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The unfrozen north bank of the Charles
By adamg on Mon, 02/10/2014 - 2:30pm
Galen Moore asks:
Anyone know why the north bank of the Charles won't freeze between the Longfellow and the Museum of Science? It's creepy.
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Some answers via Twitter
The Kendall Cogeneration Station
It generates electricity and steam for buildings in the neighborhood, but some waste heat is also dissipated in the Charles River.
Give the winner a price
A few million gallons of warm water will do that.
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2011/02/02/power_plant_plan_...
salt water
the ocean/harbor feeds salt water into.
Ye old dam
The Museum is on the old dam, of course, and the old sluices are open on the north side right about where you approach the canal that leads to the Galleria. I've paddleboarded over there and seen them open and flowing. I could assume that most of the river is flowing through that sluice or sluices or whatever you call em.
Cogen feeds into the steam grid
They were digging up Cambridge Parkway (the street there) over the last year & a half or so and I was asking one of the workers what they were doing. He said they were replacing the steam line that runs from the Kendall co-gen plant down to near North Station which is part of a steam grid for industrial heating so despite the insulation it probably still keeps the ground temp high enough to affect it.
River no frozen
It may be due to the fact that the water is brackish and has a high salt content. The bubblers and the locke activity could be helping as well.
Ha!
I like the flesh-eating eels theory.
I think we have another
I think we have another winner for the Inappropriate Use of the Word 'Creepy' Award.
The mob keeps it open so they
The mob keeps it open so they can easily deposit bodies, which won't be found until the college rowers get out there in late spring.
Go walk along the shore by
Go walk along the shore by the marinas on a really cold day (10ยบ) and watch the bubblers keeping the water moving and liquid.
Scientifically speaking...
Gypsy curse.
I suggest you look at the DCR
I suggest you look at the DCR's field in front of Massachusetts General Hospital.
They routinely dump poisons on it to keep alive sickly grass which will die without it.
A few years ago, the regular poisons would not work, so they dumped even stronger stuff. The next day, the Charles was dead from the harbor to the Mass. Ave. bridge and the crud comes back yearly.
The DCR is so fond of poisons on the Charles River, they destroyed the responsible grass and Magazine Beach which had survived the better part of a century without poisons. So they destroyed the responsible stuff and imported the sickly stuff. They then destroyed part of the playing fields to create expensive drains to keep the poisons out of the Charles River.
Next step? Governor Patrick's House Bill H3332, bond authorization for "Historical Parkways" which will destroy hundreds of trees between Magazine Beach and the Longfellow Bridge.