Lee — Armed with posters and singing songs of peace, a group of residents and other Southern Berkshire County supporters met at Woods Pond Dam on Monday, June 12 to voice their opposition to a 2020 agreement between five Berkshire towns, General Electric, and the Environmental Protection Agency that would put an Upland Disposal Facility, or toxic waste dump, at a site in Lee.
Specifically, the group aimed their charge at the state of the Woods Pond Dam that controls the waters which, organizers say, house most of the now-banned polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) deposited decades ago by General Electric from its Pittsfield electric transformer plant into the Housatonic River.
Organized by resident Clare Lahey, who lives across the street from the Housatonic River with her husband Ed, the protest focused on bringing attention to area dams in dire need of repair. As the owner, GE has the responsibility for operating, monitoring, and maintaining the Woods Pond and Rising Pond dams. Together with the Columbia Mill Dam, the Woods Pond and Rising Pond dams are holding back the major flood of PCBs, Clare Lahey said. Should the dams break or overflow, a water torrent would be released, carrying PCBs into the floodplain and impacting Berkshire towns, she said. “We want to just keep the public aware—GE aware and the EPA—that we are going to continue fighting this with every possible weapon,” Clare Lahey said. “We are going to be looking carefully at how they are managing things. How can we agree to let them control a dump when they’re not even repairing the dams.”
Tim Gray, a member of the Housatonic River Initiative that is appealing a decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals and objecting to the 2020 agreement, said the potential for flooding from the dam is “an environmental disaster waiting to happen.” Gray explained, “The bottom line is if we get a storm event that is beyond compare, which is likely to happen, this dam could blow.”
A founder of HRI, Denny Alsop traveled the Housatonic River twice by canoe. At the protest, he cited Hurricane Irene’s near-miss of the Housatonic Valley, an episode he said would have forced water over the Woods Pond Dam had it not skirted the local region. If that weather event were to happen now, “it would sweep the PCBs and sediment over the top of the dam and send it down to our neighborhoods,” he said.
The 2020 agreement leaves 70 percent of the PCBs in the floodplain between Woods Pond and the confluence of the East and West branches of the Housatonic near Fred Garner Park in Pittsfield, Alsop said. However, that number of PCBs is “unknown,” according to Bob Jones, chair of the town’s current Select Board who turned out to show his support for the protest. “The EPA and GE have no idea how many PCBs are in this river,” he said, adding that this question mark makes the current strategy of removal “a poor plan.”
Alsop cautioned that the canal adjacent to the Woods Pond Dam serves to keep too much water from going over the dam. However, he said that the canal is now plugged so that if there is a big flood upstream, some of the overflows can’t pass through, forcing that overflow laden with PCBs to topple over the height of the dam. “The canal has to be open to take the massive volume of water that needs to go down here to relieve the pressure on that dam during a flooding event,” he said, adding that some PCBs would also go downstream with the canal waters.
Others voiced concern about the porous sand on the proposed UDF tract that could enable the waste to leak out, affecting the aquifer the towns may need to rely on as a water source in the future, as well as the viability of a vernal pool that exists on the UDF site.
Jim Leahey’s family farm lies at the end of Lee’s Reservoir Road, near the UDF site. He said he’s concerned the facility is very close to the town’s water supply, with the possibility of a leak affecting residents’ drinking water and forcing groundwater to disperse. “I think it’s offensive that the same company that put the PCBs here is guaranteeing us that this landfill is going to work,” Leahey said.
Creating a UDF in Lee is “economic injustice” for protester and 44-year-Lee-resident Peg Biron. “I believe it is ‘God’s country,” she said of the local landscape. “And in God’s country, I don’t feel we need a toxic dump or an upland facility, whatever it’s labeled.”
Video by Leslee Bassman for The Berkshire Edge.
