Since it was announced in 2020, the massive cleanup plan negotiated by the Environmental Protection Agency between GE and communities along the river has remained a source of controversy. In the decades since the corporate titan dumped PCBs into the county’s main waterway, only a limited stretch immediately downstream of the Pittsfield plant where the pollution originated has been remediated.
However, the new plan – which is expected to take at least 15 years and cost around $600 million – will establish a landfill for low level toxic waste in the region. Environmental groups and Berkshire locals have bitterly protested the plan, which was negotiated by the EPA, municipal leaders, and GE entirely in private. Legal efforts to stop the cleanup have repeatedly failed, and the EPA says it expects it to move forward.
At dozens of public meetings in the nearly four years since the plan was announced, locals have expressed dismay over the situation.
At the November 15th Lenox select board meeting, Phoenix Haynes said her family had moved to Lenox Dale a year and a half ago not knowing that their home was directly across the Housatonic from the landfill site.
“We’re just really disappointed to hear about this entire agreement being made without the public’s input," she said. "It seems like there wasn’t a lot of transparency when the agreement was made.”
Through tears, she begged municipal leaders to join other communities along the waterway in protesting the cleanup.
“We invested our life savings into our home, and it’s just really scary to be not involved in a decision that could affect our lives going forward and the safety of our kids,” said Haynes.
GE will unveil how it intends to move higher level toxins out of Berkshire County Tuesday at Lee High School.
Leading up to the meeting, environmental activists like Tim Gray of the Housatonic River Initiative – one of the most outspoken critics of the cleanup – have expressed serious doubts about GE’s plan for both the landfill and the transportation of waste.
“They come to us and start to, to the town, and start to tell them they're going to be trucking this stuff to the town," Gray told WAMC. :At least what we heard is that they that they want to take it down Main Street, which is like, what? This is just unheard of. And they want to take it down Walker Street in Lenox.”
In October, the EPA gave reporters a tour of the planned landfill site adjacent to Lee and Lenox and the sprawling October Mountain State Forest. It lies in a former gravel pit above the Housatonic and Woods Pond, where PCBs have sat untouched and exposed for decades.
“Woods Pond is right here," said Project manager Dean Tagliaferro. "About 30% of the waste material to be generated from this project is going to come from Woods Pond, and a little bit more farther up. One of the key things is, this is so close to Woods Pond, you can hydraulically dredge or hydraulically pump or convey through pipes from the Pond, straight up this utility corridor, power lines, to this area up here, or a support area where GE is going to dewater it. So, there's no trucks, no transportation on city roads, rail line, out of state, anywhere.”
Taliaferro said that after working Superfund sites since 1987 – including the source of the Housatonic’s pollution, the former GE site in Pittsfield – he found both the landfill and plan to transport toxic materials do not pose a risk to human life.
“This is the lowest level of contamination I've dealt with," he told WAMC. "I shipped off hydrochloric acids, acids, bases, cyanide, and when I hear people get concerned about trucks, it's just dirt with a little bit of PCBs in it. And, yeah, I don't want it in my playground. But if it's in a truck, and people have asked me what happens if the truck has an accident, I'd say, well, first you clean up the oil and the gasoline, make sure the person is okay, and then get a shovel and shovel up the dirt just like you would do any other dump truck.”
General Electric will present its plan to remove toxic waste dredged from the Housatonic River alongside representatives of the EPA at 6:30 Tuesday at Lee High School.
