Above: My Southborough reader Deb Costine took this photo of a very empty Wachusett Aqueduct this weekend
It’s a bit of a shocking sight. The usually full Wachusett Aqueduct north of Deerfoot Road has been drained of most of its water over the past few days. Several of you emailed asking what was up. Here’s what I found out from DPW Superintendent Karen Galligan.
The MWRA is performing maintenance on the Deerfoot Road Dam. They are lowering the water level so that they can replace wooden planks that are part of the dam (they use these to control the water level). They have to remove the planks slowly and wait for the water to go down, I think they remove them two at a time. So the water will continue to get lower for awhile longer. Once they have removed all of the planks they will replace them with new planks and the water level will come back up – I don’t have a definite timeline.
Galligan also said the MWRA has plans to re-point the stone portion of the dam sometime next year, so we may see water levels this low again sometime next year.
See this post for a photo of the Wachusett Aqueduct when it was full.
