Baltimore's 'Mr. Trash Wheel' Survives Weekend's Torrential Downpour

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- There's new video of the power unleashed by Saturday's torrential rain. It comes from the camera mounted on an Inner Harbor landmark.

Ever since someone attached eyes, it's been nicknamed Mr. Trash Wheel. And Saturday night it was up to those eyes in run-off thundering down the Jones Falls into the Inner Harbor.

During normal amounts of rainfall, the wheel is working to scoop up trash, but not this time.

"Mr. Trash Wheel is not built for flash floods like that," Waterfront Partnership's Casey Merbler tells WJZ's Alex DeMetrick. "But luckily, he did hold on. He only sustained minor damage."

In the past, when big storms have been forecasted, Mr. Trash Wheel has been moved to safer waters, but that didn't happen Saturday because the deluge was not expected.

In Howard County, the floodwaters were deadly, killing two people and devastating the historic area of Ellicott City, but also taking out sewer lines. On the Jones Falls, 6 million gallons of raw sewage was released when the rain overwhelmed old pipes.

"When it rains, there's a lot of impervious surfaces, that rushes right off the streets and sidewalks and into the Inner Harbor and the Chesapeake Bay," Merbler says. "And that's why we need more infrastructure, to absorb a lot of that rain."

In two years, 440 tons of trash have been captured by Mr. Trash Wheel, and now he'll live long to enough to capture another couple of hundred tons.

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