With the implementation phase of the Rest of River remediation plan underway, affected residents are faced with a new concern: the renewal of a water discharge permit to the very party that caused the waterway’s toxicity.
General Electric Company deposited polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from its Pittsfield plant into the Housatonic River for years before the toxin was banned in 1979. As a result, a decade-plus-long remediation plan for the Rest of the River is being implemented. Separate from this cleanup effort, GE is now seeking a reaffirmation of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit through a draft document that, pursuant to the Clean Water Act, addresses water pollution by limiting the amount of pollutant that can be discharged—via stormwater, groundwater, potable water, and water generated from remedial activities—into the waterways, as well as provides monitoring requirements to ensure those limitations are met. The GE draft permit also imposes best management practices to reduce or eliminate pollutants, such as engineering controls.
The draft permit
The current GE NPDES permit was issued September 30, 2008, and modified August 10, 2009, with the draft permit released September 19. The EPA will review all public comments submitted by the December 20 deadline before preparing a written response to those comments and issuing a final permit. That deadline was extended from November 20.
According to a November 8 informational meeting and public hearing presented by officials from the EPA and Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, agencies separately charged with approving the final permit, the draft NPDES ensures that federal and state water quality standards for the Housatonic and the Unkamet Brook—that receive the discharges—are met by regulating the water sources and points of reception.
For the GE draft permit, 13 outfalls—the point of discharge of water waste into a waterway—are impacted, with 10 outfalls discharged from the GE plant into the east branch of the Housatonic and three outfalls into the Unkamet.
Changes from the 2008/2009 permit to the draft 2023 permit show a stricter reporting requirement for PCBs, especially at Outflow 64G, which serves as a treatment plant to remove PCBs from contaminated waters in Pittsfield. Other changes include modifying general stormwater-control measures related to impacts from storm and flood events, issues that can occur more frequently with atmospheric changes, as well as modifying stormwater-control measures at specific sites. Discharges of liquid or solid hazardous waste, some groundwater within a stormwater collection and aqueous film-forming foam are proposed to be prohibited by the draft permit, with routine inspections added together with action specified to be taken if a pollutant limit is exceeded.
Local environmental group weighs in
Although the draft permit employs continuous monitoring for the flow of discharges, an action praised by Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT) Executive Director Jane Winn, that action isn’t enough for the organization. Signed by Winn on behalf of BEAT, the group’s November 10 written comment to the draft permit suggests to EPA officials that, in addition to continuous monitoring for water flow, continuous monitoring should be added for Total Suspended Solids, pH levels, and temperature. “We think if you are constantly monitoring for those things, that would give you a good indication of whether something bad was happening in-between the semi-monthly grab samples,” she said.
Through Winn, the group voiced concern that no limits have been placed on the amount of volatile organic compounds (gases); semi-volatile organic compounds (liquids or solids such as pesticides and fire retardants); or PFAS (chemicals that resist oil, grease, water, and heat) released through a discharge. Although the EPA provided that it needed to monitor those chemicals before placing limits on them, she said a plan should be in place to reopen the permit to exact limits following the monitoring phase instead of delaying that action.
However, Winn said she is most worried about the two outfalls, including Outfall 64G with its pipes that ultimately flow through Outfall 005 to the Housatonic, and treat PCB-contaminated water in Pittsfield before that water is released. Among other requests, her correspondence asks for specificity as to the source of the discharged water to be released to ensure that water isn’t from the proposed Upland Disposal Facility (UDF) in Lee. “We’re about to enter into the Rest of the River [remediation plan], what things will be brought to the [Outfall 64G] treatment center?” Winn asked. “Has GE disclosed when things are coming and is that being taken into consideration in this permit?”
She said the river sediment will be dewatered in the Housatonic cleanup process and that water, as well as leachate—liquid formed when rain water filters through wastes in a landfill and draws out chemicals—from the lined UDF in Lee, could then be taken to this treatment plant. “My biggest concern is I want the people of Pittsfield to know—I want them to know that’s going to be coming,” Winn said. “It is important for the Pittsfield community to know what will be brought to the facility and processed there.”
The draft permit is running a bit late
NPDES permits are issued for five-year terms; in this case, GE’s 2008/2009 NPDES permit expired in 2013.
For Winn, an NPDES permit was the mechanism that “stopped the corporations from dumping everything into our rivers and lakes.” She explained “The theory is, at least every five years, you have to go back and say, ‘okay, here’s what I’ve changed in my business and here’s what I want to be able to dump into your river and lake,’” adding that permit process isn’t working very well.
Winn said environmental protection means not letting the same NPDES permit sit for more than a decade. Standards change, pollutants change, the nature of a business changes, and now climate change may affect how runoff will impact the surrounding ecology. “Just the changes in groundwater could affect how much [pollutant] is seeping into a lot of the different pipes [outfalls] that they are looking at that carry stormwater and groundwater,” she said.
EPA Public Affairs Specialist Jo Ann Kittrell responded that the agency “endeavors to reissue permits as expeditiously as possible, although resource constraints, competing priorities and complexity of the record can result in permits expiring before reissuance.” For those cases, she said permits are “administratively continued” if the permittee, such as GE, submits a timely reapplication. The expired 2009 permit was administratively continued since GE submitted a timely reapplication, Kittrell said.
The draft permit states that GE filed an application for permit reissuance with the EPA on June 27, 2013.
GE objections to the draft permit
In its recommendations regarding the draft permit, GE noted objections to some new requirements but stated that the company isn’t required to obtain an NPDES permit since it is exempt under the 2000 Consent Decree, the document that originally obligated GE to clean up the PCB releases from the Housatonic. Relying on that document, GE stated further that it can’t be compelled to “undertake additional response actions,” but will stand “by its commitment to engage in good-faith discussions regarding a renewal of the permit.”
The Draft Permit and Fact Sheet may be obtained here or by contacting: Shauna Little U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Region 1, 5 Post Office Square, Suite 100 (WIP06-1), Boston, MA 02109-3912. (617) 918-1989. Little.Shauna@epa.gov. Comments to the draft permit can be made by email or mail to Little at the aforementioned addresses.
