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Tensions heat up as Environmental Protection Agency and citizen committee mull future meeting agendas, communicating with constituents

The second of two back-to-back EPA sessions is set for October 10, 6:30 p.m., at the Lee Middle/High School.

Housatonic Rest of River — Maybe it was something in the air, but Moderator Tobias Berkman, an attorney and senior mediator with Consensus Building Institute (CBI), had his work cut out for him during the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Citizen Coordinating Council (CCC) October 9 meeting. Although an agenda was in place, members veered from some of the topics, and the discussions became heated, with few resolutions and more questions remaining.

A copy of the slides from the October 9 CCC meeting can be found here.

What is the CCC?

The CCC was created in 1998 to gain stakeholder input by groups, towns, and agencies impacted by the Housatonic River cleanup and disseminate information to the public.

General Electric Company (GE) deposited polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) from its Pittsfield manufacturing plant into the waterway for years, with those toxins washing downstream all the way to Connecticut. Although an earlier negotiation required all PCB materials be shipped away from the region, a 2020 agreement mandates the materials containing the highest level of PCB concentration be sent out of state while the lower-level contaminants be deposited into a to-be-created upland disposal facility (UDF) in Lee, with Lee residents and officials on record opposing this latter agreement as having been executed behind closed doors.

GE presented a plan last October to predominantly truck those dredged materials through southern Berkshire County roads. In June, after much public outcry that included health boards and state representatives over the safety of truck transport, the EPA sent GE engineers back to the drawing board to consider using rail as a mode of transportation in the plan, with that update set to be released by October 15.

The Challenge update

EPA Project Manager Joshua Fontaine updated members on a “Challenge” presented by EPA officials but conducted by private company Wazoku. The program aims to solicit qualified applicants to submit “inexpensive and efficient method[s]” for reducing PCBs in the soil and sediment, benefiting such Superfund sites including the Housatonic Rest of River, the area of cleanup stemming from the east and west confluence of the waterway at Pittsfield’s Garner State Park to Connecticut.

The Challenge launched September 11 and is “live” until November 12, with 15 solutions already submitted and 52 parties interested to date, Fontaine said. To track such metrics on the Wazoku website, see here.

Fontaine reiterated that the EPA case team is not part of the judging panel for those solutions as that task has been relegated to Wazoku, with the agency not having any information on who has submitted to the Challenge or the nature of the submission and having no official lead on the project.

Charles Cianfarini, interim chair of Citizens for PCB Removal, questions EPA officials regarding a “Challenge” pertaining to the Housatonic Rest of River remediation. Photo by Leslee Bassman.

Charles Cianfarini, interim chair for Citizens for PCB Removal, objected to the short duration of the Challenge of only two months for submissions and asked if the timeline could be extended. Fontaine responded that Wazoku set the timeline as “appropriate” but an extension could be discussed.

Regarding the Challenge metrics mandating that the solution cost come in at less than $100 per ton, Cianfarini asked how that criterion was derived. EPA Project Manager Dean Tagliaferro responded that his agency “definitely weighed in” on that measure that he deemed “a good target.”

“If someone comes up with a solution that’s $10,000 a ton, that’s probably not very useful for this site or any other site,” he said. “It really would be more practical to matter in the long run, here or anywhere else, if it’s less than an off-site disposal cost.”

Documents open for public comment; set to drop for remainder of 2024

Although there are no formal documents open to public comment at the present time, Fontaine said documents will be sent to the EPA and be available for input later this month, including GE’s Revised Transportation and Disposal Plan due October 15 and the Conceptual Design Plan for Reach 6 (Woods Pond) Pre-Design Inspection Report for Reach 6 due October 31.

GE’s Revised Quality of Life Plan Revised Project Operations Plan is due by November 22.

In December, the company is required to submit its Revised UDF Final Design (December 20); Revised UDF Operations, Monitoring, & Maintenance Plan (December 20); Revised Operations, Monitoring, & Maintenance Plans for Rising Pond and Woods Pond Dams (December 31); and 2023 Baseline Monitoring Report (December 31. Those documents will also be available for public input.

All comments can be submitted to R1Housatonic@epa.gov.

Opposition to agenda process

During the session, some CCC members expressed their remorse over the new format for the group’s meetings, as well as a decision to cut the number of annual sessions from four down to two.

Judi Herkimer, who heads up the Housatonic Environmental Action League (HEAL), said the new process isn’t “as much of a group process as it was,” and she disagreed with most of the agenda that didn’t offer an opportunity to engage with Berkman or the EPA. “This is not the agenda that I can agree with because it is essentially not consensed [sic] and it’s not how we want it done,” she said.

Berkman conducted a survey to solicit topics for the meeting’s agenda, providing the results of that survey to the group showing a preference for discussions on the CCC meeting process and frequency changes, as well as members’ thoughts on how to improve meetings. He offered to discuss how to elicit topics for upcoming sessions and that the survey process to determine meeting topics may not be “the best way to organize and make a decision” on the topics.

Herkimer responded that CBI is “an agent,” “a subcontractor under EPA,” leaving “no one except ourselves to speak our concerns and to speak our questions.” She also addressed the layout of the room for the meeting held in the Lenox Middle/High School library, with many non-CCC members seated behind a bookcase and out of view while the CCC members encompassed a U-shape seating arrangement. “The layout of the room is not what we are accustomed to,” she said, adding that the public should have an opportunity to see, speak, and ask questions. “There was always time allotted at the end for citizens, residents, attendees to speak. And sometimes we went overtime to accommodate that. This radical change that’s going on here has, of course, no involvement with any of us.”

Announced July 30, the format change includes an offer to hold “more frequent meetings for the public at large, coordinating directly with municipal officials on specific topics in the future” in place of the two dropped CCC meetings. Those sessions would focus on more specific and timely cleanup topics, such as the October 10 session covering the volatilization of PCBs.

For Fontaine, those public meetings must take precedence to “get the message out there” with guidance from the CCC as to what other materials are wanted from the public, their constituents, to widely share that to a larger audience.

However, Housatonic Clean River Coalition’s Valerie Anderson opposed the abbreviated number of meetings now prescribed by the CCC, stating that the two types of sessions—public meetings on specific topics and CCC meetings—”are not mutually exclusive.” “It’s a chance where we can have input from people like Mass [Department of Environmental Protection]; they’re on the Zoom but they’re not at the table,” she said. “We can ask questions; we can have people from the city and the towns here ask questions.”

Fontaine said his agency is working for the public meetings to have that same type of representation at its sessions, such as the presence of representatives from the Massachusetts Department of Health at the October 10 airborne PCB public hearing. He also said the EPA would be amenable to holding an emergency meeting request if need be.

Document repositories, Hunt Library in Connecticut

Connecticut-based Herkimer questioned EPA officials over the closing of the hard-copy repository at the Falls Village Hunt Library, the last in the watershed, that she said was established between HEAL and the agency. The issue became heated when Herkimer said the librarian “was blindsided” by the EPA closing the print repository relied upon by those for whom English is a second language and moving the documents upstairs, making it harder for elder individuals to access. “Why did you do that without even the courtesy of coming to HEAL and saying, ‘We’re about to amputate the last hard copy repository that exists in the entire watershed?’” Herkimer asked.

Judy Herkimer of the Housatonic Environmental Action League objects to changes in the Hunt Library. Photo by Leslee Bassman.

Fontaine countered that he and Community Involvement Coordinator Ashlin Brooks received “conflicting information from the library,” with the librarian suggesting, due to the large volume of documents, to make the documents accessible electronically, with a link to the repository.

Herkimer countered that the librarian told her she felt pressured to accept the electronic solution. “Why didn’t you come to me?” she asked the agency officials.

Fontaine said he would follow up with the librarian again for “a better plan,” and Brooks stated only the “larger documents will be kept as hard copies.

“There’s not an abandonment of hard copies,” Brooks said. “There will be hard copies, the ‘heavy hitter’ items, or hot ticket items, which are the UDF Plan or the Transportation Plan, the Quality of Life Plan. We are taking into consideration the librarian that we spoke with, and she said it was too much for her to archive all of the hard copies that she receives—as you can tell there’s many—and that she would like to, moving forward, get the heavy ticket items the community she’s requested.”

The protocol will be consistent in the three other libraries in the area: Lee, Lenox, and Pittsfield, she said.

Suggestions

Cianfarini suggested inviting EPA Director of Environmental Justice Carol Tucker to a meeting to share information. Other members discussed the need for more data sharing even if between meetings, making data more user friendly and incorporating real-time results or graphs for air quality and other standards.

According to Tagliaferro, PCB air monitoring results take 14 to 21 days to calculate as the protocol includes collecting and running samples, as well as lab work, with some labs already inundated. He said that standard turnaround time has been in place for the last 25 years and no direct “minute-by-minute” reading of PCBs is available or even required in the Rest of River process.

“What matters is the overall average concentration for your standard, week after week or month after month,” Tagliaferro said. “There’s no need to get instantaneous PCB or air-monitoring results for this level of contamination.”

Finding common ground between organizations

History may prevent some other suggestions by member groups wanting to work together to move forward.

The 2020 agreement was signed by officials from the towns of Great Barrington, Lenox, Sheffield, and Stockbridge, along with representatives from agencies including the EPA and the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Lee officials also executed the document, with members of the town’s Select Board at the time later replaced.

Mass Audubon’s Becky Cushing Gop prompted the group to offer a joint comment statement for the upcoming release of GE’s revised Quality of Life Plan. “Could we, as the CCC, find some things that we think are really important to have in the Quality of Life Plan and work to submit those comments together, in one voice,” she said, adding that the action could make the group’s voice heard better.

Herkimer rejected the offer. “But Becky, as Mass Audubon, you signed off on the consent decree that, in part, contributed to Lee being the recipient of a 1.3-million-cubic-yard toxic PCB dump because your organization signed off on it,” Herkimer said. “Do I want to join with you submitting nice comments as a group?”

Cushing Gop said the action “could make sense to identify the common ground that we do have and things that we do want to see and take that power of the CCC back.”

Herkimer challenged her to write a letter together about “what should be happening is that all of the contaminated settlement, no matter what level it is, should be going off site to a dump.”

For Cushing Gop, however, that statement “wouldn’t be finding the common ground.” “As you said, we’ve signed the settlement agreement,” she said to Herkimer. “This is something that’s outside; this is something that’s yet to come—the Quality of Life Plan. So that’s what I’m commenting on.”

Berkman said that there are organizations at the table who have been opposed to each other in the past, with some differences remaining. “If there are areas where you actually are aligned, if there are shared interests in trying to do something unanimously on those issues to increase the power of your voice [and] the answer, legitimately, could be ‘no,’” he said. “It’s an open question for you to think about.”

GE’s absence from CCC meetings

Although GE is listed as part of the CCC group, the company’s representatives haven’t participated in the sessions in quite a while, prompting members, such as Anderson, to ask for their presence.

Berkman said he spoke with longtime GE Project Coordinator Andrew Silfer about the lack of a showing for his company at the CCC meetings despite members being frustrated with their absences. According to Berkman, Silfer said GE representatives won’t be joining the sessions and are focusing community engagement on sharing information about implementing the Rest of River remedy as that will begin ramping up within the year or so. “[Silfer said] the CCC has a forum that has been focused on opposing the remedy and hearing complaints that have largely been resolved,” he said. “So they want to focus their community engagement elsewhere.”

However, Silfer left the door open, stating per Berkman that, in the future, “if it seems like the CCC has become what they perceive as a productive forum, then, for the kind of engagement that they see, then they would reconsider.”

When asked, EPA attorney John Kilborn declined that GE has a legal duty to attend CCC meetings even though dicta in the 2020 agreement, as provided by Anderson, states the company is required to “provide information to the public including the Citizens Coordinating Council” and “shall participate in the preparation of such information for dissemination to the public including the Citizens Coordinating Council.” “I don’t think the language in that section is strong enough to file such a motion to force GE to come to meetings,” he said. “The language speaks more to providing information and participating in community involvement activities or supporting it.”

Anderson responded that the group should take a more aggressive position on the issue “so our voice can be heard,” with the possibility of petitioning the EPA or writing to the U.S. Department of Justice requesting enforcement of the provision.

Community feedback

Bonnie Bertocci lives on Woodland Road in Lee, one of the truck routes previously touted by GE to be used to haul dredged soil and sediment laden from the Housatonic River when the waterway is remediated. She has been there for 24 years, residing with her husband after being drawn to the home by “the quiet, the state forest up from us.”

As one of several residents who attended the CCC meeting, Bertocci was hoping to gleam some insight to quell her fears over health dangers posed by PCBs being transported near her home. “We’re worried about the PCBs,” Bertocci said. “Originally, it was supposed to be that they were all going to be trucked out, and now it’s low-level PCBs. But I don’t think any level [of PCBs] is acceptable to us.”

Bertocci was joined at the meeting by other residents in surrounding communities who have been concerned about health and environmental dangers.

Pittsfield’s Kaitlyn Pearce asked local medical staff about PCBs, trying to determine what studies of children have reflected when youngsters were exposed to the toxins. She questioned EPA officials about what health organizations they are coordinating efforts to test for PCBs, such as blood serum samples.

Tagliaferro responded that the EPA’s primary role under the consent decree of 2020 is related to GE’s performance according to the remediation plan and the issue Pearce is expressing falls under the Massachusetts Department of Health, with his agency having coordinated in the past with that department in studies and blood samples.

Pearce pushed that the EPA may not be required to actually administer tests but “they are the responsible party for making sure that those things are being cared for and that would involve our community” and “to oversee that the public is not being harmed by its environment.”

“We have been coordinating with them; we have been for 20 years,” Tagliaferro said of the health department.

Lee resident Gail Ceresia voices her opposition to having a toxic waste facility located over an aquifer during the Oct. 9 session of the Citizens Coordinating Council. Photo by Leslee Bassman.

Other commenters asked about dam management along the Housatonic River and a proposed soil-testing schedule. Lee resident Gail Ceresia, who also serves on the town’s PCB Advisory Committee, protested putting a UDF above a “clean aquifer,” and Dave Carrington questioned the cost of disposing of PCB material in the UDF as opposed to transporting it out to a dry landfill.

More details on the plan will be addressed at the airborne PCB/PCB air-sampling public hearing set for October 10 at the Lee Middle/High School, 300 Greylock Street, Lee.

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