Housatonic Rest of River — The first week of December will be a busy one for those interested in learning more about the current state of the Rest of River remediation plan, a project that aims to mitigate the effects from the decades that General Electric Company (GE) spent depositing the now-banned toxic chemicals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), from its Pittsfield plant into the Housatonic River. A 2020 settlement agreement includes creating an Upland Disposal Facility (UDF) in Lee to house the least toxic of the substances dredged from the waterway, with the remaining materials to be transported off site, a measure long decried by Lee residents, officials, and southern Berkshire County towns as negatively impacting the health and safety of those living in the area.
Housatonic Citizens Coordinating Committee (CCC) meeting set for December 2
A CCC meeting is scheduled for December 2, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., at the Berkshire Athenaeum auditorium, One Wendell Avenue, Pittsfield, as well as online. The CCC was created in 1998 to gain stakeholder input by groups, towns, and agencies impacted by the Housatonic River cleanup and to disseminate information to the public.
Although the CCC meeting is slated to address the Technical Assistance Grant (TAG) that helps support community participation in Superfund actions such as the Rest of River program, the majority of the session will focus on topics proposed by CCC members that have been submitted including new information pertaining to the hydraulic dredging plan, vernal pool pilot study, an EPA “Challenge” that solicited interested parties to present alternative technologies to clean up the waterway, and the most recent statistics on PCB concentrations in the waterway’s fish and living organisms. In an attachment showing submitted topics, CCC member Joshua Bloom from Lee asked for state health officials to be included in the meeting following a controversial report by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) that found no correlation between toxins in the Housatonic River and any increase in the incidence of cancer in residents living along its shores. That attachment can be found here.
A public question-and-answer period will follow.
The upcoming meeting, as with other CCC meetings, will be moderated by Consensus Building Institute (CBI) Senior Mediator Toby Berkman, who stated he reached out to the MDPH and the Natural Resources Trustees about joining the meeting. CBI has previously said its personnel also reach out to GE to provide a representative to every meeting—and did so for the December 2 session—but no such representative has shown up in the past.
That meeting’s agenda can be found here. Those wishing to attend the session can register here.
Public open house set for December 3
Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—which oversees the remediation process—changed the format of the CCC meetings, cutting down the number of sessions per year from four to two. However, the agency vowed to hold more frequent meetings for the public at large on specific topics.
One such event, an open house covering the UDF plans at the GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Superfund site, is set for December 3, from 5 to 8 p.m., at the Lee Middle and High School cafeteria, 300 Greylock Street in Lee. The come-and-go program will feature an opportunity for residents to “interact directly with EPA and GE staff, and ask questions about the site,” according to an EPA news release.
The format for the three-hour session includes various stations with staffers to provide details on the UDF site preparation work, construction, water treatment and hydraulic dredging, improvements to reduce project truck traffic, and general information.
The entire remediation plan is estimated to take 13 years.
More information on the remediation program can be found here.
