By Mickey Friedman
March 25, 2018
In the real world of David versus Goliath, if you manage to find a stone for your slingshot, you’re likely to miss more times than you bring the big guy down. For more than three decades I’ve been one of the Davids hurling pebbles at the PCB-spewing Goliath, General Electric.
The Captains of GE had their hard-working Berkshire County workers sloshing around in a foot of PCB-contaminated oil on the floors of their factories as they built some of the world’s best electrical transformers, immersing their arms in oil, breathing in oil-infused fumes. While they allowed that oil to spill down the many drains, forming a virtual underground lake beneath East Street, then leeching into the Housatonic River.
Why? Because it would have cost to find a safer alternative than the polychlorinated biphenyls they used to insulate their transformers and capacitors.
Their workers never knew about the persistent dangers to their health. And GE chose not to provide their workers with protective gear. GE chose not to build an effective drainage system.
Profit trumped people. Money mattered more than their workers and our river.
The fight to protect people and the environment from the profiteers has never been easy. With every legislative victory –the Clean Air and Water Acts, Superfund – we must always rely on government agencies to enforce these new regulations. Today, you couldn’t ask for a clearer example of governmental incompetence and conflict of interest than Scott Pruitt, our first-class flying Environmental Protection Agency Administrator who doesn’t believe in environmental protection. Or our Secretary of Interior who wants to give away our public lands to the polluters who will profit from and defile them.
Those of us who have struggled for a fishable and swimmable Housatonic have experienced first-hand the competing interests of those hard-working EPA employees who serve honest science and advocate for environment remediation, and their higher-ups who bend to the interests of the offending corporation.
The Housatonic River Initiative (HRI) recently argued before EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board that the planned cleanup of the River would leave an extraordinary percentage of PCBs behind, a continuing and unnecessary threat.
HRI urged the EPA not to allow GE to dump PCB-contaminated soil and sediments. Urging EPA to force GE to treat them, to destroy or severely reduce their volume. GE, to save money, prefers to use massive dumps in South County communities. The EPA, appreciating how upset some of you might be, asked GE to send them out-of-state to someone else’s community.
CERCLA is the environmental legislation that governs clean-ups. CERCLA establishes Criteria for Evaluating Alternative Remedies. HRI argued that Criteria 1 – “Overall protection of human health and the environment” would be most effectively accomplished by the most thorough PCB cleanup possible. That removing the most contamination best met the requirements of Criteria 3 – “Long-term effectiveness and permanence.”
For decades, HRI advocated for the need to heed Criteria 4 – “Reduction of toxicity, mobility, or volume through treatment.”
HRI made a compelling case that EPA Region One’s plan for the river cleanup made too many compromises. But there’s Criteria 6 – “Implementabily” and Criteria 7 – “Cost,” which time and again has triumphed over long-term effectiveness, permanence and treatment. For example, in the 2000 Consent Decree, EPA granted GE the authority to dump massive amounts of contaminated sediment and soil across from an elementary school. HRI went to federal court to challenge that agreement and ultimately withdrew its legal action in return for a promise from EPA that they would endorse pilot tests to determine whether we could use innovative technologies to effectively treat Housatonic River PCB-contaminated sediment. A promise EPA never kept.
On January 26, 2018 the Environment Appeals Board ruled against HRI and for Region 1 of the EPA upholding: “with one exception, the Region’s decisions on the scope of the cleanup against both the claims that it goes too far and the claims that it does not go far enough; (2) remands for further consideration the permit requirements on additional response actions required for future work projects in the River by third parties; (3) upholds the Region’s decision not to require treatment of the excavated sediment and soil prior to disposal; and (4) remands for further consideration the permit condition requiring GE to dispose of the excavated material offsite rather than on-site.” So, to be negotiated and determined, where to dump the contaminated soil and sediment.
When did it become unreasonable to ask for restitution, for a complete cleanup? Because there’s “protection” and “effectiveness” that are neither completely protective or effective. Because there’s no need to force GE to spend an inordinate amount when we can live with PCB-contaminated fish – eat less – and we can live with PCB-contaminated river banks. Post some signs that say “don’t eat the soil.” And teach the eagles and ducks and beavers to read. So, they’ll know clean isn’t clean.
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“Teach The Eagles To Read” was first published in the March 15, 2018 issue of The Berkshire Record.
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