It worked again. 

Great gushes of rain fell last night.  Water flushed over the streets of Baltimore into the harbor.  But this morning, the Inner Harbor glittered, clean and trash free.  A school of striped bass swirled just beneath the surface near the tourist boat docks at the base of the World Trade Center.

This is highly unusual for Baltimore harbor, which normally is bobbing with masses of styrofoam cups and potato chip bags after even the slightest rain.  But during the last few heavy rains -- including the last time I wrote about this subject, on May 13 -- the harbor has also been unusually clean.

A logical explanation is that the trash-collecting machine installed at the Jones Falls stormwater outfall is working.  This is the biggest river flowing into the harbor. Entrepreneur John Kellett in February installed a floating boom across the stream just before it dumps into the harbor near the Marriott Baltimore waterfront hotel. The boom directs trash into an invention that uses hydropower and solar panels to rake up floating trash and push it up a conveyor belt into a dumpster.

 John Kellett and his trash collecting machine

Kellett and his business partner at Clearwater Mills LLC of Pasadena hope to sell the device to the city in October when its test period runs out.  The evidence so far is that it's really working -- and making a clear difference in the harbor.  A waterfront business organization has been urging the city to not only buy this device and keep it going -- but also invest in at least two more, to stop trash from fouling more areas of the city's waterfront.