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.
As written, the initiative would only require governments and business entities to comply with the rights of the Housatonic River as established by the initiative. No lawsuits could be filed against individual residents.
In the last 12 months, some of the board’s meetings have been standing-room-only and the manners among some attendees have been anything but mild.
The questions I pose are prompted from years working to create strong coalitions to fight General Electric – a rare coalition of former GE workers, sportsmen and women, local Lakewood homeowners whose front- and backyards were contaminated with high levels of PCBs, and environmentalists.
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.
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.
In a letter to the editor, Pooja Prema of Great Barrington, Mass., writes, “I advocate for leaving the river alone until more effective natural remediation technologies are discovered within the next two to 10 years, which could be done in situ (without dredging). This technology most likely already exists”
In a letter to the editor, Nan Wile writes, “Many of us danced around the block with the board and DEP several years ago, over the fate of a brownfield in downtown Great Barrington, and the decisions were permissive and disappointing.”
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.
Vincent began his second career with GE, later Lockheed Martin, working with the Aegis Test Team at Bath Iron Works.
Ruberto was unconflicted about what his job was. He was an elected official and to him, that meant a servant of the people: a worker for the common good.
Dalton — Growing up in the Berkshires, I could tell if a certain generation lived in the area at a certain time period by the way they referred to General Electric as “The GE.” For more than 20 years, because of my profession, local folks have asked me where “the GE” is going — should
“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
After retiring from Data Design Labs and GE, Tom had his own consulting firm at Becton Dickinson in Canaan, Connecticut.
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.
Charles and Diane were married Oct. 21, 1953, and, after raising five children, traveled the United States and Canada in their fifth wheel RV and wintered in the Ancient Oaks community of Okeechobee, Florida.
The summer-long event combines a gallery space featuring paintings of the outdoors by local artists, environmental literature on display, and a live panel of speakers featuring prominent movers and shakers in the Housatonic River and Hudson River cleanup efforts.
Warren adopted a new speaking tactic and abandoned her previous style. Instead she embraced the well-worn path of a campaigner—making a more cynical appeal for quick applause by promising to fight the Republicans and leaving the details of that fight for another day.
While we like to think the Berkshires is populated with good people and only good people, we are not always right. The combination of bad actors and naiveté has resulted in more than one Berkshire swindle.
In her letter to the editor, Elizabeth Inglis writes: “Depositing PCBs onto land that is now free of toxins in a community setting is unconscionable.”
GE has formally objected to EPA’s final cleanup remedy, challenging the agency’s directive to transport and dispose of the PCB waste to an off-site facility.
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.
Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration is quietly flirting with massive private companies like Comcast to deliver what will likely be inferior and expensive service to rural towns. “It’s a slow-rolling tragedy that will blight Western Massachusetts for generations.”
— Susan Crawford, Harvard law professor and director of the Berkshire Center for Internet and Society
If this decision holds strong against what will likely be a protracted legal fight from GE, the $613 million cleanup will go forward eventually, and the PCB-contaminated waste will be shipped out of state.
The GE-owned parcel at Rising Pond here — earmarked by the company for a PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) dump –is zoned for residential use only, according to Great Barrington Town Planner Christopher Rembold, who said the town’s zoning regulations “do not allow an industrial-type use.”
Housatonic homeowners are now worried about their property values — not to mention potential health risks from a nearby dump — and prospective homebuyers are now saying they won’t buy in Housatonic.
Harrington says she will “support collaboration–I’m a strong advocate for a region-wide approach to economic development.”
Mega March Against the Dumps, a community-organized march through the center of town in opposition to GE’s plan to build PCB dumps in the local area, will take place on Sunday, July 3, at noon, on Main Street in Great Barrington, Mass.
Rose will discuss the life of the Berkshires’ Mum Bett — who later changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman — the first black enslaved person to gain her freedom in a court of law based on the principle of general equality.
GE doesn’t want the Environmental Protection Agency telling it to ship the contaminated sludge from the Housatonic River to a certified remediation facility in Texas. It wants to drop it into three Berkshire landfills instead.
General Electric proposes to stash PCBs from the river in three landfills: one next to Woods Pond in Lenox Dale, another near the Mass Pike in Lee, close to Goose Pond, and the third adjacent to the Rising Pond dam in Housatonic.
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