Malden River

The Malden River is a 2.3-mile-long (3.7 km) river in Malden, Medford, and Everett, Massachusetts. It is roughly 675 feet (206 m) wide at its widest point and is very narrow at its smallest point. Its banks are largely occupied by industrial business, and the river is scarcely used or even mentioned. Its water quality is worse than most local waters, including the Mystic River, into which it flows.

Most agree that the river is under-utilized. Projects like Rivers Edge (formerly TeleCom City) hope to promote recreational use of the river's banks. Currently, crew teams, including the Malden High School and the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School, practice on the river because it is never crowded like the Charles River. Also, a state-of-the-art boat house is located on the Malden-Everett line on the west bank of the river, used by the Tufts University rowing team.

The above-ground portion of the Malden River starts behind Canal Street in the southwest corner of Malden, where it is fed by three underground canals (described below). It then flows southward for about 2 miles (3.2 km), forming the border between Medford and Everett before emptying into the Mystic River.

Like the Mystic River, its waters were once brackish and influenced by the tides. The construction of the Amelia Earhart Dam in 1966 has converted it to freshwater and maintained a fairly constant depth. The Malden River is very polluted; not only is it exceedingly turbid, but it contains high numbers of fecal coliform bacteria.

Water quality is further reduced by the use of combined sewer overflow systems, in which storm water and raw sewage share pipes. Thus, in times of high water, raw sewage is fed directly into the river.

The Amelia Earhart Dam, situated on the Mystic River below the mouth of the Malden River, converted the Malden River from a brackish, tidal river, to a non-tidal freshwater river when it was constructed in 1966. The dam was more sophisticated than the simple iron gates of the Craddock Locks, which it replaced. It is a permanent concrete structure with three passages to allow boats to pass through. There is a tower where workers observe incoming boats and open the lock accordingly. The dam is equipped with a pump, and is able to pump freshwater downstream even during high tide to prevent flooding. The river flows backwards at times depending on the dam. It was modeled after the Charles River Dam, which is very similar in structure and purpose. Fish passage has been a problem, as there is no working fish ladder there, but workers do leave the locks open at times to allow fish to pass. There is no pedestrian access to the dam.

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