Newton's City Hall lagoons get $444,000 cleanup
The three lagoons in front of Newton’s City Hall, designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, are getting a long-due clean-up.
The city has hired Grove Construction Inc. to dredge the lagoons at a cost of $444,000, said Bob Rooney, the city’s chief operating officer.
For the next few months the front of City Hall will look like a construction site, parked with excavators and trucks, as the company digs ups 3,500 cubic yards of muck, Rooney said.
The project should be complete by the first of April.
Olmsted, who is known for his urban parks, including New York City’s Central Park, designed the lagoons to serve both an esthetic and environmental purpose, Rooney said.
They are supposed to be reflecting pools and catch runoff and prevent flooding in the neighborhoods around City Hall, he said.
Newton did a minor cleanup of the lagoons about seven years ago, but the last major dredging was in 1992.
“They’re overdue for the removal of sediment,” Rooney said.
Deirdre Fernandes can be reached at deirdre.fernandes@globe.com
Waiting for Twitter to feed in the latest...