Federal government shutdown drives Boston city workers, volunteers to clean up trash

Boston’s Public Works Department and resident volunteers have started cleaning up trash that has been piling up at national sites since the federal government partially shut down in late December.

Among the sites that volunteers and city workers have been targeting are Charlestown’s Bunker Hill monument and South Boston’s Thomas Park, which is within the National Park Service’s Dorchester Heights site. Both it and Bunker Hill are major Revolutionary War sites.

The Boston area, of course, teems with such Revolutionary sites commemorating that conflict—it started here after all—and the federal government maintains the majority of them. The shutdown, however, has drastically curtailed the work and working hours at a number of agencies, including the park service.

The shutdown—one of the longest in U.S. history—showed no signs of ending as of January 10 as President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats remained at loggerheads over Trump’s request for billions in funding for a wall along the southern U.S. border. Stay tuned.

• Residents, city clean up Bunker Hill monument during shutdown [Globe]
• Boston Revolutionary War monuments: 11 key ones, mapped [Curbed Boston]