Maynard's water needs, past, present and future

SUMMARY: Maynard initiated town water in 1889 with White Pond (Hudson/Stow border) as the source. Wells were added starting in 1965 and White Pond discontinued in 1990. Maynard currently operates seven wells at three well fields. Its water needs going forward depend on population predictions; stay under 12,000 (currently about 11,000) and the town can probably make do with adding wells at existing sites, but grow more than that and it may need to either revive White Pond or connect to the Quabbin Reservoir system. Regardless of sources, the existing treatment facilities need upgrading.

Undated aerial photo of Maynard's two water tanks atop Summer
Hill before a roof was added to the original, 1889 tank.
Photo courtesy of Maynard Historical Society Archive.

During the early 1800s Assabet Village was a small community flanking the Assabet River, with bridges crossing at what are now Route 117 and Mill Street. Water supply was via wells that reached aquafers at depths of 30-80 feet. Wells were either private or else public wells that homeowners could visit with barrels on wagons or sleds. Starting in 1847 the village grew rapidly with the beginning and expansion of the woolen mill, reaching a population of 2,700 by the 1890 census. Delivering piped water directly to homes and businesses and fire hydrants had started just a year earlier. 

That system involved water flowing from White Pond to Maynard, then being pumped to an open-to-the air tank able to hold 1.5 million gallons constructed atop Summer Hill. From that high point, gravity provides the water pressure to all parts of Maynard. The original pipeline was replaced in 1942. The town's annual reports describe the expansion of the water system as the population grew through decades, including adding a roof to the original tank and construction of a second water tank in 1972. The mill had its own, smaller, water tank, near Amory Maynard's mansion.

Water is provided to hundreds 
of fire hydrants. Color indicates
water flow capacity, with blue 
best, then green, yellow and red.

Maynard was drilling test wells as early as 1957 to supplement pond water. Massachusetts suffered a multi-year drought in the early 1960s, causing a perilously low water level at White Pond. Toward the end of 1964, Robert Quirk drilled a successful well in the Old Marlborough Road area and started selling water to the town. In following years land was seized by eminent domain so as to create well fields and water treatment plants (WTPs) at Old Marlboro Road (OMR) starting in 1967, and Green Meadow (GM) in 1975. These accessed shallow aquifers at depths under 80 feet. In 2000, a third well field and treatment plant were added at Rockland Avenue (RA) to access bedrock water at 400 feet. Collectively, there are seven active wells that have a capacity to deliver an average of 1.1 million gallons per day (MGD), which exceeds Maynard's current needs.  

Each WTP faces unique challenges, including aging infrastructure, water quality issues, and regulatory compliance requirements. The primary water quality concerns include discoloring iron and manganese, and also per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the water supply, as well as elevated chlorine disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in the distribution system. These water supply issues have caused operational difficulties at the WTPs, leading the Town to limit rate of withdrawal of well water in order to improve water quality. 

PFAS, sometimes referred to as "forever chemicals," have for decades been used in food packaging and household products, stain-resistant furniture and fire extinguishing foam, and subsequently widely contaminate food and water supplies. Exposure to PFAS appears to have multiple, serious, health consequences. Massachusetts has a current upper limit of 20 nanograms per liter (also described as part per trillion) for PFAS in water supplies. Town reports show Maynard is below that limit (roughly one-half of MA communities - mostly in the east - are not). However, the federal Environmental Protection Agency is considering enforcing a lower limit of 10 ng/L in the future. There are commercially available PFAS filter system for use at the municipal level and for residences that reply on private wells. All of Maynard's WTPs would need to be improved to comply with the proposed limit. 

Map of central Massachusetts showing
Quabbin Reservoir and Framingham, with a 
pipeline needed from Framingham to Maynard

Currently, usage is about 50 gallons per person per day. Pipe leakage is under ten percent (a significant improvement from 10 or 20 years ago). Additions to housing in the form of single family homes, town houses, condominiums and apartments are either in progress, planned, or projected. There are contradictory estimates of the extent of this future demand. Current population is a tad under 11,000. One report predicts a population plateau at about 11,500, in which case existing wellfields - perhaps with adding a well or two - will suffice. However, the more recent report, a 50-year MasterPlan, at https://www.townofmaynard-ma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/4162/Maynard-Master-Plan-2025-Final-w-appendices?bidId= projects out to 2075 and anticipates for a much higher population, on the order of 16,000 to 19,000 (modeled on past population increases in Waltham). 

A second rationale for increasing capacity is to have redundancy in case an existing well fails. Either reason would mean adding either a Quabbin Reservoir connection north from Framingham or reactivating White Pond. Quabbin does not have measurable PFAS contamination but the same cannot be said for White Pond. These options would be at least 20 years in the future at a cost exceeding $50 million. Included in that would be creation of a new water treatment plant to process water from OMR, GM and the new pipeline. 

In recent years, Maynard has issued a mandatory "Seasonal Water Use Restriction" either time-of-day limiting or prohibiting non-essential outdoor water use, i.e., lawn and garden watering, from May through September. The purpose of time-of-day restriction that still allows watering either before 9:00 a.m. and after 5:00 p.m. is to curtail peak daytime use; otherwise Maynard would have to extract a higher volume per hour with the consequence of higher iron and manganese content that requires more demineralization to prevent discolored water. Last year, because of regional drought, the restriction started in April and prohibited any watering Monday through Friday.    

During a low-water moment, summer of 2015, yours
truly stepped into the Assabet River at the Rail
Trail bridge and walked to the Mill Street bridge.
Sights along the way included an active beaver lodge.

Water in, water out. The great majority of water supplied to Maynard ends up as wastewater, either to septic systems or processed and discharged to the Assabet River. As described above, the town's centralized water supply system dates back to 1889, but Maynard did not create a wastewater collection and treatment system until about 40 years later. The system was upgraded in the 1970s, but still inadequate, as were the discharges from several wastewater treatment facilities in upriver towns. 

In 1982 an author described the dam-created pond north of Powdermill Road on the Maynard-Acton border as "...the river smell is nauseating, reeking like an unpumped-out campground outhouse times ten." Upriver newspapers referred to the river as the "state cesspool." Key to the problem was the Assabet being less of a river and more of a series of ponds created by factory mill dams. Industrial discharges and wastewater nitrogen and phosphorus were trapped in the ponds' sediments rather than being flushed by spring floods, leading to eutrophic algae blooms, rotting plant matter and fishkills. Major wastewater treatment upgrades starting in the 1980s now mean that wastewater discharges are cleaner than the river it is put in to, and the net effect up and down the river is boatable and approaching swimmable. 

Learn more about the Assabet, Sudbury and Concord rivers at https://oars3rivers.org/ 

 

Maynard's Main Street Bridge Status

Maynard's Main Street bridge is tentatively scheduled for replacement starting the summer of 2028. The estimated budget is $8.4 million, a far cry from the $20,000 that the bridge it will be replacing cost back in 1922 (or the original, $1,310 in 1849).

A bridge is rated “structurally deficient” if its deck, superstructure, or substructure is rated in poor condition, which is a rating of 4 or below on the National Bridge Inspection Standards (NBIS) rating scale. Per website https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbis.cfm, "...the NBIS are the standards established over the safety inspections of highway bridges on public roads throughout the United States. The U.S. Congress originally required the Secretary of Transportation to establish these standards in 1968. The original NBIS was published in 1971, creating our Nation's first nationally coordinated bridge inspection program. Periodic and thorough inspections of our Nation's bridges are necessary to maintain safe bridge operation and prevent structural and functional failures. Updates to the standards have been made over the years, most recently in 2022. These updates recognize technological advancements, research results, and experience in administering the inspection program."

Plaque on the Main Street bridge (click to enlarge).
This plaque and one for the Walnut Street bridge
were installed on Armistice Day, November 11, 1923,
 in memory of those who served in the named wars.  

The mass.gov website https://gis.data.mass.gov/datasets/MassDOT::bridges/about has a link to a map of all bridges in Massachusetts with reports of the most recent inspections for each bridge. Maynard has three Assabet River bridges that are more than 100 years old: Walnut Street, Main Street and Route 117/62 toward Stow. The latter is also known as the Ben Smith bridge, as it is not far downstream from the Ben Smith dam. (The dam so-named because it was Ben Smith who sold the land to Amory Maynard and William Knight to build the dam that would power their mill.) These were all constructed as rebar-reinforced concrete bridges, with an expected lifespan of 50-75 years. The Walnut and Route 117/62 bridges were recently scored as six overall, i.e., "Fair", with no four or lower scores for deck, superstructure or substructure. In contrast, the Main Street bridge - constructed in 1922 - had an overall score of four, i.e., "Poor", with a four score for deck and superstructure and five for substructure. The image shows some of the deteriorating concrete.

A search for proposed bridge projects identified #604564 as a replacement of this bridge (#M-10-004), with a planned start date as summer of 2028. The existing bridge has a curb-to-curb with of 36 feet with 6.8 foot sidewalks of both sides. The plan calls for full-depth reconstruction of 300 feet beyond the bridge itself on both approaches, which would include not just Main Street but also the Walnut Street connection. The demolition, removal and replacement will be conducted in stages to always allow one lane of traffic in both directions plus pedestrian access during all of the demolition and construction, much as was accomplished for the Waltham Street bridge a few years back. This may require a temporary sidewalk bridge, as did Waltham.

The 1872 Main Street bridge, standing on Walnut Street and
looking west. The farthest building was "Assabet House",
 a large boarding house demolished in 1962 to make room
for the present-day post office, which opened in 1963. 
Photo courtesy of Maynard Historical Society. 

The estimated cost of the project is on the order of $8.4 million, to be funded primarily through the Federal Transportation Improvement Program. Bridge replacement projects are notoriously slow - state records show initial consideration dating to 2005, then the Notice To Proceed (NTP) to begin negotiating a contract issued in 2022, with actual work-start scheduled for 2028. 

The history of a Main Street bridge over the Assabet River dates back to 1849, with replacements in 1872 and 1922. The 1872 bridge was of steel construction, as was the Walnut Street bridge of the same year. Both were replaced with rebar-reinforced concrete bridges. The contract was awarded to F.B. Saunders of Framingham, who had bid $34,485 to do both bridges, in August of 1922. (The smaller Florida Street bridge had been replaced in 1919 for $6,000.) In the photo, the tracks were for the electric trolley that serviced Hudson, Stow, Maynard and Concord, with a branch to Acton, over the years 1901-1923. 

Main Street bridge (built 1922) photographed from the rail
trail bridge, with the mill buildings in the background. The mill
processed raw wool to make cloth and blankets (1846-1950),
later the home for Digital Equipment Company (1957-1998).

The first bridge owed its existence to the woolen mill. Under the auspices of Amory Maynard and William Knight, a woolen mill was constructed in 1846. At that time there was a railroad line passing through South Acton, connecting Fitchburg to Boston, that had become operational in 1844. The mill, however, was on the south side of the Assabet River, with no convenient way for horse-drawn wagons to bring raw wool in and finished goods out from the railroad station at South Acton. This wooden bridge across the Assabet was completed in 1849 at a cost of $1,310.* It allowed wagons loaded with wool or other goods to more conveniently connect to the road north to South Acton. That road (now Route 27) also crossed Concord Street, thus providing a connection to Concord to the east and Stow to the west. The east/west road was ancient, as on April 19, 1775, Stow Minutemen had marched on it toward Concord to confront the British troops that had forayed out from Boston to seize guns and other militia supplies.  

*By 1850, with a lot of lobbying by Amory Maynard, a railroad spur from South Acton reached what was then informally named Assabet Village (later incorporating as Town of Maynard in 1871), and then extended to Marlborough in 1855. This is now the Assabet River Rail Trail. In Assabet Village, a short railroad spur was created directly into the woolen mill. In addition to transporting raw wool and finished goods, after the Civil War the railroad was delivering coal, and in that way allowing the Assabet Mill to convert from water power to coal-fueled steam engines. The mill also had a coal gasification facility to provide gas for gaslight for the mill and for the town's streetlights, and then later a generator for electric lights. Over the following decades Maynard's mill became the largest woolen mill in New England. It closed in 1950. The mill buildings complex have had various tenants and owners since then, most famously Digital Equipment Corporation (1957-1998), and later, Monster.com.     

Cedar Waxwings and Winterberry

Cedar Waxwing; note 'wax-like' deposits
at tips of wings and tail.

In Acton, MA, at the end of Sylvia Street (a dead end road on the west side of Route 27 as one heads toward Maynard) there is a small parking lot and a pedestrian ramp providing access to the Assabet River Rail Trail. As one descends the ramp, looking over the fence, there is a row of winterberry bushes.

Winterberry is a variety of holly that loses its leaves in the fall but retains its berries into winter. It is a popular garden plant for providing winter color. Like other holly varieties, a few male plants are required if the female plants are to bear fruit.  

I anticipated seeing the leaf-bare winterberry branches sporting a generous display of red berries. Instead, they looked picked over. And then I saw the culprits. A flock of about 20-25 Cedar Waxwings were alternating between sunning themselves in the branches of a near-by tree and diving down into the shade to sample the berries. 

Cedar Waxwings and Robins consume winterberry berries but most of the over-wintering bird species such as Sparrows, Cardinals and Blue Jays do not. Waxwings are not long-distance migrators, but they do tend to head south - to our area - in winter. 

Robins, in contrast, summer here but in the past almost all migrated south for winter, returning in spring. (Hence, "First robin of spring.") However, what with native Winterberry and invasive plants that provide berries - for example Multi-flora rose and Oriental bittersweet - significant numbers of Robins stay year-round. They travel in flocks in winter, and can clear a patch of winterberries in the course of an afternoon.  

Robin in a Winterberry thicket

Winterberry and holly berries are mildly toxic to humans and dogs and cats, in humans causing nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea. 

  

Trail of Flowers Failures

Volunteer daffodil planters, fall of 2018

Hundreds of Mark's columns from his 12 years writing for the Beacon-Villager are accessible at maynardlifeoutdoors.com. The website includes an article directory by category (History, Nature, etc.). 

The Trail of Flowers (TOF) project (www.trailofflowers.com) had its beginnings when more than a dozen volunteers showed up in the fall of 2018 at the Marble Farm historic site to plant thousand of daffodils. Since then, close to $12,000 has been raised and spent to plant flowering bulbs, shrubs and trees at three sites in Acton, four in Maynard and two in Marlborough, all adjacent to the Assabet River Rail Trail (ARRT). Volunteers have been recruited via high school community service programs, garden clubs and residents interest in TOF. The Town of Hudson approved a site, but an inability to get a commitment from any volunteer group in Hudson led to that expansion being tabled. 

In the intervening years, amongst planting successes, there have been failures. Fall of 2021, nine small Kousa dogwoods were planted along High Street. These grew slowly, reaching heights of four to nine feet by fall of 2024. Winter of 2024-25 was a low snow year, and this gave rabbits access to the lower trunks of the trees. Come spring of 2025, all of the trees showed some gnawing damage, with two so extensive that no leaves appeared. Over the summer both of those put out new growth from the ground. A third - one of the tallest - mysteriously died in mid-summer. The remaining six had a sprinkling of flowers, with hopes for more as the trees mature, but there is always the risk of further rabbit depravations. Rabbits also decimated Eagle Scout planted weigela along High Street, but all of the plants recovered.

On the east side of where the Rail Trail crosses the river in Maynard there is a modest-sized grassy area with five large granite blocks - remnants of the railroad bridge that once crossed at the same site. In the fall of 2019 and again in 2020, tulip and grape hyacinth bulbs were planted amongst the blocks. Each year, the initial spring blooming was strong, but by the second spring the tulips were scant and the hyacinths diminished. By the third spring - worse. It is possible that the soil was contaminated from the railroad era's deposits of lead (from burning coal) and arsenic (used as a weed herbicide). There are no plans to try again. 

Extensive plantings between Summer and Concord streets suffer from competition from native and invasive species. At the north end, Virginia creeper vines overgrow the daylily bed unless cut back. Pokeweed pops up throughout. Further south, a large swath of Japanese knotweed (invasive) threatens daylily and iris plantings. English ivy is a slow-motion invasive ground cover that also forms vines which cling to tree trunks, causing damage. Maple trees overshade hophornbean trees, including the currently signed "Very Sad Tree." On a positive note, plantings of forsythia and beauty bush on the east side are thriving, and in doing so, contribute to blocking the view of the Enterprise and Emerald Acres parking areas. In time, the beauty bushes will be more than ten feet tall and wide. In late June these are covered in pink flowers favored by bees, bumblebees and hummingbirds. The forsythia, while celebrating early spring in yellow, are not pollinator friendly.

Winterberry is related to holly; it differs in that
the leaves fall off for winter. Male plants are
needed for the female plants to have berries.

In Acton, by the Sylvia Street parking area and access ramp, there have been a few failures, but in the main, the variety of flowering shrubs and trees are doing well. The row of winterberry display red berries in winter until either robins or cedar waxwings put in a hungry appearance. For robins, this used to mean "first robins of spring" but now ravenous hordes of non-migrating robins stay all winter, eating winterberry, Oriental bittersweet, multiflora rose hips, holly and juniper berries, etc.   

Also in Acton, north of the bridge over Fort Pond Creek, a long row of flowering "Double-Take" quince planted in the spring of 2024 are doing poorly. The summer drought hindered growth despite periodic watering. That winter saw deprivations by rabbits, which target the protein-rich bud ends of low branches, and then the summer drought of 2025 was an additional setback. There may also be an (untested) soil problem, as quince prefer slightly acidic soil. The growing season of 2026 may require soil treatment, fertilizer and weekly watering if the poorly-looking, foot-tall plants are ever to reach the promised height and width of four feet, creating, ideally, a striking flowering hedge. At one end of the row, a few flowering ninebark are doing somewhat better.

In Marlborough, six beauty bush plants, each about a foot tall, were planted at three locations near the south end of the Hudson/Marlborough end of ARRT in the fall of 2021. Despite notifying Marlborough's Dept. Public Works of the plantings and marking the plants with stakes, a visit during the summer of the next year found the stakes removed and the plants mowed over. The sites have not been since revisited to discover whether any recovered from the roots or continue to be mowed as part of DPW maintenance. A planting of daffodils with the help of the Marlborough Garden Club and another of grape hyacinth by Marlborough Girl Scouts probably both need refreshing.    

Tulips and sculpture inside the fence
at the Marble Farm Historic Site

Tulips, unless planted in the best of growing conditions, fail after a few years. Typically, a large bed of the same type will display height-, size- and timing-matched blooms the first year. By second year there may be variations. By third year some will refuse to bloom at all, instead displaying only one large leaf. By fourth year, if not dug up and all bulbs discarded and replaced, the entire bed may have failed. Part of the tulip plantings inside the fence at the Marble Farm Historic Site failed prematurely in the second year, so that bed was dug up and replanted with 200 bulbs in the fall of 2025. Fingers crossed for a good display next spring.    

Extensive tree plantings pre-date Trail of Flowers. Clearing space for construction of the Rail Trail in Maynard included removal of more than 600 trees of more than four inches in diameter that had grown next to and between the rails in the 50+ years since the last train passed. The budget to create the trail included planting of 600 trees in Acton and Maynard in 2017, at a cost of about $200,000. Roughly 15% died from being planted in areas too wet, too dry, too shaded, etc. Others were smothered by over-growing Oriental bittersweet vines. However, the majority are thriving; the firs and spruces, initially 5-6 feet tall, are mostly 10-15 feet tall as of fall 2025.

Tulip trees (yellow poplars) that were initially 2-3 inches in diameter are now topping 6 inches. Four of these are in the green-space south of Concord Street. Once mature, they will display tulip-shaped flowers in spring, a striking yellow leaf color in fall, and can easily top 75 feet in height. Tulip trees are messy - dropping flowers, sap, leaves and wind-snapped branches - and are also susceptible to tipping over in strong wind storms. 

TOF donations welcome! Checks to be made out to Assabet River Rail Trail Inc and mailed to David Mark, 10 Maple Street, Maynard MA 01754. (ARRT is the parent organization for Trail of Flowers, and is a 501(c)(3) organization.) Or donate via PayPal to damark51@gmail.com or Venmo to www.venmo.com/u/DavidAMark51.  

 

  

Maynard's House Prices

In my 2011 book "Maynard:History and Life Outdoors" I included an observation on comparing Maynard to the neighboring towns of Acton, Concord, Sudbury and Stow. That table included area, population, population per square mile, percent rentals, median house prices and median household income. The information was sourced from 2010 data from city-data.com. The question, then, is how have things changed over the intervening 15 years? 

  TOWN      AREA    POPULATION   POP/SQ MI   %RENTALS   MED. HOUSE   MED. INCOME

   Maynard     5.2 sq.mi.    10,100             1,942              30%              $308,000           $  78,100

   Acton        19.8               20,400            1,030               24                   536,000             117,500

   Concord    25.0               17,500               700               19                   725,000             123,200

   Sudbury    24.3               17,300               710                 8                   692,000             152,200

   Stow         17.6                 6,100                350              13                   485,000              123,600

Maple Street house purchased from builder in 1870. The left side
displays additions, as the first floor replaced a porch with a TV room 
on a concrete slab, and the second floor replaced an attic room
with a bathroom and a walk-in closet with a clothes washer/dryer. Behind 
the TV room, the kitchen was extended 12 feet past the foundation. The
original purchase price in 1870 was $2,430; estimate now >$700,000.

From the above, one could have referred to Maynard as "the low cost hole in the middle of a high cost donut." As far as housing costs, the high-to-low order was Concord, Sudbury, Acton, Stow and Maynard, with the first two having a median house value of more than twice that of Maynard. For a recent year, city-data is incomplete on median values, but Zillow provides average values for 2025 through September. The high-to-low order is the same: Concord $1,440,000, Sudbury $1,135,000, Acton $864,000, Stow $811,000, and lastly Maynard at $600,000.  

Average sales prices cannot be directly compared to median sales prices because a handful of extra-high sales will shift the average higher than the median (which is a value with half of sales above and half below). In Concord, there are sales of homes in the multiple-millions. Even in Maynard, in 2025 there have already been sales of homes, mostly much newer and larger than most of Maynard's housing stock, and near the Sudbury border, in the range of  $850,000 to $950,000. Regardless, the general picture is that Maynard, while having crept comparatively closer to the others, is still a low-cost option. 

As for population growth, the 2020 census pegged Maynard at 10,745, Acton at 24,021, Concord at 18,491, Sudbury at 18,934 and Stow at 7,174. Thus, Acton and Stow grew by about 17% and the others under 10%. Maynard has since crossed 11,000 (its highest population ever) with the addition of several apartment projects at Maynard Crossing and elsewhere, but still under 10% growth compared to 2010. Given the limited availability of developable land, and perhaps limits on its water supply, Maynard may never top 12,000. Note that for Massachusetts as a whole, predictions for the next 25 years are no population growth - basically flat at seven million. 

On an interesting local history note, because Maynard was an early industry town surrounded by farm and orchard towns, until after World War II the population of Maynard was larger than the combined populations of Acton, Stow and Sudbury. Only after WWII did those become fast-growing commuter suburbs.

Predicting the future of housing prices is difficult. Recent government policy on legal immigration and actions against non-legal immigration will have a massive effect on U.S. population predictions, and thus on demand for housing; the latter affecting whether the value of housing increases faster, the same or lower than the inflation rate. For a country with no immigration, population maintenance calls for 2.1 births per woman. Many countries - including the U.S. - are now well below this rate.* Countries in Europe and the far East have 'empty' villages with no children being born, and have shrinking cities. For the United States - until this year - immigration (legal and illegal) compensated for the declining birth rate, but with immigration stalled and birthrates in immigrant families becoming Americanized, it is not impossible to imagine that inflation-adjusted housing prices could peak in the future and decline thereafter, paralleling a peak and then a decline in population.

Japan is a good example, with population peaking circa 2010 at 128 million and a decline expected to reach 106 million by 2050. Prolonged low birth rates lead to a higher percentage of older people in the total population. Already, an estimated 10 million house properties are empty - abandoned by heirs when their aged parents die.

*At https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/country-comparison/ the United States ranks 133rd with 1.84 births per woman. Japan is at 1.40 and South Korea at 1.12.