Journalists are reporting on the constant chaos, but they are not featuring the Congresspeople who are speaking up. Here are a few; there are many more.
“We certainly don’t want to be the last town to move forward with this; we want to act on this as soon as possible,” Town Manager Christopher Ketchum said.
The fact is our region of the EPA has demonstrated its bias towards landfilling and once again will allow yet another massive PCB-dump in Berkshire County. That a handful of local officials have substituted their limited judgment for the desires of an entire diverse community is a travesty.
"We’ll have to see what happens with the signed settlement. We can’t rest easy just yet. We hope there are not going to be any appeals. We hope EPA moves forward to issue a new permit based on the settlement agreement.”
-- Great Barrington Town Manager and Director of Planning & Community Development Chris Rembold
Town planner Chris Rembold told The Edge that the assessment work under the previous grant would be completed at the end of this calendar year, and clean-up work under the EPA grant will begin next year.
“There is no failsafe technology. In fact, we think the best technology for this level of PCBs is landfilling, because if we use one of these other technologies we might knock it down from 20 ppm to 5 ppm, or even 1 ppm, it still needs to be put somewhere. You still need a landfill.”
-- Bryan Olson, director of the Superfund and Emergency Management Division of the Environmental Protection Agency
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.
The only way for the item calling for withdrawal to be placed on the warrant is for the selectmen to put it there, even though they were the ones who signed the settlement on behalf of the town in the first place.
The parties know that this cleanup could be better, but they have balanced the waste reduction improvement, the monetary compensation and expeditious start of cleanup against the risks of continued litigation.
Opponents of the recent settlement between General Electric, the Environmental Protection Agency and five South County towns to clean up PCBs in the Housatonic River reveal plans to stop a planned PCB landfill in Lee.
The settlement worked out by the Environmental Protection Administration is not exactly popular with those who are trying to save our world from catastrophe.
I am all for science and sadly EPA, in this fight, has proven they are only as good as the standards we hold them to. Let the EPA know there will not be a local dump, period.
Efforts to get the truth out about glyphosate has been stymied by tainted corporate research and by an Environmental Protection Agency that is "dysfunctional at best."
The rules are part of President Trump’s vast environmental deregulation agenda aimed largely at eliminating rules the fossil fuel industry finds burdensome.
