The Next Festival of Emerging Artists also has its eyes on the future. An annual event founded by composer-conductor Peter Askim in 2013, it brings together young like-minded string players and cutting-edge composers for a week of intensive preparation followed by a pair of performances.
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.
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.
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.
"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
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.
