To the editor:
As an elected public health official, I can attest that our communities, like a defendant who is not competent to stand trial and must be protected by the court, were not able participate adequately in the public consideration of the implementation of the Housatonic River cleanup remedy during the 2020 state of emergency provoked by the (COVID-19) pandemic. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should recognize that our communities were compromised and, with respect to implementation decisions and assumptions regarding the Housatonic Rest of River remediation, it should go back to the February 2020 Settlement Agreement, start over again with its public feedback process, and do it all with the same degree of openness that was present through 2016.
While the EPA’s public comment process through 2016 had been exemplary, beginning in February 2020 and thereafter, it was inadequate. The EPA has a remarkable website in which one can find record of publicly visible data gathering, expert scientific debates, solicited public comments, and reasoned decisions considering the remediation of the Housatonic River over many years, leading to its decision in 2016 to export the sediment contaminated with polychlorinated-biphenyls (PCBs) to an out-of-county site. The General Electric Company (GE) and other parties protested, and the issue was remanded to a mediation process, not open to the public. The decision-making became public again in 2020. To quote an excerpt from the EPA’s website:
“In February 2020, EPA and seven other parties reached a Settlement Agreement on how to proceed with the rest of River Cleanup. In July 2020 EPA issued a revised proposed plan/Draft RCRA Permit modification for public comment. EPA held a public comment period from July – September 2020. In December 2020, EPA issued a Revised Final Permit accompanied by Response to Comments.”
This retrospective review of the remediation decision-making process fails to note or consider the following contemporaneous events:
On March 10, 2020, Governor Baker declared a state of emergency in response to the expanding COVID-19 pandemic. On March 13, 2020, the president declared the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic of sufficient severity and magnitude to warrant an emergency declaration for all states. Normal public discussion, communication, and feedback, upon which the EPA had relied so earnestly prior to February 2020, was not possible in our communities during the state of emergency and in the weeks immediately before. Open meetings were curtailed. Public access to virtual meetings was in its infancy. Broadband internet was not available to many. Everyone was either occupied with extraordinary distractions from normal daily activities, terrified of getting sick, caring for the sick, or actually sick. A major component of our economy, the service and hospitality industry, was shut down. People lost their jobs and had no idea when they might get them back. Businesses folded permanently. The first COVID surge peaked in the Berkshires in the fall of 2020. Vaccines did not become available until 2021. Ultimately, over 300 people died in Berkshire County because of the plague.
I do not intend herein to challenge the decision to have a local upland disposal facility (UDF). I do question the decision to use massive trucking to implement such a remedy. Moreover, there are valid reasons for the EPA to revisit its decision-making process leading to the choice of trucks instead of railroad for PCB-contaminated sediment transportation to such a local UDF, starting with the February 2020 Settlement Agreement and including subsequent public comment opportunities.
“We are certainly willing to work, and we have worked and offered to meet with anybody on implementing the remedy, but the remedy is selected and that’s the way we’re moving forward,” Project Manager/Team Lead Dean Tagliaferro reportedly said in Leslee Bassman’s recent “On the record” report. Absent the adequate public education and feedback processes regarding implementation that the EPA had intended to put into place during 2020, current public discussions, as encouraged by Mr. Tagliaferro, and website-search referrals regarding implementation are severely compromised and inadequate.
According to The Edge article, Mr. Tagliaferro’s also states, regarding the UDF, that adequate public discussion has already occurred and that further discussion poses a much greater risk. Such an unsubstantiated conclusion has the far greater risk of seriously discouraging the reinstitution of adequate discussion regarding implementation. To be clear, as a member of the Tri-Town Board of Health, I welcome Mr. Tagliaferro’s stated willingness to work together. I would respectfully ask Mr. Tagliaferro, who asserts the unassailability of the remedy, not to carry that same assertion of unassailability into the discussion of the implementation. PCBs have resided in the river for over half a century. The EPA made an extensive effort before 2016 to incorporate public comment. The compromised ability of the public to provide similar input during the COVID-19 state of of emergency of 2020 should be acknowledged and repaired, not discouraged by statements asserting that further discussion is dangerous.
Careful parsing of concepts is in order not to confuse adjudicated decisions related to remedy with assumptions that have not yet been fully or properly vetted about implementation. According to The Edge, and confirmed by the EPA to The Edge, a significant estimated total cost differential exists between the 2020 hybrid plan ($576 million, in 2020 values) and the 2016 all-off-site rail method ($774 million, in 2020 values). I note that this enormous cost differential relates to something that, according to Mr. Tagliaferro, is not going to happen. On the other hand, an adequate public consideration of rail versus truck tranportation to a local UDF has not occurred and should happen.
Is it not reasonable to expect that the cost differential will be less for rail transportation to a local UDF compared with off site? Is it possible that railroad track infrastructure improvements might facilitate passenger service to Berkshire County or commuter service within it? Would economic benefits for the service and hospitality sector offset some of the remaining cost differential? Such a discussion should involve experts from the railroad industry and should occur with the same effective openness that the EPA fostered through 2016.
I believe a full, truly open, public consideration of the rail transportation options for some or all of the PCB-contaminated waste offers an additional opportunity for the EPA, GE, the people of the Berkshires, and our federal, state, and local representatives to work together to create a positive legacy for our communities.
Charles Kenny, MD, Chair of the Tri-Town Board of Health
Stockbridge
