By Mickey Friedman
November 17, 2015
Not surprisingly, after all this time, politics prevailed. And the Environmental Protection Agency will allow General Electric to leave great quantities of PCB contamination in our Housatonic river system. Even though with every additional study we learn that PCBs are dangerous in even the smallest quantities, GE is challenging the compromised EPA plan, determined to wrest an even better deal from the government.
At least, thanks to a small but dedicated coalition of the concerned we the people have during this four-decade-long fight forced GE to spend a billion more dollars to clean than they would have.
I have seen several generations of public servants wrestle with this dilemma, many of whom transcended bureaucracy, office politics, and came to love our river. They brought science and service to the fore and, while putting up with great public discontent, did their jobs with skill and integrity.
Through it all GE has been relentless, bobbing and weaving around the facts, throwing its best lawyers at the problem, spending enormous amounts on public relations. And give them credit. They convinced sportsmen and local business leaders that we couldn’t adequately and safely clean up our river. And then they employed former stewards of the environment and bought their compliance. And contributed a small fortune to politicians large and small.
Sadly, so many bought the hype and didn’t study the science. “Don’t Destroy The River To Save It” became the GE-paid-for mantra of the sportsmen. Well, the science proves the opposite. Every day around the world, sensitive river ecosystems are cleaned then brought back to life. Healthier than before.
One doesn’t have to travel any further than Pittsfield to see the vernal pools so successfully restored in the cleanup of the first two miles of the Housatonic.
Along my 35-year journey, with countless meetings, a legal brief written, letters, columns, and public comments, and a documentary film, I’ve come to cherish the GE workers who walked in the deep puddles of PCB-contaminated oil on the factory floors. Plunged their arms into the Pyranol to tighten bolts; who went into the large transformers; who operated the cranes and breathed the fumes. I met men who buried barrels in the Pittsfield softball complex, the old dump, by the riverbank.
I will never ever forget Ed Bates, Jr, and Charles Fessenden who were employed as Manager of Tests and Calculations at Power Transformer and couldn’t bear to see those who worked under them grow sick and die. Who bravely pushed GE to acknowledge the problem and address it.
Ultimately, so much credit goes to these workers and the brave truckers who risked much to share their secrets. Admitting to transporting PCBs throughout the county. Shocking disbelieving state and federal officials and pushing them to excavate and clean backyards and school yards and playgrounds throughout the city.
My biggest problem with the EPA proposed cleanup of The Rest of the River is its decision to leave great quantities of PCBs in the river bottom, the banks and the adjoining floodplain. And to allow unnecessarily high levels of PCBs in fish and wildlife.
If there is one thing that EPA scientists have shown us is that PCB-contaminated soil and sediment continues to move. You can find a PCB hotspot here today, but with a storm or flooding or just the natural flow of the river it will have traveled elsewhere tomorrow.
Remove it and it’s gone. Leave it, even put a warning sign nearby, hand out flyers or tell folks to watch where they walk, well, that’s really a political, not a scientific, solution.
Somehow GE managed to turn watching nature and waiting and doing nothing into an EPA-accepted strategy. In our increasingly sloganized America, “Monitored Natural Recovery” deserves special recognition.
Made it to EPA’s “combination of cleanup approaches:” “Removing and capping PCB-contaminated sediment in some reaches in the Housatonic River.” Then “Monitoring natural recovery in some reaches in the Housatonic River.”
For those of us who love language, this is just another corruption. Because monitoring is just not cleaning up. That GE’s insistence that watching works has somehow made its way into a cleanup strategy is just profoundly sad for those who believe we need to remove and isolate one of the world’s great poisons.
Yes, large concentrations of PCBs will be dredged and some others capped and trapped beneath geotextiles and stones.
But science rarely prevails over power. And so we will live with a still-contaminated Housatonic, with PCB concentrations up to 50ppm in many places. Perhaps in years to come it will be safe to eat the occasional fish but those of us who fought for a fishable, swimmable river? Well, we have lost that great battle.
And because money talks, GE will use the appeals process to fight to clean even less, and also dump its PCB waste right here in Berkshire County.
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You can see Mickey Friedman’s film, “Good Things To Life” at http://www.mickeyfriedman.com/?page_id=533
You can download the EPA’s Final Decision for the cleanup of The Rest of the River here:
http://semspub.epa.gov/src/collection/01/SC32124
GE’s response: https://www.scribd.com/doc/287912980/GE-s-Notice-of-Dispute-on-Rest-of-River-plan
This column originally appeared in the November 5, 2015 edition of The Berkshire Record.