Drove past the old mill site in Lowell last month and the "cleanup done" sign is bolted to a chain link fence hiding 30 years of paperwork nobody reads

Lee Price · 2026-10-18T07:55:03.933778+00:00

I was doing a mulch job two streets over and took my lunch at the park by the canal. There's a sign saying the site is capped and safe. Fine. But a guy walking his dog told me the public file on it fills a whole shelf at the library and the actual testing reports are buried in appendix 9 or something. So I pulled the file. He wasn't kidding. The headline in 2019 was "site cleaned up." The appendix says they tested 4 spots for the stuff that matters and 60 for the stuff that doesn't. Four samples for a whole mill site. I'm not saying it's a cover up. I'm saying the story ended way before the paperwork did, and nobody at the paper stuck around for appendix 9. How often do you go back and read the actual report after a headline like that?

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Drove past the old mill site in Lowell last month and the "cleanup done" sign is bolted to a chain link fence hiding 30 years of paperwork nobody reads | Behind the Headlines - Vivisector