Housatonic Rest of River — In conjunction with the Housatonic Rest of River remediation project, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to shrink the number of annual meetings of the Housatonic River Citizens Coordinating Council (CCC)—stakeholder individuals and groups, including the departments of environmental protection for Massachusetts and Connecticut—in favor of adding targeted, community meetings. However, the July 30 email from the agency to CCC members supporting the action comes as a surprise to environmental groups involved in the cleanup program who strongly oppose the measure. That email can be found here.
The issue originated with a 2020 remediation plan drafted after decades of General Electric Company (GE) contaminating the waterway with the now-banned polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from its Pittsfield transformer manufacturing plant. The settlement agreement includes creating an Upland Disposal Facility (UDF) in Lee for the least toxic of the substances, with the remaining products to be sent off site, a measure long decried by Lee residents and officials—and now southern Berkshire County towns—as negatively impacting the health and safety of those living in the area.
According to the email, the CCC was created in 1998 to gain input from a variety of stakeholders affected by what is now a Superfund cleanup site and the plan to remediate the Housatonic River. The government agencies involved and GE are to “share information and coordinate and cooperate with the CCC during the performance of the [plan]-related cleanup,” without the CCC serving as “a negotiating forum,” the email states.
Using a question-and-answer format, the EPA stated a new contract was finalized with its CCC moderator, Consensus Building Institute (CBI), last month, with the next meeting to be scheduled for the fall. With fewer CCC meetings—cut from four annually down to two sessions in January and September—the agency offered to hold “more frequent meetings for the public at large, coordinating directly with municipal officials on specific topics in the future.” Those meetings would focus on more specific and timely cleanup topics, with the email proposing three upcoming sessions covering the volatilization of PCBs, the revised transportation and disposal plan, and the Woods Pond remediation plan. However, it stated CCC members could meet more often, independently, without the EPA.
Additionally, the email responded to critics of the CCC who pushed the EPA to have GE attend the meetings since the company’s representatives have been absent. However, the agency stated it couldn’t require any CCC member to participate or attend the sessions.
The EPA, in its email, suggested that “feedback” prompted the CCC changes, and the agency would be taking a more passive role in future meetings to enable it to “focus more on receiving feedback and hearing member concerns and advice” for improved community engagement. It rationalized that the CCC meetings didn’t offer enough time for members to discuss agenda topics amid a half-hour or more presentation by the EPA and, with the complexity of the plan increasing as well as the number of documents to be produced, the issue would only be exacerbated as time goes on.
Moving forward, the EPA stated it won’t offer a detailed presentation during the hour-and-a-half CCC meetings, but instead provide a five-minute update of the coming work and documents, followed by a 10-minute update by the Technical Assistance Grant representative, a 50-minute open session, and 15 minutes devoted to questions and answers from the public. The agency stated the CCC meetings won’t have agenda topics specified ahead of the sessions since those issues can be addressed in the new open session.
Charles Cianfarini, interim executive director for CCC member Citizens for PCB Removal (CPR), responded to the proposed format on August 3, calling the reduction in the number of CCC meetings “a slap in the face” to representatives of the stakeholder groups who have been attending the currently quarterly sessions. “We have long complained that the four meetings per year were not sufficient and yet now the desire is to reduce even that number,” he stated.
According to Cianfarini, the current setup of the CCC meetings features a more intimate and formal setting than larger public meetings. “While CPR acknowledges the need to have more open public community meetings as have been proposed, these should not be used to eliminate CCC meetings,” he stated.
Cianfarini, on behalf of the CPR, opposed the meetings being held without EPA representatives present since the CCC not only exists for citizen stakeholders but includes government and business members—including the Massachusetts and Connecticut state departments of environmental protection—that may be prompted to skip as well, missing out on new information. Admonishing the agency for the modification in CCC protocol, he stated that by denying a notice of agenda topics to be addressed at CCC meetings, the EPA and other members may not be prepared to provide a response at the session.
For Cianfarini, the CCC meetings provide notice to the public at large of the issues surrounding the Rest of River remediation through media reports of the sessions. “CPR believes we need more CCC meetings, not less,” he stated.
On August 6, CBI Senior Mediator Toby Berkman aligned with Cianfarini’s push to provide the CCC meeting topics of conversation in advance of the sessions, noting EPA representatives told him the agency didn’t want to be “seen as deciding the agenda items on behalf of the CCC.”
In a follow-up correspondence, Cianfarini maintained that conversations between a member of the CCC and the EPA or CBI should be transparent and made public, and he requested the EPA and CBI, as intermediary, disclose the individual members who provided the feedback that prompted the changes.
Berkman stated that if the group’s members are interested, CBI could anonymously share the format concerns heard by CCC members leading to the EPA changes. “I think there are ways to do that that will still give members an opportunity for input and notice around likely topics of discussion, and plan to try some approaches in advance of this coming meeting,” Berkman stated in his email reply.
Jane Winn, executive director of CCC member Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT), praised as “extremely important” the slated increase in EPA public information sessions that add opportunities for comments and questions, should that change come at the expense of CCC meetings. Although her team tries to gather community input to bring to the EPA, she prioritized the public hearing plan information directly from the agency.
“I want to make darn sure that they’re having meetings with the public, even if that means giving up a CCC meeting,” she stated to The Berkshire Edge.
