BOSTON — Closing a chapter in the ongoing environmental saga in Berkshire County, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that it has issued its final permit decision requiring General Electric to perform an extensive cleanup of the Rest of River portion of the GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site.
“EPA is requiring GE to move forward with the Rest of River cleanup plan documented in the final permit,” EPA Regional Administrator David W. Cash said in a news release this morning. “The communities along the Housatonic deserve access to a river free of threats posed by PCBs, and issuing the final permit today is a big step towards that cleanup goal.”
At issue is what to do with contaminated soil to be removed from the Massachusetts portion of the Housatonic River. General Electric, which had dumped carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) legally into the river from its sprawling Pittsfield plant until the practice was banned in 1979, had reached an agreement in 2020 to clean up the river with the five towns affected by the pollution downstream from the plant: Lenox, Lee, Stockbridge, Great Barrington, and Sheffield — known collectively as the Rest of River Municipal Committee.
The EPA says the final permit is “a significant step towards reducing PCBs in and around the river and will reduce risk of human exposure.” The goals of the permit include: reduced risks to children and adults from direct contact with contaminated soil; reduced soil contamination in the floodplain, which will allow for recreational and residential use in such spaces; and reduced PCB concentrations in fish to allow increased consumption of fish caught from the Housatonic in Massachusetts and downstream in Connecticut.
After a public comment process, the EPA issued its revised final permit, outlining the cleanup plan on December 16, 2020. Activists were appalled that the Rest of River Municipal Committee had agreed to allow a second PCB disposal site to be built in Lee, in addition to the existing site at Hill 78 in Pittsfield that contains much of the contaminated sediment already dredged from the river upstream.
The Housatonic River Initiative and the Housatonic Environmental Action League subsequently appealed to the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board for review of the revised final permit. Last month, the board issued a 122-page decision broadly denying the appeal of the revised permit. But the HRI has not given up and is appealing to the First Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, which has yet to render a decision.
Three federal officials who represent the Berkshires, all Democrats, hailed the announcement in a joint statement:
“Today’s decision by the EPA will support the recovery of past wrongs that have impacted the communities along the Housatonic River for over 70 years,” said Rep. Richard Neal, along with Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren.
“It is the result of the hard work of community leaders and will ensure the Housatonic River can be enjoyed for generations to come. We will continue working with our federal, state and local partners to hold GE accountable for meeting all of its obligations and seek the environmental justice our communities deserve.”
The EPA says the revised final permit requires GE to clean up contamination in river sediment, banks, and floodplain soil “that pose unacceptable risks to human health and to the environment.”
GE will excavate PCB contamination from 45 acres of floodplain and 300 acres of river sediment, resulting in removal of over 1 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated material. Most of the sediment and floodplain cleanup will happen within the first 11 miles of the Rest of River in the city of Pittsfield and the towns of Lee and Lenox.
The EPA insists that “phasing the work will disperse the effects of the construction activities over time and locations.” The excavated material will be disposed of in two ways. Materials with the highest concentrations of PCBs will be transported off-site for disposal at existing licensed disposal facilities out of state.
Lower-level contaminants will be deposited in what the EPA insists will be a lined “state-of-the-art” landfill in Lee, known as the Upland Disposal Facility, adjacent to the Lane Construction Company gravel pit property off Woodland Road at the Lee–Lenox town line. As part of the settlement allowing the dump in Lee, GE will be obligated to pay $25 million to the town.
The EPA estimates that cleanup will cost GE $576 million and will take approximately two to three years for initial design activities and 13 years for implementation.
