White Pond is a 58.5 acre
lake
A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from ...
and
reservoir
A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation.
Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...
within the towns of
Stow and
Hudson
Hudson may refer to:
People
* Hudson (given name)
* Hudson (surname)
* Hudson (footballer, born 1986), Hudson Fernando Tobias de Carvalho, Brazilian football right-back
* Hudson (footballer, born 1988), Hudson Rodrigues dos Santos, Brazilian f ...
, in
Middlesex County, Massachusetts
Middlesex County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,632,002, making it the most populous county in both Massachusetts and New England and the 22nd most populou ...
. The lake has historically provided a source of
drinking water
Drinking water or potable water is water that is safe for ingestion, either when drunk directly in liquid form or consumed indirectly through food preparation. It is often (but not always) supplied through taps, in which case it is also calle ...
to the town of
Maynard, and Maynard maintains water rights to the
pond
A pond is a small, still, land-based body of water formed by pooling inside a depression (geology), depression, either naturally or artificiality, artificially. A pond is smaller than a lake and there are no official criteria distinguishing ...
and owns some of the land surrounding it. White Pond is adjacent to
Lake Boon but their waters are not connected.
History
A nineteenth century writer described White Pond as "a fine sheet of water, situated in a level, sandy section of town, and
ttakes its name from the white, sandy bottom, which gives its hue to the water." By 1828 a railroad corporation surveyed a route around White Pond, and eventually constructed railroad tracks along one side of the pond. By the mid-1800s, "White Pond had a large commercial ice cutting operation functioning on its shores, and
ice house was situated next to the pond near an old railroad."
In 1888 the Commonwealth granted the Town of Maynard
water rights
Water right in water law is the right of a user to use water from a water source, e.g., a river, stream, pond or source of groundwater. In areas with plentiful water and few users, such systems are generally not complicated or contentious. In o ...
to White Pond,
[Acts and resolves passed by the General Court by Massachusetts (1888), p. 419, accessible on archive.org] and in 1889 Maynard built a three-mile pipeline to carry water by gravity to Maynard where it was pumped to a reservoir atop
Summer Hill for distribution throughout the town.
In 1935 the
Civil Works Administration
The Civil Works Administration (CWA) was a short-lived job creation program established by the New Deal during the Great Depression in the United States in order to rapidly create mostly manual-labor jobs for millions of unemployed workers. The j ...
(C.W.A.) and
Federal Emergency Relief Administration
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was a program established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, building on the Hoover administration's Emergency Relief and Construction Act. It was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progre ...
(F.E.R.A.) cleaned up the forest surrounding the pond and planted new trees. In 1942 the water pipeline to Maynard was replaced with a ten-inch diameter, concrete pipe. Due to droughts affecting the level of White Pond, in 1964, Maynard acquired a well within the adjacent U.S. Army Reservation (now
Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge
The Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge (ARNWR; formerly referred to as the U.S. Army's Fort Devens-Sudbury Training Annex) is a protected National Wildlife Refuge located approximately west of Boston and west of the Eastern Massachusetts ...
) to pump water into White Pond when it was low, and in 1972 and 1973 Maynard acquired other wells, the Quirk Wells off
Old Marlboro Road.
White Pond continued to provide Maynard with drinking water until it was decommissioned in the 1990s because the system required an investment to be updated to comply with the EPA Surface Water Treatment Rule. Maynard switched entirely to wells for its water supply.
The town still holds water rights to White Pond, and in 2019 discussed reactivating this water supply through the Refuge to diversify the town's water supply. Cost estimates were approximately $20 million for a water treatment plant and $9 million for replacing the 1942 pipeline.
References
{{Massachusetts lakes and ponds
Lakes of Middlesex County, Massachusetts
Hudson, Massachusetts
Maynard, Massachusetts
Stow, Massachusetts
Ponds of Massachusetts
Reservoirs in Massachusetts