Content area
Full Text
Once dubbed "the filthiest harbor in America," Boston Harbor has made an extraordinary recovery thanks to a regional system of undersea tunnels, treatment facilities and even the world's largest anaerobic sludge digester. And by implementing strict controls, managers have shaved nearly $700 million from the original project cost.
Nine years into one of the largest environmental construction projects ever undertaken in the U.S., the Boston Harbor now has clearer, cleaner and better smelling waters. Fecal coliform levels and zinc and copper loadings are down at least 75% from the early 1980s, and pesticides and disease in shellfish and winter flounder are reduced. Native marine life has even returned. In fact, the Boston Harbor cleanup has been successful enough that Congress recently added the harbor's islands to the National Park System.
Known as the Boston Harbor Project (BHP), the $3.4 billion program is the result of a 1986 court order requiring the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), Boston, to build new wastewater treatment facilities. The project is on a strict timetable that began in 1988 and will conclude in 1999. MWRA, which provides sewer and water services to 43 municipalities in eastern Massachusetts, engaged Metcalf & Eddy, Boston, as lead design engineer and ICF Kaiser Engineers, also of Boston, as construction manager. Working together, this management team has adhered to the court-mandated schedule and kept costs well below the original budget
The complexity of the project, which includes dozens of major civil construction projects spread over a wide geographic area, led MWRA to establish a special Program Management Division (PMD) to oversee the harbor cleanup. In the early stages of the project, Metcalf & Eddy developed initial conceptual design and projectwide standards for new facilities. Also during this early phase, the firm addressed the unique construction management challenges, including water shuttle transport of workers to harbor work sites, temporary construction support facilities, noise and dust control, and constructibility. These critical early decisions laid the groundwork for what has resulted in a remarkably successful environmental project.
A UNIFIED MANAGEMENT APPROACH The scope of BHP is extensive as its improvements focus on three principal sites: Deer Island, Nut Island and Fore River. The new facilities constructed at and between these sites include one of the nation's largest...
