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
Never mind that poisoning the air will only add to the suffering of people with respiratory trauma due to the virus.
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.
The airport proposes to construct six new hangars, while removing the existing clamshell hangar.
By chipping away at our waste line and energy consumption, we hope our local efforts are joining a larger, worldwide movement.
The bill would establish practices and procedures to require those legally in charge of running sewage overflow outlets to inform the public if and when raw sewage is entering their rivers and waterways, a term known as “combined sewage overflow.”
Suffolk needs a change in state law to permit it to hold races in Great Barrington while at the same time allowing it to maintain its simulcasting and betting operations back in East Boston. Racing at the fairgrounds would also require permits from the town.
“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
We’re all familiar with Reid Cleaners. It’s been vacant, deteriorating, and toxic for years and it sits right in the middle of our downtown.
Paula Lynn Ely spends part of each day looking through a microscope, examining amoebas, flagellates, ciliates and other microscopic organisms that feed on and break down wastewater as part of the treatment process.
“We need strong leadership to strengthen, not weaken, common sense protections that benefit all of us and push a cleaner, greener economy that will simultaneously address an already changing climate.”
GE has also challenged the EPA’s order to dispose of the contaminated sediment at an out-of-state facility, insisting it wants to establish dumps for the material dredged from the river in Lenox Dale, near Goose Pond in Lee and on land adjacent to Rising Pond, an impoundment on the river in the village of Housatonic.
Former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator Judith Enck will launching the “Beyond Plastics” project, through which she will work with college students and community leaders around the country to reduce plastic pollution.
In September the New York Times revealed there are even more kids in concentration camps than we knew and they are being relocated in the middle of the night to facilities that warehouse them.
When asked about one of the biggest, and longest running, environmental issues in the Berkshires—cleaning up the Housatonic River from PCB pollution dumped decades ago by General Electric—Gonzalez said he agrees with local communities and the EPA that the toxins should be “safely disposed offsite.”
Anti-democratic governments, which thrive on obfuscating truth, seek to delegitimize and suppress scientists and other authoritative voices that offer accurate information that can be used to hold the government to account… So people who live near facilities that emit carcinogens or other hazardous pollutants are likely to be breathing more of them than before.
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.
What started off as a civic exercise turned into a lesson in how a righteous cause can gather steam, convince fence-sitters, transition to a generational issue and overwhelm the opposition.
In her letter to the editor, Jennifer Clark writes, “We have had a positive response from our business community, with endorsements from 30+ retailers from Guido’s to Soco to Domaney’s.”
It’s clear that the Trump administration’s actions, including the weakening of the Environmental Protection Agency, are the animating force behind some of the demonstrators, whose signs proclaim opposition to “alternative facts.”
There are handbooks on becoming a dictator. You have to have the taste for it and the talent but, if you do: create an oligarchy, encourage thuggery, undermine checks and balances and silence the press.
Legislators urged the Department of Environmental Protection to invest in electric vehicle charging infrastructure and invest the balance of the funds in fully electric transit and school buses.
News and Ideas Worth Sharing