Touring A Wastewater Treatment Facility

An Atlantic Monthly writer tours a Boston-area A wastewater-treatment facility.

1 minute read

June 29, 2001, 8:00 AM PDT

By Chris Steins @planetizen


How do these massive plants turn brown sludge into water? "The operation room rivals the deck of the Starship Enterprise; there are monster pumps, and in the dome of each egg a lovely oculus, a functional cousin of that calm, all-seeing eye in the Pantheon. But what really sends me is the transformation this plant is working on Boston's once sullied harbor, restoring it to a sparkling realm clean enough to please bluefish and seals. ...Human infrastructure is at once heroic and ordinary, gigantic and intimate, always a membrane between the great and the small, the collective and the personal, between things as close as our skin and as remote as the distant future."

Thanks to Chris Steins

Monday, July 2, 2001 in The Atlantic Monthly

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