At last, a major institution in America is standing up to the bullying and extortion that seems to characterize every action of the Trump administration.
So, when the trucks come rumbling through, who you gonna call? Not the Ghostbusters. As for calling Town Hall and members of your select board, can you really expect those who put you in this position in the first place to actively and effectively get you out of it?
For more than three decades, the EPA has been negotiating with GE toward a goal of cleaning up the Housatonic River. The Rest of River settlement is the latest attempt at fulfilling that goal.
"At EPA there’s a big morale issue at the staff level. It’s awful. Some employees wouldn’t normally think of leaving, but after two years of this, they wonder what they should do. I was counseling people in their 30s to hunker down for the longer run. But how can the EPA people work for a President who lies every day?”
-- Jim Murphy, former Community Involvement Coordinator for Environmental Protection Agency Region 1 that comprises New England
Berkshire County residents have been vehemently and consistently opposed to dumping PCB waste in any of the three locations that GE has proposed – Woods Pond, Rising Pond, and Lenox Dale. EPA’s final permit required GE to transport all PCB waste off-site to a licensed PCB disposal facility.
If the Region were to roll up its sleeves, as it were, and revise the remanded permit, the Housatonic could yet remain free from the risks and burdens of PCB landfills.
Although EPA’s final remedy requires the General Electric Company to transport and dispose of PCB waste in a federally approved landfill, the company is fighting tooth and nail to dispose of contaminated waste locally.
An emailed statement by a GE spokesperson indicates the company will take the matter to court, and continue to argue over how much of the 125-mile stretch of river to clean, and how.
In her letter to the editor, Pooja Prema writes: "To ask the people of Great Barrington to pay for protesting an ongoing ecological atrocity that was committed by corporate greed – to put the bill on citizens instead of taking up the responsibility as a town government – is both ridiculous and shameful."
“I feel that GE is just one in thousands of corporations that are doing the exact same thing to land and to rivers all across the world. We here have our small part to play in that big fight which is to stand up for our land and our water and the respect for humanity.”
--- Pooja Prema, an organizer of the Mega March against PCB dumps
The romantic vision of closer-to-nature of log homes turned into a toxic nightmare for Great Barrington where the town and the Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire had to deal with the demise of New England Log Homes that processed timber on an 8-acre site on Bridge Street.
