How will those two connect? You might want to specify something so somebody doesn't leave a non-closed polygon.
If you'd like, I can send you the shapefile with my suggested changes.
It may help you understand QGIS and also the BBSP.
send me your e-mail address.
I've sent you the shapefiles.
The process that I used was to make a copy V2 edges file for Columbia County. This way if I made a mistake, I could always go back to an original.
I then deleted all edges outside of Hudson, just to cut down the amount of data. Plus Hudson is so small I could zoom to the layer, and still be at a fairly large scale. I tried to do the same for Kennebec/Augusta but it seems like some of the boundaries of Augusta were being lost. There is probably a way to do it, but it wasn't obvious.
I then edited the file. Finally I created a shapefile that only had changes in it, which is what I have sent to you.
I don't know if you saw this or not. But it will enable display of Google satellite and raster files in QGIS.
Open Google Earth or Bing as a Layer in QGIS (Youtube Video)You can create a new project, open Google Earth as a layer and drag the shapefile on top of it.
I have equivocated on how to suggest the ponds be used. Logically I am treating them as fat lines (lines have no width, so "fat" is more like using a very thick crayon as opposed to a sharpened pencil). I'm not coloring-in the line.
The number of census blocks increased by somewhere around 30-40% between 2000 and 2010, most of them zero population. I'm not sure of the exact causes. One may be the availability of high quality satellite images available to the census bureau and general public, along with line detection software that could detect roads in images. So there appears to be an effort to reduce the number of blocks.
For 2010, there were 165 census blocks in Hudson. The census bureau proposes to reduce that to 121, mainly by eliminating driveways and lanes in the cemetery as block boundaries. It appears that their algorithm takes into account whether a street has a name or not.
I can eliminate seven by deletion of non-existent features that are used as block boundaries. This gets us to 114.
+3 for missing alleys.
+2 for division of Hudson Terrace
+8 for division of north side blocks.
For a new total of 128 (130 if ponds are kept as blocks)
The internet is a wondrous thing. Google has indexed the census block file maps (PDF with readable text). That is how I found Nellman Pond. By the way sometimes map companies will put errors in their maps. The underlying data (where a street is, etc.) is not copyrightable, but the presentation is. If the pond is actually Wellman, and someone copies "Nellman" you have evidence that they copied the presentation.
If you select the edge of Nellman pond, you will see that the CBBFLG = 9 which means it is not eligible for use as a block boundary, or at least it is not intended to be used as one by the Census Bureau. If you compare the 2020 prototype blocks to those used in 2010, you can see that Nellman Pond is not slated as being a block boundary.
Directory of
Prototype block files. Maine is state 23, Kennebec is county 11. The zip file is for the entire state, but I haven't found a shortcut to get county specific files.
Other changes in Kennebec include eliminate some blocks around the airport and interstate interchanges.
In the V2 files, the house boundary looks OK - District 80 is Windsor, and then comes into Augusta from the northeast. District 85 includes the Augusta portion of the pond. I don't know how Maine communicated their district boundaries to the census bureau - it might not be by the statute text. Someone might have corrected it as part of transmission.
A curiosity is that the block numbers are quite similar across the Windsor-Augusta border.
After you have dragged the shapefile into work area, you will want to set a project. Census data is in Lat/Long and thus is stretched in the east-west direct which causes me to have nausea.
In the lower right corner, you will see an icon that looks like a globe with a couple of loops (I'm not sure what it actually looks like, but click it anyway. It probably says EPSG:4269 next to it.
When you get a menu with a large number of projections, check mark the Enable on Fly at top left.
In the second box, locate
Projected Coordinate Systems
Azimuthal Equidistant
World Azimuthal Equidistant
In the third box cut (Ctrl-C) the text that begins "+projd".
Click on Cancel (we were just after that text string)
On the menu bar, select Settings > Custom CRS, and click on the Green + sign.
Paste (Ctrl-V) the text into Parameters. Edit it to say:
... +lat_0=42.25 +lon_0=-73.75 ...
Enter a name (eg Hudson)
Click on OK.
Go back to the CRS Projection Properties.
Click on "Enable on the Fly"
Enter "USER" in the Filter Box, and find the projection you just defined. It should show up as selected CRS at the bottom. Click Apply and OK.
You can also bring in the Google Satellite view as a raster layer. You can change the display order by dragging the layer order.
If you right click on the layer name, select Properties and Style.
Select Single Symbol, and you can select the color, and the line thickness. By default.