January 22, 2017
By Mickey Friedman
PIP has come to town. Not the Pip of Charles Dickens, though hopefully this PIP is indeed a sign of great expectations.
PIP is the formal public involvement process for the toxic waste site we’ve been left with for too many decades, the abandoned New England Log Homes (NELH) in Great Barrington. We have PIP because eleven residents, including Nan Wile, Elizabeth Orenstein, Sharon Gregory, and Laurily Epstein, petitioned the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire (CDCSB) to designate the site a Public Involvement Plan Site. Our state version of the federal Superfund Law, M.G.L. c. 21E and the Massachusetts Contingency Plan (MCP) provide a way for citizens to participate in the process of cleaning up hazardous waste sites.
The responsibility for creating such a plan falls on the CDCSB, which in its desire to make useful once again these eight acres along the banks of the Housatonic, and so very close to Main Street, have inherited the toxic soil and groundwater, and the responsibility for cleaning it up. Which may fall under the heading of “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.”
A Public Involvement Plan guarantees public participation. On Wednesday January 4, 2017, more than fifty people crowded into the Community Room at Mason Public Library to hear Tim Geller share details of CDCSB’s draft document. You can reach him at 17 Bridge Street in Great Barrington or call (413) 528-7788 and ask to get a copy. His email is tim@cdcsb.org. Any comments you have about the draft plan need to be submitted to him by January 24, 2017.
Sadly, this site has always been complicated by the fact that the previous owner, truly responsible for the toxic chemicals he used to strip logs, skipped town. And while it would have made most sense to draft a plan years ago, the DEP notes: “The designation of a site as a PIP site may occur at any time throughout the remedial response action process.”
According to DEP, a PIP identifies “specific opportunities for public participation in cleanup decisions … when advance notice of site activities will be provided, and when information about site investigations will be available. The Plan identifies community concerns and describes activities that will be undertaken to address and incorporate public concerns in the remedial response process.”
Previous efforts of CDCSB to develop this site have engendered suspicion and conflict. And I believe all who have expressed their feelings have done so out of legitimate concern. Those who reacted to the dust and odor that accompanied the attempt to utilize an innovative form of bioremediation to break down the toxic chemicals were sincerely troubled. Those who didn’t appreciate the planned placement of the affordable housing, or the architectural plans offered reasonable criticism. And yet. And yet. And yet …
If you read the several decades’ worth of technical reports you’ll learn about the alarming levels of toxic chemicals in the soil at the site: pentachlorophenol (PCP), dioxins, extractable petroleum hydrocarbons (EPH), metals, and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
I urge CDCSB to implement the Community Interview process outlined in DEP’s Public Involvement Plan Interim Guidance document. DEP calls for holding a series of small meetings with a wide variety of community members, including the petitioners, the abutters, neighborhood residents, environmental groups, and town officials including the Town Manager, Fire Chief, the Board of Health, the Conservation Commission etc. To ensure that “Concerns expressed by community members provide the foundation for determining appropriate public involvement activities to be proposed in the draft Plan. Concerns must also be factored into assessment and remediation activities.”
Having read these technical reports – no easy job – I urge the CDCSB to prepare simple leaflets that explain this past work in a simple, easy to understand way, and prepare and widely distribute sheets detailing the chemicals of concern, what levels are we dealing with at the site, how we can be exposed to them, and the potential health problems that results from exposure. Several of these chemicals are probable human carcinogens, disrupt the endocrine system, and mess with human development.
Community members up and down the Housatonic River used the PIP process to discover additional contaminated sites, to educate their neighbors about the dangers to human health from PCBs, and to advocate for a more thorough cleanup.
Those of you who live in Sheffield should know that NELH’s PCP contaminated groundwater can be found within the Zone II for the public water supply for the Town of Sheffield.
And, it was quite telling that several people journeyed up from Connecticut because they are concerned these chemicals are making their way into the Housatonic and moving downstream.
So at the end of the day, all of us need to work cooperatively with the CDCSB to confront the present danger we live with. And to figure out a cleanup plan that works for all.
Let’s embrace PIP.