From urban eye-sore to paradise

Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area

By Maureen Kelly

A PART OF BOSTON'S history lay buried on Spectacle Island until archaeologists unearthed a midden, filled with clam shells, animal bones, spear points and pottery. The ancient landfill revealed that Native Americans camped on the island from as long ago as A.D. 535 until English settlers arrived. Years from now, if future archeologists dig into the island, they will find a much bigger and more toxic pile. Beneath the twin hills that bulge up in the middle of Boston Harbor, are 80 feet [24 meters] of 20th century urban garbage. The modern day trash once oozed into the harbor adding to the foul soup of raw sewage, sludge and chemical contaminants which, in the 1980s, earned Boston Harbor the ignominious title of the most polluted harbor in the United States.

But times have changed. The construction of a new sewage treatment plant on nearby Deer Island and the abatement of sewage discharges from combined sewer overflows has significantly improved water quality in the harbor and transformed Spectacle Island. The landfill is now capped with 30 feet [nine meters] of dirt from the excavation of the highway tunnel in Boston's massive Central Artery/Tunnel project - the “Big Dig.” As part of the environmental remediation effort, the island has been vegetated with native and non-native plant species. In addition, five-acres of artificial reefs were created east of the island.

Today the island's drumlin mounds are covered with flowering vegetation and the air is full of jumbo-sized dragonflies, butterflies, red-wing blackbirds and swallows. Only the worn sea glass and occasional pieces of asbestos tile that have washed up on the shore remain as evidence of the polluted past.

Spectacle Island opened to the public this past summer, ten years after Congress added it and 33 other harbor islands to the national park system. The former dumping ground is now a showpiece of the progress that has been made on restoring Boston Harbor and its islands as places where people can come to enjoy the natural, cultural and historical scenery.

New high-speed catamaran ferries now whisk day-trippers from Boston's Long Wharf to Spectacle in just 10 minutes. One July Sunday afternoon on the island, a jazz band entertained visitors lounging in Adirondack chairs on the breezy veranda of a brand new visitor center. At a nearby beach, families waded in the water under the watchful eye of a lifeguard, in what would have been an unthinkable picture twenty years ago.

Others strolled along the five-miles of walking trails or picnicked on the hilltops taking in the 360-degree view encompassing neighboring Thompson Island and Long Island, the skyscrapers of downtown Boston, Logan International Airport, and, to the north, the domes of the Deer Island Treatment Plant “digesters,” which appear like an enormous carton of eggs on the landscape.

Spectacle now joins 10 other harbor islands that are accessible to the public and draw several hundred thousand visitors a year who are looking for a respite from city life, a day of recreation or camping, or who come to explore the rich history of the islands. Over the past couple of centuries, the islands have been used for coastal defense, prisons, quarantine sites, and industrial activities. Native Americans have notable historical links to the islands from pre-Colonial times through King Philip's War, the Wampanoag-led revolt of the late 1600s. Deer Island, connected by road to the mainland and the most visited of the islands, is a historically significant site from the King Philip's War era when colonists interned Native Americans on the island and many starved or died of exposure.

Georges Island ranks as the second most visited island where people go to picnic and explore Fort Warren, a Civil War-era fort that once housed Confederate prisoners. Other popular destinations include Little Brewster Island, one of the outermost harbor islands, where Boston Light beacons to incoming vessels.

Along with recreation, the park offers environmental education opportunities for area youth. The National Park Service and Island Alliance coordinate to run the B.E.A.N. Program (Boston's Environmental Ambassadors to the National Parks), which provides internships to urban teenagers and trains them to teach younger students about marine biology and the harbor environment.

“The more people appreciate and use the islands, the less likely we are to ever see Boston Harbor as degraded as it was in the 1980s,” said Tom Powers, president of Island Alliance, one of eleven organizations that make up the Boston Harbor Islands Partnership.

The Partnership is comprised of federal, state, local and private sector organizations, and an advisory council (made up of members appointed by the National Park Service) that work together to implement the park's General Management Plan, which has a 15 to 20 - year outlook. The National Park Service does not own the park lands, rather the islands have remained in the hands of municipal, state, or institutional owners and the U.S. Coast Guard.

The cooperative arrangement has advantages for park management, according to Powers. The involvement of the not-for-profit Island Alliance enables the park to raise money from the private sector and react to problems more quickly than the government process might allow. Last year, when a stormed damaged a dock on Little Brewster Island, the Island Alliance was able to come up with the funds to repair it within ten days, in time to open the island to summer visitors.

Following the milestone event of opening Spectacle Island to the public, the Partnership plans to continue to work toward enhancing the harbor island experience for visitors by upgrading infrastructure and improving access for the disabled. Major projects planned include rehabilitating the buildings of Fort Andrews, built around 1900, on Peddocks Island. The National Park Service is beginning to do inventory of island resources to determine the appropriate level of use.

For a tour of the islands, ferry schedules and information for educators visit www.bostonislands.org.

© 2006 The Gulf of Maine Times