The Sluice Pond Association organizes events and activities for members of the 165 households that meander along the shoreline of this 55+ acre urban pond located in Lynn, Massachusetts. Along with neighbors and the general public who use the pond for boating, fishing and swimming, members of the Sluice Pond Association are volunteers in the preservation of this natural resource.

Sluice Pond Association (Sluice Pond Association information)

Up-coming Sluice Pond Yardsale (click for information)

HISTORY OF SLUICE POND ASSOCIATION

The Sluice Pond Association began in the 1950s as a social group of pond abutters and has remained active through several iterations of organizational growth and state/federal recognition of the organization.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s the Association mounted it’s first effort to eradicate the weeds from Eels Cove  where a primary source of water for Sluice Pond feeds in from the Cedar Brook.  There has been a great deal of concern over the years that there may be inappropriate discharge to the pond from housing developments further upstream. This has not been substantiated by water quality measurements and consultants with Aquatic Control Technology have described a natural process of bubble formation due to weed activity that looks similar to soap suds in the cove. However, reports that one or more pond abutters have not tied into city sewer lines remains a concern. In the early 1980s, that part of the pond was manually dredged by boat, a process too costly and not effective enough to match today’s chemical treatment of weeds.

In the late 1800s, there was an assessment of the ponds fed by Cedar Brook and forming the “Strawberry Chain” of ponds that flow to the Atlantic Ocean through Lynn. It showed that Sluice Pond had the purest water and the pond was considered for the town water supply. A decision was made instead to create the largely unnatural occurring  ponds within the Lynn Woods Reservation; Walden’s Pond, Breeds Pond, Birch Pond that are used as water supply sources in Lynn and surrounding communities.  Naturally formed ponds from the Cedar Brook (Cedar Pond, Sluice Pond, Flax Pond, Goldfish Pond and the Floating Bridge Pond) are maintained for recreational purposes by abutters and the City of Lynn. Sluice Pond is currently under review as one of the few glacially formed ponds in the Northeast.