Water Wheel

A new water wheel will remove tons of plastic bottles, cups and cigarettes butts from the Inner Harbor.

Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore Inc. is harnessing the power of light and water to help prevent trash from floating into the Inner Harbor.

The organization is installing a solar- and water-powered wheel to collect trash at the base of the Jones Falls, between Pier VI and Harbor East.  The wheel, capable of removing 50,000 pounds of trash per day, will bring the Waterfront Partnership closer to its goal of making the harbor clean enough for recreational use by 2020.

"It's a big step forward toward a swimmable, fishable harbor.  Trash in the harbor is considered a pollutant, and so it helps remove a major source of pollution." said Laurie Schwartz, president of the Waterfront Partnership.  "Most importantly it will serve as a really important educational element."

The $800,000 wheel is being funded by two main donors - $500,000 from the Maryland Port Administration and $300,000 from Constellation Energy.

The wheel is set to debut this week.

It's no small installation.  The 100,000-pound contraption is 50 feet long, 30 feet wide and the water wheel itself is 14 feet in diameter.

This is no the first time the harbor has utilized a water wheel to clean up trash from the water; the Waterfront Partnership tried one at the same spot in 2008 for about eight months.  During that time, the wheel removed about 300,000 pounds of trash, including 190,000 plastic bottles, 160,000 foam cups and other products, 60,000 plastic bags and more than 1 million cigarette butts, Schwartz said.

She expects the new wheel to collect about the same volume of trash this time around, noting that street sweeping throughout the city could help reduce the amount of trash that ends up in the water.  But the city isn't the major source of the harbor's trash problem.

"While some people think that it's the tourists that stand at the edge and throw cups into the water, it's really not." Schwartz said. Rather, the trash washes downstream from the Jones Falls watershed into the harbor.

The new installation will be more permanent than the previous wheel.  The water wheel should have a life of about 15 years, Schwartz said.