The town of Lee, Massachusetts has appointed a PCB advisory committee as a controversial cleanup of the Housatonic River draws near. Under the plan brokered by the Environmental Protection Agency behind closed doors, General Electric will remove the toxic chemicals it dumped into the waterway from a Pittsfield plant in the 20th century. Despite ongoing legal challenges to the cleanup, it appears the multiyear, multimillion dollar undertaking is set to go forward. One of its most contentious elements is the establishment of a landfill for low-level toxins in Lee. Town administrator Christopher Brittain tells WAMC that residents remain skeptical of GE’s ability to protect them from the chemicals.
BRITTAIN: This is a PCB Advisory Committee for the board of selectmen and the town administrator, and we tried to find people with different areas of expertise. We have a couple scientists, a lawyer, a medical doctor, and some people that are in public relations and communications. And the idea was, as this cleanup progresses, to be able to assist the board and work with our consultant to do things best for the town of Lee and its residents.
WAMC: Now, can you breakdown who made the cut for this advisory board? Who's going to be offering their expertise to Lee about PCBs?
So, we have a couple scientists, we have a wetland professional, a licensed site professional and an environmental scientists that are all on the committee, which is Gail Cerecia, Robert Heinsman, and Mary Brittain. We have Peter Bluhm, who is a lawyer, and we have Robert Wespiser, who's a medical doctor, and then Marilyn Wyatt and Julia Thomas, who both have degrees in communications and social engagement. And then we did have one member at-large as a public member, who is Dave Carrington.
Can you give me a good example of a kind of situation that this advisory board might be called on to weigh in on or offer their judgment on?
Yeah, so there's a couple of different things. One is where we get plans to comment on from GE and EPA regularly. We have a couple other sources we use, but this will be another group that can help make comments and suggestions on behalf of the town. The other is we are putting in for a what EPA calls a QAP, or a quality assurance project plan. This group will be involved in that as well. Our plan is for the town to be able to, through our consultant, do our own independent testing as this project starts, whether that be testing surface water, groundwater, air, sediments. Any of the tests that are being done, we want to make sure that we're verifying those and with our own independent test as well. The third thing is the committee will also be working with us on any of the any of the future projects that come down from the EPA, so that we can, in any future plans, commenting on those, that sort of thing.
Now, this obviously speaks a little bit to the level of trust in the GE cleanup plan that Lee is bringing in essentially its own layer of oversight to this process. Can you speak to that a little bit? What are the attitudes in the town at this point, as this process continues to move forward?
I think because of the way this all happened, there's a lot of skepticism, unfortunately, and we want to assure the residents of Lee that we're doing everything we can to protect the town and its residents. And by doing this, again, we're just adding that extra layer of protection for the citizens of Lee.
Anything about this I've not thought to ask you, Chris, that you want to make sure folks understand about the new body.?
The only other thing I wanted to mention, we are initially being funded through a grant from MassDEP to write the QAP plan. We are also going to be going through this, with this body, looking at what we want to budget for future years to continue this program, presumably through settlement money for testing, which is going to cost money, and for other technical and legal assistance that we might need throughout the process.
