October 12, 2013
By Mickey Friedman
If we lived in the Twelfth Best Small Town in America I probably wouldn’t say anything. But somehow here in The Best Small Town in America, a dollar starts out a dollar, but becomes a five in no time at all.
Considering the thirty million we’ll be spending to fix the new/old high school, ten thousand seems like chump change. But there’s something so odd about this ten grand, I can’t seem to let it go.
We’re giving this ten grand to the Pawa Law Group, a Boston-based law firm to negotiate with and/or sue GE over the cleanup-to-come of the Housatonic. Stockbridge, Lenox, Sheffield, Lee and Pittsfield will put in their ten to make sixty, and the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission (BRPC) will coordinate the effort.
I’ve never had a barn or horses. And never had occasion to talk about closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. But this seems as good a time as any to say that Great Barrington’s imaginary horse named Sue has already left our barn. To question whether our money ought to be used for better purposes. And warn again how quickly our original ten grand could multiply to even more ten grands.
Polychlorinated Biphenyls. PCBs. GE has lied about its PCBs from day. About how dangerous they were. About how many of them contaminated Pittsfield neighborhoods, Silver Lake, and the Housatonic River. And now they’re lying about how hard it is to clean them up. So hard, GE calls it “destroying the river to save it.”
BPRC and our sixty grand seeks compensation for the “local impacts of a possible expanded PCB cleanup.” Unfortunately, this plays right into GE propaganda. Because in this scenario, the problem is the cleanup, not the contamination.
Eight decades of PCB poisoning. GE workers exposed to unconscionable levels of toxic chemicals. PCB-contaminated oil seeping from the GE plant to form huge underground lakes, more than a million and a half pounds of PCBs into and down the Housatonic River.
Ironically, the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission was one of the public agencies that misled the public about the PCB contamination. Its handout in the 1980s spread the GE lie that there were only 39,000 pounds of PCBs in the river.
It took years for former GE workers and Berkshire environmentalists to pressure the environmental agencies to preform independent tests. Brave souls who defied the silence: truckers who risked prosecution to tell us where they dumped GE’s PCB-contaminated fill; GE workers who admitted they dumped PCB-oil in and alongside the river.
So there were decades when it would have been the proper thing for Great Barrington to sue GE: for the loss of the Housatonic, for all the children who could have swum in Rising Pond and the river, for the fish that could have been eaten. But for the most part like most every other township in the County, GB was silent.
I know about fighting GE and lawsuits. I helped the Housatonic River Initiative sue the EPA over the terms of the Consent Decree that governs the cleanup of the first two miles of the Housatonic.
We wanted a more comprehensive cleanup of the commercial area around Newell Street, and of Silver Lake. We wanted to use cutting-edge alternative technologies to clean the river. We wanted GE to treat its toxic PCBs not bury them across from the Allendale Elementary School.
It’s been an exhausting struggle and sadly many of the bravest GE workers are no longer with us. Somehow over the last four decades there has been a continuing, constant effort to hold GE accountable. We’ve won and lost along the way.
Considering some of the agency officials we’ve had to deal with, we’re blessed today with an EPA team that cares passionately about the river. Finally, after decades of political pressure, we are about to get a cleanup of the rest of the river.
I’m sure they’ll be areas where GE prevails: PCBs they will leave for future generations; compromises the EPA will make when the powers-that-be in DC overrule the dedicated scientists who know better. Because, of course, GE lobbyists have given so much to the politicians.
A lawsuit that seeks compensation for the “local impacts of a possible expanded PCB cleanup” is a distraction and won’t prevail. Considering the self-inflicted disruption of Downtown Redevelopment, it’s odd we’re troubled by the minor inconvenience of a PCB-cleanup.
The Best Small Town in America should be fighting for an expanded cleanup, not worrying about it. Not reinforcing the GE lie that a cleanup will damage the river and disrupt our communities. Giving GE another reason to delay.
We should demand a PCB-free river and a PCB-free Rising Pond. Alternative technologies rather than a PCB-dump. Because cleaning the river is the right thing to do. Because a cleanup will bring productive jobs, and stimulate our local economy. Let’s celebrate, not sue.