Malden River Works, to Better Malden’s Community

The Malden River Works project is a community-led organization in which individuals from all ages work together to build a waterfront park behind the Malden City yard. 

The Malden River Works project started in 2019 and is still going strong as of now. The project consists of many people. Environmental Advocate Karen Buck shares some insight in regards to the project. 

“So, it’s a group of people there’s two different facets. You have the team, which includes the lead designer, and other people, including myself. And then you have the Malden River Work Steering Committee which represents different communities within Malden,” stated Buck.

The project was started by an award from MIT Leventhal which gave them the resources needed to pursue this project without worrying about cost.

“We submitted our concept, our idea, and we won seed money to start the project. The seed money’s been very good because the steering committee, they receive stipends for their time and to help with the community events, funding and that type of thing,” Buck explained.

The estimated amount of money needed to create this park is 13 million dollars through grants and seed money provided to the Water Works program to follow through with the project.

“The Malden River Works project has two components: Restructuring the Malden City Yard (about $6 million) and building a climate resilient park that will also protect the Malden River from the City Yard that will cost about $7 million)” stated Buck. This plays a role of importance because it includes the necessary infrastructure change to the city yard.

Despite the challenges of COVID-19, the River Works program managed to pull through and keep their eyes on the prize and they weren’t going to let anything distract them from their goal.

“Then, you know, of course the pandemic came, so that was kind of an interrupter. Not really though, we had in-person meetings and about 75-100 people showed up to talk about the different concepts. Then we went to Zoom with our public meetings,” said Buck.

When participating in these advanced urbanism projects, memorable moments and achievements are inevitable. Buck claimed that making memories and accomplishments has been the best part of the process. “Well, that’s what the process has been; the best part. So it’s all about reaching out to the community, knocking on doors, going to community events. In the beginning we had proposed three different ideas for the park in the public meeting, people voted for their favorite design. To have the community involved in designing this park just makes people more involved, it reassures that they’re gonna be part of the project,” noted Buck.  

The Malden River Works also shares a fondness for youth voice and action as they give the opportunity for the youth to collaborate and develop their critical thinking skills as well as seeing how this incredible project really comes into place and how the steps are taken throughout the process. 

“It’s so important because this park is for the youth, for families and everybody. But really, the youth voice is so important with the Malden River [and] with the environment because you’re inheriting this. We want buy-in from everybody, but with the youth being more involved, people listen. They’re like, ‘oh, okay.’ They’re interested in it, they take it into consideration,” stated Buck.

The majority of the team involved in this project are representatives of the Mystic River Watershed Association. The Mystic River Watershed Association is a nonprofit organization that works to promote a healthy Mystic River and other bodies of water in Boston.

Most of the Mystic River Watershed Association is north of Boston so it contains cities from Arlington, Belmont, Boston,(Charlestown & East Boston), Burlington, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Lexington, Malden, Medford, Melrose, Reading, Revere, Somerville, Stoneham, Wakefield, Watertown, Wilmington, Winchester, Winthrop, Woburn. “Their main mission is to, “restore the Mystic River and protect its tributaries for the benefit of present and future generations and to celebrate the value, importance and great beauty of these natural resources,” claimed Buck. (Via the MRW Website https://www.maldenriverworks.org/team) 

The Mystic River Watershed Association acts as a “mothership” for another organization that is the creator of the Malden River works called the “Friends of the Malden River”. The Mystic River Watershed Association is one member of the project team and the “Friends of Malden River” are another member of the Malden River Works team which is in partnership with the Mystic River Watershed Association.

Malden River works has a few goals in mind after working consecutively for around five to six years on this amazing community project.

“The goal is to have a continuous walkway around the whole river that would connect with the Mystic River Greenway. We would have over 25 miles of connected paths for bicycles and pedestrians and strollers etc, so that’s one of our goals,” Buck claimed.

“We also wanna make sure that the river stays clean. The Malden River was always an industrial dumping ground, so it’s been healing over the years. We had the Clean Water Act of 1972, which got rid of a lot of those big polluters. We still have polluted storm water that enters the river, so during rainfalls, the river is not so clean. Big rainfalls and also a lot of trash kind of flows from the streets into the catch basins, the storm drains, and then into the, directly into the river,” Buck stated.

“So environmental protection, keeping it clean and public access is huge because the public will be and are the best stewards for our environment,” Buck stated passionately.

The Malden River Works have designers and work to develop blueprints and visuals of what the Park will look like after everything in the process is finished. 

Buck states that they are at “90% of design” and are almost finished with the blueprints and are initially ready to take steps in actual construction and bidding of the park itself. The 10% of the design is to make sure there aren’t any faulty mistakes, or in case something comes up and they need to change gears.

There are two parts of this project, cleaning up the city yard which was initially an industrial wasteland for random things to get dumped there, and designing and building the waterfront park. “So the one part is for the city yard, the department of public works. That’s where all the trucks are that plow and pick up garbage and all of that. It’s a dirty site, and behind the city yard was a wasteland. It’s just kind of a dumping ground for a city yard,” Buck said.

Beneficial community projects like these don’t just fall out of the sky, and it’s important we highlight and recognize the hard work and dedication these individuals have conveyed and show them full support. Check out the Malden River Water Works website (https://www.maldenriverworks.org/project) for more information about this current project, updates on future projects, the staff, and other plans they have up their sleeves.