For all the years I’ve been prowling the Neponset, there is plenty I haven’t seen, particularly in the upper watershed. Here’s the river skirting an old linoleum factory upstream of Morse St. in Norwood:

This is about as beat-up and uninviting as the river gets. Here’s the same reach just a bit downstream:

If you consider that a river, like a person, can be abused, then this is a crime scene of sorts, except that the crime happened long ago, and everyone has forgotten about it. Here’s Kerry, our Advocacy Director, at a siding just up the hill, where trains no longer stop:

The only thing moving, in fact, was the river, and the water looked surprisingly clean, as if it had just come off of Moose Hill:

But the nastiness wasn’t quite done with; here’s a rivulet of gray stuff I found seeping into the channel:

It was coming from this suspicious culvert just up the bank:

The size of the scour pit indicates it sometimes flows a lot stronger.

I wanted to go further, but the factory was closing in on me:

I didn’t feel comfortable following the channel through here:

So I walked around the building, and saw this:

Believe it or not, this is a picture of the river:  I believe it’s enclosed by the white guardrails on the left and flows left to right under the road, as you might guess from this view through the gate:

But I’d had enough ugly for one day, and I left.

April 2018  —  Tom Palmer, Willett Pond Manager