About
The goal of this site to act as a resource to everyone with a stake or interest in the future of the the ponds and brooks that make up the Lake Cochituate watershed.
This includes Fisk Pond (or Fiske if you prefer) to the South of Lake Cochituate which is in turn made up of the North, Middle and South Ponds (and which combined were earlier known as Long Pond). I’ve also added Dudley Pond which technically drains into the Subdbury through Dudley Brook – my logic for this is tenuous as the Pond was connected to the lakes through an 18 in pipe when Lake Cochituate was used as a secondary water reservoir for Boston during the latter half of the 19th century.
Dug Pond, not 100 yards South of Fisk Pond, might also be a candidate except it actually is a part of the Charles River watershed.
Farm Pond might also be a candidate as at one point in the late nineteenth century the Sudbury River was temporarily connected to Lake Cochituate through Farm Pond and Beaver Dam Brook presumably to increase the levels of the Lake to supply Boston with water.
The Lake Cochituate watershed includes Beaver Dam Brook and Course Brook to the South that feed into South Pond from as far away as Ashland and Sherborn; Pegan Brook, now known as Pegan Cove, which also feeds South Pond; and Snake Brook that flows into the connector between North and Middle Ponds. Ultimately Lake Cochituate drains through Cochituate Brook where it is joined by an un-named tributary before flowing into the Subdbury River.
Unfortunately it also includes hundreds of storm drains that gather the rain runoff and everything else that is carried along with it: from aging or poorly maintained septic systems, to the lawn fertilizers and pesticides that we use in our yards, and the salt and other chemicals that we use on our streets in the acres of parking lots of the office buildings and malls that are a part of the watershed. As was discovered last Spring, it can also include the oil and chemicals from a broken transformer on the abandoned paperboard plant in downtown Natick.
There is also the legacy of ignorance or indifference from the chemicals that found their way into the Lake from the Natick Army Labs in the ’50′s and ’60′s and from the dozens of leather factories and other industrial properties that polluted the watershed in the 18th and 19th century.
At the moment this site does not include the Old Wayland Reservoir on Snake Brook; nor does it include Waushakum Pond in Ashland or Gleason Pond in Framingham, both of which feed into Beaver Dam Brook.
There are some other things that you should know about this site:
- You can comment on posts and receive news and updates by mail if you register with the site. See details under “Participate“
- I reserve the right to block comments that are offensive because of language or extreme view, or if they are completely off topic. I’ll create a rules page where people can leave comments if they believe this is not the case. If you have a desire to rant anonymously, the sites where most news is sourced would I’m sure be willing to accommodate you.
- This is not an editorial or opinion site per se, and items will be included as reported. That’s not to say I don’t have an opinion, however I will add these in comments under my own name with other registered subscribers.
- From time-to-time, I may ask or allow guest posts that can give perspective to some of the issues. If you would like to make such a post, please contact me. Be aware, I’m not interested in opinion-pieces as this is the role of comments.
- In addition to this site, I’ve created a Group on flickr which anyone can join and post their pictures.
- We will also display the pictures here in the photos section of the site. We have no particular allegiance to flikr so if you have, or would like to set up a group on another service like Picassa, just drop me a note and I’ll add them. I’m also working on a facebook application which can be used to post pictures.
- Finally, if your group would like to use this site to publish news and events, let me know and I’ll set your permissions to allow you to do so directly. In addition, if your group would like to use WordPress for your own site let me know, I host a number of are nonprofits for free that use WordPress.
If there is additional information or links that you think would make the site more valuable, please don’t hesitate to contact me. If you have some WordPress skills and would like to help maintain and curate the site, I’d also be interested; just drop me a note.
