A 1998 study of Boston’s Fort Point Channel found that the water in the narrow section of Boston Harbor could be replaced within roughly one to 2.7 days, while suspended particles that carry sediment-like material were removed from the water column at rates about an order of magnitude faster than laboratory settling tests had previously suggested. The researchers were trying to understand what happened to contaminated particles that entered the channel, which is an area that is affected by combined sewer overflows and historically polluted sediment. They released fluorescent tracers and followed their movement through the water rather than relying on observations alone.
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