I got to like it. Did you. Say.