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Title page of Report of the Joint Special Committee upon the subject of the flowage of meadows on Concord and Sudbury Rivers. Committee formed in 1859 in response to petitions to the Massachusetts legislature by owners of meadow land affected by flooding of the Concord and Sudbury Rivers caused by the Middlesex Canal dam in Billerica, Massachusetts. Committee consisted of two members of the Senate and three members of the House appointed to investigate "the flowage of lands, lying in the towns of Concord, Sudbury, Wayland, Bedford, and Carlisle, and to recommend such changes and improvements in said flowage as they may deem requisite for the public good and the owners of said lands." In its 1860 printed report, the committee supported the petitioners and recommended the reduction in height of the dam. Although an act was passed in 1860 to reduce the dam, the mill owners whose profits depended on the functioning of the Middlesex Canal obtained a stay of execution, and the act in favor of the petitioners was repealed in 1862. Contains [5] leaves of plates (all folded) : charts, maps, plans.