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Posts tagged as “gardner”

Future of Gardner Sludge Dump Raises Concerns for Local Residents

By editorialteam on April 11, 2025

By Wayne Jurgeleit
Assistant Editor

The toxic sludge in question.
Photo from sciencedirect.com

Sewage sludge, a byproduct of wastewater treatment, presents significant environmental and public health challenges. Wastewater and stormwater flow into treatment facilities, where solid wastes are separated from liquids through settling and then decomposed by bacteria. These processed solids—sewage sludge—contain numerous hazardous materials, including household, medical, chemical, and industrial waste.

Once treated, sewage sludge is dried and disposed of in landfills. This “chemical soup” is laden with toxic compounds, nanomaterials, hormones, and dangerous pathogens. When a landfill reaches capacity, the site is capped, and the extremely slow process of breaking down these substances to safe levels begins. While sanitation processes mitigate some health risks, chemicals like PCBs, flame retardants, heavy metals, and endocrine disruptors, many of which are carcinogens, are not filtered out. Additionally, landfills are vulnerable to leaks caused by severe weather and aging infrastructure. read more

A Mansion Turned Murderous

By editorialteam on October 30, 2022

Visitors Relay Paranormal Activity at SK Pierce Victorian Mansion

By Sandy Oser | Observer Contributor

According to the SK Pierce Haunted Mansion website, around the end of the 1880s, Sylvester Pierce, a businessman whose furniture company brought them to Gardner, decided to build a mansion. The mansion itself, 7000 square feet, was considered extravagant. Now, it’s considered one of the most haunted places in Massachusetts.

Currently open to public tours, the website explained that visitors have witnessed “voices,” “moving furniture,” “slamming doors,” and much more. However, the rest you may just have to witness yourself, just like Gardner resident Joanne Melvin and her daughter Olivia Warner. read more

Artistic Crime

By editorialteam on April 6, 2022

Museum Curator and Local Artist Express Views on Graffiti

By Shaye McKeen | Assistant Editor

Art and crime, a mysterious mixture of expression and struggle–the origins of spray-paint graffiti, an art form that began in the New York projects, which can often be traced back to the 1960s in the Bronx, where African Americans attempted to reclaim their place in society which was previously barred by segregation.

Current perspectives surrounding graffiti art vary, as the act of creating graffiti art in its traditional sense of using various buildings and structures as its canvas is inherently illegal. Marjorie Rawle, an Assistant Curator for the Fitchburg Art Museum, offers her insight on the form of art’s ethos: read more