Lee — The Lee Select Board signed off on a letter on Tuesday, January 2, directed to various national and state officials, including President Joe Biden, alleging that an improper relationship existed between General Electric Company and Monsanto Company; specifically, the two companies agreed to absolve Monsanto from potential liability for contamination caused by the use of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the now-banned chemicals, which it produced and GE used in the production of its electrical equipment.
A 2020 remediation plan involving Lee and four other Berkshire County town,s as well as GE and the Environmental Protection Agency, was drafted to clean up the Housatonic River following years of GE depositing PCBs into the waterway, a plan that includes the creation of an Upland Disposal Facility (UDF) in Lee to accept the lower-level contaminated sediment while the more toxic materials are sent out of the area. Lee officials and residents have long objected to the plan and the presence of a UDF within the town’s borders, with the permit executed by former Select Board members in private.
Select Board Chair Robert “Bob” Jones read the letter out loud at the meeting, referencing documents that were recently received by the group “that are cause for great concern.”
“Namely, the attached documents show that GE signed an agreement releasing Monsanto of liability for PCB contamination,” he said, adding that the agreement was not disclosed to the EPA or to the First Circuit Court of Appeals that affirmed the 2020 permit following a lawsuit challenging the permit’s legality.
As read by Jones, the letter states that the EPA failed to “adequately investigate” this relationship between the two companies. Additionally, he said the Board has received internal Monsanto documents showing a “cancer index” outlining each employee diagnosed with the disease and dating back to 1949, more than two decades before the alleged 1971 GE-Monsanto release was executed.
Public health physician and University of Albany professor David Carpenter testified by affidavit to the Lee Board of Health that the current location of the projected UDF in Lee “would be catastrophic to the residents of Lee,” according to the letter.
In the reading, Jones produced a timeline of events depicting the GE-Monsanto relationship, from 1968 when Monsanto learned PCBs discharged into rivers become embedded into the waterway’s sediments as opposed to being carried by river currents into the sea, to August of 1970, the date Monsanto stopped producing PCB mixtures as evidence showed the chemicals—of which it had already sold 1.4 billion pounds—to be toxic and harmful to humans and the environment. In between those dates, Monsanto notified its customers of the contamination risk to waterways from discharges emitted through production plants using PCBs, and Massachusetts regulations only cover radioactive chemicals discharged into rivers, he said. On January 21, 1971, Monsanto contracted with GE to continue to sell its PCB mixtures for GE’s electrical equipment despite Monsanto conveying to GE that the chemicals “were severely harmful to humans and the environment,” the letter states.
“GE executed this contract assuming all responsibility for any damages Monsanto might have to pay others for PCB exposure,” Jones read. “In the opinion of the town of Lee, the January 21, 1971, contract between Monsanto and GE violates Massachusetts civil conspiracy law.”
He said town representatives intend to file charges against Monsanto this month based on this claim and related claims as well as a public nuisance charge and asked the addressees for their support. “It’s time that we get down to business,” Jones said as he signed the document.
The Berkshire Edge has filed a request with Lee officials for all documents supporting and referred to in the correspondence read by Jones at the session.
