The Environmental Protection Agency has released a 12-page document related to the potential liability of residential property owners for the cleanup costs of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) materials left behind from General Electric’s decades of depositing the now-banned toxins into the Housatonic River.
The action follows the September 14 meeting of the Environmental Protection Agency Housatonic River Citizens Coordinating Council (CCC), during which Interim Executive Director for Citizens for PCB Removal Charles Cianfarini addressed the group regarding the agency’s issuance of comfort letters for homeowners in the Rest of River, the area extending from the east and west confluences of the Housatonic River to Connecticut.
The September 26 clarification issued by Project Coordinator Dean Tagliaferro states that a comfort letter will be provided to homeowners only upon the property owner’s request, and to those individuals whose tract has been either remediated by the EPA for PCB contamination pursuant to GE’s actions or sampled to determine if such a cleanup is required. The letters are issued after the cleanup or sampling has occurred, the statement provides.
Additionally, the clarification notes that, even for homeowners who lack a comfort letter, the EPA’s longstanding policy is to not pursue those homeowners for liability, the cost to remediate their property, even if their property has not been remediated or sampled for contamination. That policy, dating back to 2000, applies to properties that are not within the cleanup site and is valid if the homeowner has not caused or contributed to the contamination, the clarification provides.
“The purpose of EPA’s Homeowner Policy is to alleviate concerns about cleanup liability for homeowners, as well as others involved in real estate transactions, such as lenders and title insurers,” stated a November 1, 2000 letter from EPA Regional Administrator Mindy S. Lubber to the CCC regarding the agency’s policy toward homeowners with contaminated property. The letter describes the purpose for such a program as being the decline in resale values and property marketability of real estate that has the “prospect of potential liability under environmental laws,” referring to Superfund sites. (The Rest of River cleanup site is considered a Superfund site, as Tagliaferro stated during the prior CCC meeting.)
However, the clarification notes that the EPA’s policy to not pursue homeowners for cleanup costs stemming from the GE events only applies to the owner’s liability to the EPA and not to other people or entities, including GE.
Cianfarini’s late wife, Barbara Cianfarini, worked with EPA attorney Tim Conway to obtain the comfort letter program for Pittsfield residents. Following her death in 2019, she was posthumously presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the EPA for being “a constant voice overseeing the cleanup and continu[ing] to prod EPA for 20 years,” including her focus on the one remaining Housatonic River segment to be cleaned.
“Barbara’s respectful, well-informed advocacy always came with the reminder that the cleanups are important for current residents and future generations.” the EPA award stated.
Charles Cianfarini said he faces the same issues now as at the time he and his late wife first approached the EPA about issuing comfort letters. “It seemed very unfair that there was really no public information about those comfort letters,” he said.
The Pittsfield native said he grew up on Edison Avenue, abutting a property on Longfellow Avenue that “had received a clean bill of health from GE.” When his childhood home was tested by the EPA, PCB contamination was found, Charles Cianfarini said. GE significantly cleaned up that home, as well as others on adjacent streets, removing at least 1.5 feet of soil on his property and constructing a new driveway, with some homes on Newell and Longfellow streets subject to much deeper excavation efforts of eight feet or more, he said.
According to Cianfarini, EPA officials told the owners of neighboring homes with more severe remediation that PCB-contamination remained under their garage and, should they ever renovate that structure, the owners would be responsible for the PCBs that remained in place. This prompted the couple to push for some type of protection for property owners should more contamination be found on their sites later or if the standards for contamination thresholds change, he said.
Citing another example of a situation in which PCBs may remain on a property following remediation, Charles Cianfarini said some sampled properties included a “hot spot” of higher PCBs averaged out with a couple of spots with lower amounts of PCBs, resulting in an overall average level of PCBs on the tract that was below the stated unsafe threshold requiring remediation. With these efforts, he said contamination could remain on that property.
“Unfortunately, there was never the thought to tell people, ‘You had a spot cleanup, you can get this letter saying if you ever decide to put an addition to this house, that if PCBs are found, you’re not going to be responsible for them,’” Charles Cianfarini said.
Although the EPA’s policy provides that such homeowners won’t be responsible for future cleanup efforts unless those owners contributed to the issue, he said the wording is unclear for residents who unknowingly accepted landfill from GE that was contaminated with PCBs when the company offered consumers dirt from its plant or later remodeled their site unaware that PCBs would be exposed.
Because a lot of properties line the Housatonic River, Cianfarini said he feels those residents should have the right to demand their property be sampled, an action that will qualify for a comfort letter if it results in a determination of PCBs. Additionally, although EPA and GE have sampled along the river, he said that action should be “revisited” as to where and how the area’s sampling fits into the next 15 years of remediation. The Housatonic River remediation plan will remove only about 30 percent of the PCBs in the waterway’s soil and sediment, an issue for Cianfarini, who said that, by leaving a large amount of contamination in the river, reflooding from weather issues is destined, with contaminated soil due to eventually wash up on the adjacent residential and business properties. For Cianfarini, it all boils down to GE being the source of the toxicity. “I want GE to always be the one responsible for everything, all the contamination, whether it’s residential properties, in the river, on their plant,” he said. “Wherever they put contamination, they should be responsible for it.”
The clarification directs individual homeowners to request a comfort letter from Tim Conway, Conway.tim@epa.gov, or John Kilborn, kilborn.john@epa.gov.
