We were in Baltimore, Maryland and enjoying breakfast.
Discussing sightseeing adventures might have been a good topic of conversation.
Instead we were concentrating on Naming An Unidentified Floating Object we could see out the window!
The “thing” was a giant water wheel with no familiar or observable purpose.
Being rather shy and reserved people (from the Virginia countryside) we are usually hesitant to ask questions. But the temptation was too great, so Bill finally asked the restaurant manager, “What is that thing?”
Not being shy or reserved, the manager gave us a mini-history lesson.
Inner Harbor Water Wheel, Baltimore, Maryland
“That is a water cleaner, said the Manager.” It has been here for four years. People would dump things in the water and it was 80% polluted. Now it is 40% polluted. The goal is to make the water in the Inner Harbor swimmable by 2020. Very young engineers maintain the project and it costs almost nothing to run.”
“Does it have a name?” I asked.
“What is that shell you hold to your ear?….you know – a Conch!” he said.
I decided to look up the conch shell water cleaner when we got home, but couldn’t find a thing until I began looking up Cleaning Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. If it is called a CONCH, I find no reference to it, but here is what I did find:
The Mystery Barge is called the Water Wheel or Mr. Trash Wheel or officially – The Inner Harbor Water Wheel. It is a hydro and solar-powered barge parked in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor since 2014, slurping up all garbage that makes its way downriver. And it uses nothing but the current and the sun!
Historic ship manager, John Kellett, was getting sick of watching garbage in the rivers on his way to work, so he invented this giant floating wheel that turns with the current. It places trash from the harbor onto an on-board conveyor belt which then routes it into dumpsters on board.
The “Wheel” is part of a Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore’s Healthy Harbor Plan which has a goal to clean up the harbor enough to make it safe for swimming by 2020!
Before Mr. Trash Wheel
On April 20, 2015, Mr. Trash Wheel removed 19 tons of garbage in that one day. And at the end of the first quarter in 2016 it was noted that the Wheel had collected over 1,000,000 pounds of trash since its inception.
The ingenuity of man seems boundless and The Thing in Baltimore Harbor restores my faith in our ability to clean up our own messes and make life pure again.
Now if only we could figure out how to control traffic!
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