Since it was announced in 2020, the blockbuster plan to finally address PCBs in the Berkshires’ major waterway has been a bitter pill for county residents. Brokered behind closed doors by the Environmental Protection Agency, the agreement between GE and municipalities along the Housatonic has been vociferously protested at every step of the process. The meeting in Lee High School, typical of public forums since the plan was unveiled, had its share of interruptions, boos, and tears from attendees — some holding signs blasting the cleanup.
The transportation plan Berkshire residents heard from GE Tuesday night heavily favors trucking as the means of moving PCBs dredged from the river both within and out of the county. While low level waste will be dumped in a new landfill in Lee directly adjacent to the Housatonic and Woods Pond, high level waste will be taken to containment sites out of state. While the landfill has been the subject of much of the controversy over the cleanup, discussing transportation of the waste proved to be just as fraught.
Dr. Charles Kenny, chair of the Tri Town Health Department and the Stockbridge board of health, said he found the presentation disappointing, inadequate, and insulting.
“The region has stipulated in the final permit, the revised final permit of 2020 that came out in December, that the permittee should, in his proposal, consider and put forth measures that would maximize the transport of the waste material off site by rail,” he said.
Kenny contends GE’s plan, with its heavy focus on trucking, failed to meet the EPA’s standards and was delivered prematurely.
“I also think that this proposal is seriously misleading," he continued. "The truck figures that are being presented are totally predicated on the idea that the rail staging used will be remodeled existing rail staging, which is located at inconvenient distances from wherever the truck staging or the recipient stating for the material coming out of the excavation is located. The consideration that new rail staging could be constructed is not in this proposal at all.”
The doctor was just as unsparing in his criticism of the EPA.
“In the 60s, and the 70s, I can show you statements by the EPA that PCBs were not dangerous," said Kenny. "If you tell us that they are not dangerous on the assumption that the scientific information today will not be improved upon, you're running the risk of making the same error you did before.”
Lee select board chair Bob Jones read a communication from Parker Rodriguez, the corporate counsel for the Housatonic Railroad — a freight company that connects to the national rail system out of a hub in Pittsfield, running south alongside its namesake river.
“This entire argument is intellectually dishonest," Jones read. "Plainly, this material will be loaded into either dump trucks, gondola rail cars, or intermodal containers in the reach areas. There is no need for trucks at the locations of the dredging. If these materials were to be trucked, they would have to clear and level an area to use machinery to load it into the trucks. The same machinery can be used to load the material into rail cars if a siding exists. The burden of building a siding is not so much more than the burden of creating a flat level area to load into trucks that it becomes unfeasible. Moreover, Housatonic Railroad would be willing to contribute some track and possibly labor to contribute to the signing construction.”
Rodriguez said that GE’s plan is patently false in how it depicts the railroad’s schedule as being comparatively constrictive to that of trucking.
“We operate seven days a week," Jones continued. "Rail cars for this project would be placed on a siding for loading. We would have their empty cars placed for loading either the day before they were loaded or very early in the morning the day of. Once they are loaded, we can remove them. In contrast with trucking, the trucker has to show up and wait until the truck is loaded. GE would be dependent upon the truckers’ schedules, whereas our schedule would provide the greater flexibility.”
The message continued with Rodriguez declaring that GE’s plan lacks a legitimate and comprehensive cost benefit analysis between trucking and rail, and it ended with a question.
“Why is GE being allowed to pass on the environmental cost of favoring trucks onto the community in order to save themselves money on infrastructure?” he asked.
During an emotional question and answer period following the presentations, residents expressed anger and grief over the image of a county filled with toxic waste-bearing trucks for a cleanup expected to take at least 15 years. In a display of solidarity with Lee’s efforts to buck the cleanup plan, Patrick White of the Stockbridge select board summed up the long simmering feelings of a county that exists in the shadow of General Electric and its local legacy.
“Approximately 50 years ago, GE laid off my dad, along with tens of thousands of other people and put this county in a depression, and the people of Berkshire County lifted themselves up out of that depression, and we built a tourism economy and a service economy," said White. "And if you think we're going to trust you not to wreck that economy over the next 20 years as you put all these trucks over our roads past Oak and Spruce and Tanglewood and the Red Lion Inn, tens or dozens or 50 trucks a day, you have another thing coming. And I just want to tell the Lee select board, you have one vote for whatever you need.”
