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With more than 60 inches of snow this year, will the city dump its snow into Boston Harbor?
The short answer is "no," Mayor Michelle Wu's office said. The city's "snow farms" will be utilized to melt the snow accumulating across the city.
The blizzard this week has put Boston’s snow total this winter at more than 60 inches for the first time since 2015’s “Snowmageddon.” But, what will the city do with all that snow?
With the city hit by 17 inches of snow from Monday’s blizzard and more expected this week, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said crews had removed 165 loads of snow already as of Tuesday evening, totaling 4,620 cubic yards of snow. Will Wu consider a practice of winters past: dumping snow into Boston Harbor?
But, short answer, no, Wu’s office said. The city’s “snow farms” can currently handle the snow accumulating across the city.
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Back in 2015, Mayor Marty Walsh considered dumping snow into Boston Harbor as a last resort — something that used to be synonymous with snowy Boston winters until the late 1990s.
As clean-up of the Boston Harbor gained momentum, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection banned snow dumping in 1997, Boston.com previously reported, but with emergency exceptions.
Walsh ended up not dumping snow into the harbor. A spokesperson for the city said that the blizzard of 2026 also had not prompted the emergency measure. Instead, the city will utilize 14 snow farms across the city to manage and melt the snow.
Before the blizzard, 40 inches of snow had already fallen on Boston. The melting at the snow farms had to pause during Monday’s blizzard, the city said, but melting operations will restart “to create more space for the removal efforts.”
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The 14 farms include West Roxbury High School, Widett Circle in South Boston, Bunker Hill Community College, Circuit Drive in Dorchester, the George Wright Golf Course in Hyde Park, and the Old Edison Plant in South Boston. Snow is also dumped for melting at Franklin Park, Terminal Street in Charlestown, Bayside Expo in Dorchester, and Rivermoor Street in West Roxbury, the city said, along with locations in Brighton, East Boston, and Hyde Park.
Walsh utilized snow farms in 2015, too. A Seaport snow farm lasted nearly five months, finally melting in July of that year.
Already this winter, some coastal communities without Boston’s space or resources are turning to the ocean as a removal method. Marblehead declared a state of emergency in January to allow the disposal of snow into the sea, the Marblehead Independent reported.
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