Per the terms of a landmark agreement brokered by the EPA and unveiled in 2020, General Electric – once Berkshire County’s main employer until the 1990s – will clean up the waterway it polluted with toxic PCBs for decades in the 20th Century in communities south of the Pittsfield plant they emerged from.
Tonight’s meeting at Taconic High School follows one roughly a year ago in the town of Lee, where a controversial new landfill for low level pollutants dredged from the river will be sited. The original plan presented then was heavily reliant on trucking, much to the dismay of Berkshire locals harboring many years of frustration with the corporate giant.
“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 Stockbridge select board member Patrick 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.”
Much of the local frustration relates to the secretive nature of the cleanup agreement, which was negotiated and signed without public referendum by municipal officials, GE, and the EPA.
While legal efforts to challenge the cleanup plan have failed, Lee leaders say every element of the ongoing process – including tonight’s meeting – presents a chance to push back against it.
“This is not a done deal, and the fact that they told us a year ago that the rail was not a viable option and then turn around and now are taking 76% of the trucks off the road, shows that this is an agreement that's in flux. The original agreement that was signed in 2020 is full of holes. It's full of holes! Why the town signed off on it, and Lee was one of those towns that signed off on it, why they signed off on it, is beyond me," sad Select board member Bob Jones. “If the average citizen was buying a house and they handed you a contract that had all kinds of blanks in it regarding boundaries and responsibilities in owning it, you wouldn't dream of signing it. But they're basically, everybody signed off on it, and now they're filling in the details. And so, as long as we're going to fill in the details, let's fill them in with details that will work. And that's what I want people really to understand- This is not a done deal. It's a conversation that's ongoing, and it's important that people understand that they be part of it. Let people let GE know, let the EPA know, this ain't good enough.”
Lee’s concerns with the plan go far beyond how the chemicals in the river will be taken out of Berkshire County.
“What we're looking for is a conversation at the table where we can do away with the dump, or certainly diminish the size of the dump, and come up with a way of actually cleaning the river- Not overnight, not in a year's time, maybe not in 10 years’ time," said Jones. "But currently, there's no plan on the table for cleaning the river at all. Their figure is about 20% of the PCBs they're going to get out of the river. And quite frankly, that's not good enough, because before they started dumping PCBs, there were no PCBs in the river. They alone have committed this crime.”
Reached by WAMC, a GE spokesperson offered the following statement on the new removal and transportation plan:
“In response to feedback from U.S. EPA and the local community, GE has submitted an updated transportation and disposal plan that maximizes rail and hydraulic pumping, while also reducing trucking on local roads. We look forward to the EPA’s review.”
The meeting at Taconic High School begins at 6:30.
