Keeping in line with his predecessors, Baltimore’s newest trash wheel has assumed an honorific title with some authority.
The city’s third garbage-collecting water wheel will be called Captain Trash Wheel, the Maryland Port Administration announced today. Web users picked that name over four others – Uncle Curtis, Trashzilla, Trash Smasher and Oscar – in a week-long naming contest in October.
(Drum roll) The winning name for the Masonville Trash Wheel is, Captain Trash Wheel! Thank you to all who voted! #CaptainTrashWheel pic.twitter.com/qWGfSKP0n4
— Port of Baltimore (@portofbalt) November 6, 2017
The wheel will be installed at a state-owned dredged material containment facility at Masonville Cove, located in South Baltimore.
Like his counterparts, Captain Trash Wheel will have a conveyor belt powered by solar panels that will send garbage and debris from the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River into an affixed, floating dumpster. Pasadena-based Clearwater Mills is building the machine at a cost of $450,000.
Unlike his siblings, the OG Mr. Trash Wheel in the Inner Harbor and the younger Professor Trash Wheel in Canton, Captain Trash Wheel will be managed by the Maryland Port Administration, rather than the Waterfront Partnership’s Healthy Harbor Initiative.
Adam Lindquist, director of the initiative, told Baltimore Fishbowl last month that Captain Trash Wheel should be up and running by early 2018. Despite the fact that the Healthy Harbor Initiative won’t be managing the machine, he said his organization “couldn’t be more excited” about its arrival.
Port Covington’s developers plan to add a fourth trash wheel nearby at the mouth of the Gwynns Falls. That machine will be managed by the Healthy Harbor Initiative, and will be much larger, costing $770,000.
