HazMat Day

Lots of household hazardous materials were dropped off to Quincy's DPW yard yesterday to the folks in yellow suits.   I trust that the materials will be disposed of as safely as is humanly possible.  If you missed the drop off, there will be another in the fall.  Start gathering your household materials for the next one; see the list of accepted items  here.

Mulching

The flower beds in Quincy Center are being made ready for summer plantings by the city's Parks & Public Works Dept.  In the background you can see the new site of Quincy College at Presidents Place.  Have a great weekend everyone!

Out With The Bad . . .

Happy Monochrome Monday!  On the highway heading north towards downtown Boston is this very industrial looking building.  It is actually the ventilation system controlling the air quality for 3.6 miles of tunnels in Boston.

Shadow Paint

The Forbes Hill Standpipe with its shadowy facade presents a good backdrop for a mystery story. You can read more about the Standpipe for a previous QDP post HERE.

Sludge To Fertilizer II

Someone was thinking when they engineered this public works project. The byproduct of the digestion process is 70 percent methane gas, which is captured and piped to boilers that generate enough heat to warm the buildings on the site as well as for the heat-dependent treatment processes. The steam from those boilers is sent through a steam turbine generator (STG) producing an average of approximately 3 megawatts of electricity. The digested sludge from the giant eggs leaves Deer Island through the Inter-Island Tunnel to MWRA's pelletizing facility at Fore River in Quincy, where it is further processed into a fertilizer product.

Sludge To Fertilizer

The process being used to deal with our waste water is very efficient. After waste water is treated, digestion then occurs in 12 distinctive egg-shaped anaerobic digesters, each 90 feet in diameter and approximately 130 feet tall. Mimicking the stomach's natural digestion process, microorganisms naturally work to break sludge and scum down into methane gas, carbon dioxide, solid organic byproducts, and water. Digestion significantly reduces sludge quantity.

A Giant Dozen

These giant eggs can be seen along Boston's coastal areas. They are used in one of the final stages of our wastewater treatment.

Rooftop Apparatus

Our waste water goes through a primary and secondary treatment after being pumped into the treatment plant. The secondary process raises the level of pollution removal to over 85%. The Deer Island Treatment Plant generates 130 - 220 tons of pure oxygen per day to support the secondary treatment process.

Castle In The Clouds

The Forbes Hill Standpipe, made of steel and uncoursed Quincy granite is the closest Quincy gets to a medieval French chateaux. The Forbes Hill Reservoir and standpipe were built by the Metropolitan (Boston) Water Board in 1900, to supply the City of Quincy after it joined the Water System in 1897. Pipes from Chestnut Hill fed the Reservoir and standpipe, which then supplied the surrounding town by gravity. The standpipe was taken out of service in 1955 and the reservoir filled in some years before, following a drowning. You can see another view of it here.

Happy Skywatch Friday!

Water Works

This is the Quincy Pumping Station, located on the northerly limits of Merrymount Park. This facility was rebuilt in 2003 to help pump sewerage to a larger treatment facility before it's final destination - Boston Harbor. The original Quincy Pumping Station was taken over by the state in 1901. All Quincy's sewerage facilities are owned and operated by the state (MWRA)and they were all updated as part of the Clean Harbors Act to reduce the pollution in Boston Harbor.

I like the design of this public works building and the materials used, especially those glass blocks. I would like to get inside to photograph.

Hole In One

I really like the juxtaposition of elements at the demo site of the old Sears building aka Quincy Fair Mall.

Fresh Coat

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The handicap spaces are getting a fresh coat of paint so they will be clearly marked for those who need them.

ZIP 02170

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The interior of the Wollaston Post Office, built in 1940, is a beautiful example of one of Quincy's functional monuments from the WPA project launched in 1935 in response to tough economic times. People were put to work through work-relief programs to build roads, schools, park structures and civic buildings like this one. The marble and oak pictured here have proven very cost effective over the years.

New Sewer Lines

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These workers are replacing sewers throughout the city. They are using a trench less, high tech process that will leave the streets unaltered and the sewer pipes relined.