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Posts tagged as “pollution”

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

(Archive February 2019) Recycling: The Drastic Plastic Issue

By editorialteam on April 3, 2025

By Cassie Roy | Observer Contributor

Two projects, Larry the plastic bag sea turtle (above) and the giant plastic water bottle (below) can be found on campus. Each promotes awareness of the growing problems with plastic pollution.
Photos by Thomas Hill Jr.
The sign explaining Larry the plastic turtle
Photo by Thomas Hill Jr.

Plastic- we all know it, we all use it, we all buy it, but that’s the problem.

According to plastic-pollution.org, over 8.3 billion tons of plastic resides on our Earth. A study conducted in 2013 showed that an average of approximately 299 million tons of plastic gets produced and added onto the growing pile of waste each year. That same study estimated that by 2025 we would be able to line one hundred plastic bags per foot along every coastline on Earth. That’s about 372,000 miles of land covered in waste that will take over five hundred years to be broken down and recycled back into the Earth. read more

PFAS Pollution

By editorialteam on April 26, 2024

Forever Chemicals Threaten Westminster

By Elysian Alder | Editor-in-Chief

In February of 2022, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) found that private drinking water wells in homes along Bean Porridge Hill Road in Westminster had PFAS levels 50 times what state regulations consider safe to drink. “PFAS have been found in at least 169 public water systems in 95 cities and towns, and most of them have exceeded the state’s legal limit,” explained Madison Latiolais, a community organizer working for Community Action Works, an environmental nonprofit based in Boston that provides training and resources to communities and individuals with environmental concerns. “Westminster has some of the highest levels of PFAS in Massachusetts,” she added. The contamination concerns in Westminster prompt the question: How does Mount Wachusett Community College address water safety? read more