How Cardiff turned a polluted bay into one of Europe’s best waterfronts
CARDIFF, Wales — This city’s bayfront is often packed with people: families boarding tour boats, office workers enjoying a waterside lunch, theatergoers out strolling before a performance, and fans of the TV show Doctor Who emerging from tours of the BBC studios where the series is made.
It wasn’t always this way.
Just 30 years ago, Cardiff Bay was dead — both environmentally and economically. For decades, the two rivers that feed into the bay — the Taff and the Ely — had been so black with coal dust, sewage and industrial waste that no fish could survive. Nearby mines that once exported one-third of the world’s coal through Cardiff’s port had shut down. So had steel factories, put out of business by cheaper foreign competition. Cardiff, whose center lies a mile inland, turned its back on the decrepit port and befouled bay.'>>>
http://citiscope.org/story/2016/how-cardiff-turned-polluted-bay-one-europes-best-waterfronts
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Rift
The Cardiff Bay Barrage is an example of a smaller geoengineering project, replacing a muddy polluted bay with a freshwater lake attractive for urban humans, but birds that had been returning to feed on the mudflats were displaced. It would be a grand thing if salmon and eels returned in large numbers. Sadly, zebra mussels have infected the waters.
Personally, I think mudflats are as interesting as lakes; I like to watch tides changing, and birds feeding in the mud.
