By adamg on Tue., 3/18/2025 - 9:43 am
John Vitagliano, former BTD commissioner and Massport board member, makes the case, allows how it won't be cheap, but says the costs of not doing it would be far worse.
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It would have been cheap to
By Anonymous
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 11:24am
It would have been cheap to built 30 years ago instead of building up 200 billion dollar in real estate in a landfill tidal flat. The developers and officials made out like kings and now its on the public to pay for their greed?
I read this as "rising seals"
By Anonymous
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 12:56pm
And agree, we need protection from them also!
No
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 1:26pm
All this would do would push water into other areas and destroy the ecology of the harbor and harbor islands.
It will also be obsolete as soon as it is built, if not before.
Make the Seaport pay for a Seattle 1890 solution: fill in to raise the street level as the tides rise. They built in an area known to be problematic - they need to pay, not the state, not the fed.
The ecology of the area will change regardless
By ScottB
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 2:14pm
Several feet of sea level rise will submerge places like Belle Isle Marsh and the Neponset Estuary. And the Seaport isn't the only place at risk. Raising the airport would be even more expensive than raising the street level in the Seaport, and probably more expensive than a barrier system to boot. There's nowhere within an hour or so of Boston which would be suitable for a new airport, either, and like it or not, an airport is critical infrastructure in a modern economy.
Flooding pushed into other areas isn't a solution
By Anonymous
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 3:04pm
The seacoast is flat - this isn't Manhattan sitting in a fjord. Any water pushed away from Boston will destroy surrounding areas with much worse flooding. There is no free lunch here.
Raising land will do that too
By ScottB
Wed, 03/19/2025 - 2:31pm
If you raise the Seaport, airport, etc. the flooding from future storms will end up in Chelsea, Everett, Medford, Charlestown, ...
At some point you have to come down to a decision of trying to optimize how much you can protect with the resources available. A barrier system probably ends up protecting the most land/buildings for the amount of money that would be spent, and that's important considering any sort of project like this is likely to have an 11 or 12-figure price tag.
There is a location within 20 minutes, on a good day.
By Sator
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 7:29pm
The old Weymouth NAS would be ideal.
Yeah, they've put up a couple buildings, but really, those enormous runways are pretty much still there.
Not big enough
By ScottB
Wed, 03/19/2025 - 2:18pm
Even if you knocked down everything that's been put up on the NAS South Weymouth site, you'd still need to take a bunch more land to get to what Logan supports for capacity. And you'd also have to build highway and rail infrastructure for site access. It would all make the Big Dig look like a bargain.
Like Venice did?
By Anonymous
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 3:08pm
Massively over budget. More than a decade over the estimated time frame. Still not fully functional. Already nearly obsolete.
Yeah. We need more of that around here.
Check out the barrier New Bedford built in the 1960s
By hydeparkish
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 3:21pm
It's a bit smaller but similar concept.
https://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Missions/Civil-Work...
Or Providence, also in the 1960s
By Ron Newman
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 10:16pm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Point_Hurricane_...
New Bedford and Providence were both devastated in 1938.
By Anonymous
Wed, 03/19/2025 - 12:02am
The barriers were built after WWII in response.
Wrong thread.
By Lee
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 8:05pm
Comment deleted.
How Expanse-esque, and
By Frelmont
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 10:33pm
How ‘The Expanse’-esque, and equally science-fiction.
With all the motions going on in the world you’d think the governments are well convinced we are past the tipping-point towards experiencing and enduring the dreaded climactic positive feedback loop.
No, best we retrench elsewhere.
It could work for awhile...
By Don't Panic
Wed, 03/19/2025 - 12:44am
His plan sounds a lot like the Delta Project in the Netherland which took 40 years to build and cost an estimated 13 billion dollars to complete. Boston Harbor is a lot smaller though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works
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