The investigation into Matthew Rutledge’s alleged criminal conduct, as well as any suspected criminal conduct of other staff members at Miss Hall’s School, remains active.
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.
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.
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.
Front and center in the arguments was GE’s insistence on site disposal at Woods Pond on the Lee-Lenox border, Rising Pond in Great Barrington, and near Forest Street in Lee.
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.
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.”
“We need to look to the long term better good of society. Nobody’s going to want to have a PCB dump near them — and they should be as removed from populated areas as much as possible.”
-- Dr. David Carpenter, Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at SUNY Albany
An Edgecast video report on the May 7 march against General Electric's proposal to create a toxic PCB waste dump in the village of Housatonic, along the banks of the Housatonic River at Rising Pond.
Massachusetts could have conditioned the move to Boston on an expeditious, cooperative cleanup of the Housatonic River; there is no evidence that that happened. On the contrary, GE appears to have received benefits and incentives in the East, and no reminder of its responsibilities in the West.
Selectmen and life-long Lenox resident Dave Roche invoked the concept of an environmental legacy. “Let’s leave something better for our children,” he said.
