Word: damming
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Conservationists and health officials urged the construction of a dam to keep the sea water out and to transform the Charles into an entirely fresh water river. In 1908, the Charles River Dam was built near the present site of the Museum of Science, and the eight-and-a-half mile long, 300 million gallon capacity Charles River Basin was created. The fresh water basin could have absorbed and treated "naturally" the storm water overflow sewage...
...again objectives were confused and the Charles, caught in the middle, lost out. Since the Basin was designed promarily for recreational purposes the lock in the dam has to be opened--more frequently now than ever--for motor boats. Each lock-opening admits salt water, and the wedge of salt that gets into the basin prevents oxygen from circulating throughout the water to treat the sewage. And so the Charles remains polluted...
...storm water chlorination chamber will end this problem, but another threat--flooding--will still exist unless another project is undertaken. But because of the state's financial crisis, no action has been taken in the year since the MDC proposed a pumping station and a new dam near North Station. The existing dam has no pumps and operates on a gravity principle, which means that when tides are unusually high the dam cannot be opened to discharge excess river water for fear of a back-rush of salt water. During a heavy storm, when tides are high and the river...
...some occasions the dam's engineers been forced to admit salt water into the Charles to maintain the river's level. Salt creates sludge banks at the bottom of the river and prevents oxygen from circulating and "naturally" treating the sewage, according to Albitson...
High tides and heavy storms also cause flooding problems in the Cambridge-Boston area. Engineers cannot let the flow through the dam during the hours of high tides for fear of a water backrush. A flow of storm into the river at that time causes overflowing...