Housatonic Rest of River — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced September 11 that it has launched a “Challenge” calling for interested parties to present alternative technologies in conjunction with the Housatonic Rest of River remediation plan to cleanup the waterway of toxins.
Specifically, the agency is soliciting qualified applicants to submit “inexpensive and efficient method[s]” for reducing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the soil and sediment, benefiting such PCB Superfund sites including the Housatonic Rest of River.
The action was prompted by a 2020 Settlement Agreement that outlined a remediation program following years of General Electric Company (GE) depositing the now-banned toxins into the waterway from its Pittsfield plant. In addition to providing that an Upland Disposal Faciltiy (UDF), or landfill, be constructed in Lee to house the less-toxic materials dredged from the Housatonic while the more toxic materials are sent to landfills out of the area, the agreement required the EPA provide opportunities for innovative treatments and technologies to be developed to reduce the PCB concentrations in those excavated materials slated for the UDF.
Although Region 1 of the EPA is funding this latest $120,000 measure, the Challenge will be administered by national contractor Wazoku, with a panel of judges declaring the winner or winners. That information can be found here.
“Our project team does not have a judge on the panel; we are not part of the evaluation panel,” said EPA Project Manager Dean Tagliaferro. “We want to be completely independent so we’re not viewed as tipping the scale. So, we have a complete ‘hands off’ on how this Challenge is going to be run.”
Applicants presenting the best solutions to the Challenge can be awarded $30,000 each, should their proposals pass through two phases of review. According to its terms, questions regarding the Challenge must be submitted to Wazoku by October 9, and the deadline for submissions is November 12.
Charles Cianfarini, interim director of the Citizens for PCB Removal, voiced concern over the short time—two months—for submissions to be due.
That deadline was determined by the facilitator, Wazoku, Tagliaferro said, with the contractor stating the time frame “was appropriate.” “We’re relying on Wazoku to run the challenge,” he said.
According to EPA documents, more than 1 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated soil and sediment will be excavated in the proposed 125-mile stretch of the Rest of River cleanup area that includes Great Barrington, Lee, Lenox, Pittsfield, and Stockbridge.
Now joined by other local municipalities, Lee officials have long decried the remediation plan that involves carting dredged PCB-laden materials through the southern Berkshire roads, promoting the research of other technologies that could alleviate those issues they fear are unsafe.
Cianfarini denounced the Challenge limitation that proposed technologies must cost less than $100 per ton of waterway soil and sediment. This cost requirement, along with the tight deadline, points to a program “that has been written to fail and just give EPA a talking point that it has complied with creating a [C]hallenge,” he said.
The GE Rest of River remediation plan will tally in the $600 million range, not accounting for inflation over the project’s next decade-plus of implementation, Tagliaferro said. “To be cost-effective [as a solution], the criteria that was set up in the Challenge is that it has to be less than $100 [per ton],” he said. “That’s realistic. That’s got to be one of the key criteria. If the cost is more than it costs to dispose off site, then it doesn’t make any sense to do it.”
According to EPA Remedial Project Manager Anni Loughlin, methods currently exist that can reduce the concentration and toxicity of PCBs, with the agency identifying and screening those methods out for the remediation because they “are excessively costly.” “Part of the Challenge is we’re looking for that innovative treatment or technology that can actually do it in a different way,” she said. “There are plenty of known technologies that can do this. This Challenge is focused on finding the next greatest thing out there.”
In June of 2023, the Lee Select Board heard a presentation from ecoSPEARS CEO Sergio Albino regarding a novel technique to treat PCBs in place, on site. Loughlin told The Berkshire Edge that Albino has been made aware of the Challenge; however, Tagliaferro said his team won’t know what entities or persons ultimately submit a proposal.
Lee, through its Town Administrator Christopher Brittain, weighed in on the announcement with pleasure. “Over the past few years, Lee officials have met with multiple scientists that have offered potential solutions to the PCB contamination in the Housatonic River,” he stated in an email. “We hope this may be the first step towards a more adequate cleanup of the river.”
According to Tagliaferro, the four-year lapse between the 2020 agreement and this month’s implementation of the Challenge was attributable to the time his team needed to coordinate with the agency’s Office of Research and Development, with that action taking longer than they had hoped. “We wanted to get it right, and we were also doing a lot of other things in parallel,” he said.
Although “hopeful” the Challenge submissions will be successful, Tagliaferro cautioned those fruits won’t replace the plan’s UDF requirement, with remediation efforts to continue as scheduled during the Challenge process. “We wouldn’t be putting up $120,000 of our money if we weren‘t hopeful that something positive could come out of this,” he said. “However, [what is] pretty clear in the settlement agreement and the Challenge statement is that we’re looking for technologies to reduce the toxicity before, during, or after disposal in the landfill. I think it’s extremely unlikely that the technology will result in something that doesn’t require the removal of the material, the sediment, and the contaminated soil.”
