The Cochato River is a stream rising from

Avon, Massachusetts Avon is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. History The first settler in the land that would become Avon was Moses Curtis (), a blacksmith from Braintree, Massachusetts.Monatiquot River The Monatiquot River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed April 1, 2011 river in Braintree, Massachusetts, formed by the confluence of the Farm River and Cochato River ...

in Braintree. It is part of the Weymouth Fore River watershed and empties into

Boston Harbor Boston Harbor is a natural harbor and estuary of Massachusetts Bay, and is located adjacent to the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the Port of Boston, a major shipping facility in the northeastern United States. History ...

. The river serves as the boundary between Braintree and Randolph. The river previously fed the Richardi Reservoir, a water system serving nearly 90,000 people in the Towns of

Holbrook Holbrook may refer to: Places England *Holbrook, Derbyshire, a village * Holbrook, Somerset, a hamlet in Charlton Musgrove * Holbrook, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, a former mining village in Mosborough ward, now known as Halfway *Holbrook, Suffolk, ...

, Randolph, and Braintree. This use ended in the 1980s, however, due to severe pollution from the Baird & McGuire company. From 1912 to 1983, the Baird & McGuire chemical manufacturing facility was operated near the river in

, manufacturing products such as pesticides, disinfectants,

soap Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are use ...

s, and

solvent A solvent (s) (from the Latin '' solvō'', "loosen, untie, solve") is a substance that dissolves a solute, resulting in a solution. A solvent is usually a liquid but can also be a solid, a gas, or a supercritical fluid. Water is a solvent for ...

s. Between 1954 and 1977, the company was fined at least 35 times by various state and federal agencies for numerous violations. Because of their poor storage and disposal practices, industrial waste was discharged into the soil, river, wetlands, and a gravel pit. The facility was closed in 1983 and declared a " superfund" site. The Environmental Protection Agency dredged and treated over of sediments in the Cochato, with cleanup completed in 1997. The river has been monitored since that time.

References

Fore River Watershed Association

Environmental Protection Agency
Randolph, Massachusetts Geography of Braintree, Massachusetts Rivers of Norfolk County, Massachusetts Rivers of Massachusetts {{Massachusetts-river-stub