White Pond conditions this summer: plenty of overcrowding, litter and bikes

A recent Concord Bridge article on the Town of Concord’s public beach gave a false picture of White Pond conditions this summer. By focusing only on the beach and not Sachem’s Cove or surrounding areas, the article made it sound like White Pond residents had raised a false alarm; this is inaccurate and a public disservice. Outside the Town’s beach area, White Pond faces ongoing challenges.

The popular and unregulated Sachem’s Cove conservation area has seen regular overcrowding and litter this summer. The police have been called at least six times and visitors leave behind towels, pizza boxes, slippers, ropes from impromptu rope swings, bottles and other debris. We are not posting pictures of individuals or animals for privacy reasons.

Left alone, these all end up in the pond after the next big rain. The Town of Concord continues to have no people management plan for the pond, something that Town committees have called for from 2015 to 2025.

Bikes are still being used regularly on White Pond trails. The Town recently put up new “No Bike” signs; these are entirely ignored. There have been bike tire marks on multiple parts of the trails in the last weeks.

Concerns about the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail opening up more parts of White Pond to visitors have been well founded. There is an obvious increase in pond visitors from the trail, with walkers and bikers seen carrying towels on their way to the conservation land Cove area. On the other hand, concerns about substantially more visitors from the large new developments on Route 117 have not materialized; while some new residents venture down to the pond, there has not been a large influx of new people.

The Concord Bridge article from July 15, 2025, entitled “At White Pond, manageable crowds ease into summer,” painted the wrong picture. The article focused exclusively on the Town’s beach and stated that “As of early this month, a feared crush of visitors generated by the state’s closure of Walden Pond’s main beach still hadn’t materialized.” Please come check out the Cove on a nice summer day to see for yourself what is happening beyond the Recreation Department’s purview. These are not "manageable crowds" as the Bridge’s headline said, and which apply to the public beach only. We sent a letter to the editor that was not published and spoke with the article’s author who said they would follow up, which has not happened. This is a public disservice.

We wonder what it will take for the Town of Concord to take people management around White Pond seriously? The one Ranger was never that helpful. The signs are not working. The Town continues to give lip service to the importance of the pond while taking actions that fail to deliver.

By contrast, a large fallen tree was removed from the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail near Powdermill Road the same day it fell on Monday, August 11. If the Town invested even half of their energy in clearing a tree for the biker crowd, White Pond and the trails around it would be in much better shape.

After a decade of asking, explaining, presenting and cajoling, what a shame this topic needs to be brought up again.