Sudbury Reservoir

Metropolitan Water District system, 1910

The Sudbury Reservoir (2.02 square miles) is a former Boston metropolitan water reservoir located in Framingham, Marlborough, Southborough, and Westborough, Massachusetts, USA. It is now a state park administered by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation.

The reservoir was first begun in 1878, as part of a system of reservoirs fed from the Sudbury River to supplement the Lake Cochituate system in Natick. Today's reservoir was created by excavation from 1894-1898, with construction undertaken in sections. It was begun by the City of Boston but completed by the newly formed Metropolitan Water Board. All told, construction required moving about 4.5 million cubic yards of soil and boulders. Water began to fill the reservoir on February 8, 1897, with construction of the reservoir's new Sudbury Dam on the Stony Brook Branch of the Sudbury River completed later that year.

When completed, the reservoir's surface area was 2.02 square miles, its average depth was 17 feet and maximum depth was 65 feet, and its capacity was 7.253 billion gallons. The reservoir was linked to the Wachusett Reservoir on the west by the Wachusett Aqueduct (1898), and to the Weston Reservoir to the east by the Weston Aqueduct (1901).

In 1947 the obsolete Whitehall, Hopkinton, Ashland and Cochituate Reservoirs became state parks, and in 1976 the entire Sudbury System was officially reclassified as an emergency water supply. Today only the Sudbury Reservoir and Foss Reservoir (Framingham Reservoir No. 3) remain as reserve drinking water supplies.

See also

• List of Massachusetts State Parks
• Sudbury Dam Historic District

References

• Metropolitan Water Board (Massachusetts), Annual report, 1898, pages 66-72.
• Science and industry, Volume 6, The Colliery Engineer Company, International Textbook Company : Scranton, Pennsylvania, February-December 1901.
• American Association for the Advancement of Science, A handbook of the principal scientific institutions of Boston and vicinity, Rockwell and Churchill Press, 1898, page 85.
• Sudbury Reservoir (Department of Conservation and Recreation)