Lee — The annual Riverfest will be held at the First Congregational Church park from noon to 6 p.m on Sunday, August 14.
The event, a benefit for the Housatonic River Initiative, will include performances from David Reed, Vicky True, Steve Adams, Chris Merenda and The Wheel, Hill 78 with Benny Fingers Kohn, and the Housatonic Philharmonic.
According to co-organizer and organization Executive Director Tim Gray, the event was started in 1996. “The event is a celebration of the river, and it’s also about people getting together and meeting with each other,” Gray said. “Our organization advocates for a better clean-up of the river, and we also want to bring light to a planned dump facility that [General Electric] wants to build in Berkshire County.”
For decades, GE polluted the Housatonic River with Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from its Pittsfield located transformer plant.
In May 2021, the company purchased 75 acres in Lee to bury a million cubic yards of PCBs that had been pulled from the river. Legal challenges are currently being mounted by the Initiative, the Housatonic Environmental Action League, and four Lee residents.
“The Initiative has always been against the concept of putting a dump next to anybody’s house,” Gray said. “To us, that is exactly what is happening. We want to stop this terrible dump facility from happening in Lee. The river is still contaminated and it needs to be cleaned up.”
Bob Jones is a co-organizer of the event and a member of Lee’s Board of Selectmen.
“The Initiative has been working for decades to try to educate the residents of the Berkshires as to the conditions of the river and what needs to be done to clean it,” Jones said. “It has been a struggle that has gone on for decades. The festival is just another step in the right direction for doing that. To us, GE is looking to do a half-baked clean-up of the Housatonic River to save money. All of these PCBs were supposed to be shipped out of state to licensed facilities. Instead, GE changed their minds.”
