Baltimore’s trash-eating waterwheel

Abstract

John Kellett spent two decades on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, first as an educator aboard boats that took schoolchildren to learn about the waterfront and then as director of Baltimore’s Maritime Museum. “It was pretty obvious that trash was one of the major issues that Baltimore harbor faced,” he says. “Visitors to the harbor were remarking about it.” It was also clear to Kellett that too much trash was bobbing around for it to come only from boats or visitors on foot. Local streams were gathering trash from around the region and carrying it into the harbor. Then he seized on an idea: why not intercept the trash at those tributaries? Kellett started with the Jones Falls, one of the major streams emptying into the bay. He also had a design. Floating booms would stop the flow of garbage, largely plastic flotsam, and funnel it to a machine. A waterwheel would