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EPA, GE Respond To Environmental Appeal Of Housatonic PCB Cleanup Plan

A consumption advisory posted on the Housatonic River in Massachusetts in a file photo.
Nancy Eve Cohen
/
NEPM
A consumption advisory posted on the Housatonic River in Massachusetts in a file photo.

General Electric and the EPA have responded to an appeal of the agency's plan to clean up the rest of the Housatonic River.

So far, the first two miles south of the former GE plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, have been cleaned up. The plan for the rest of the Housatonic calls for a PCB disposal site near the river in Lee. 

The appeal, filed by the Housatonic River Initiative and Housatonic Environmental Action League, includes a geological report of the disposal site, describing it as a “textbook example of where not to locate a landfill.” The report describes the sediments as highly permeable, which would allow PCBs to migrate.

In its response, filed this week, the EPA said the report by the geologist is "procedurally improper" because it was not submitted earlier, and should be struck from the record.

The agency also said the disposal facility will have a cap and double liner with low permeability, and that GE is required to "inspect, monitor and repair" the disposal system, if needed. 

Attorney Andrew Rainer, who represents the environmental groups, said eventually the PCBs will leak back into the river. 

"Who knows where GE will be 50 years from now, let alone 100 or 400 years from now?" he said. "I mean, this idea that GE is going to be there to deal with this is — nobody has any idea where GE will be."

The EPA and GE declined interviews.

In a statement, the EPA said it "stands behind the permit issued in December as the best suited remedy for addressing the risks posed by the PCBs in the Housatonic River and its floodplain."

In a separate statement, a spokesperson for GE said, "Under the revised permit we will remove more contaminated sediment and floodplain soil than under the EPA's 2016 cleanup plan and will accelerate the work years ahead of the original schedule."

The environmental groups have until May 20 to file a reply.

If they lose the appeal, Rainer said, they'll take it to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Nancy Eve Cohen is a former NEPM senior reporter whose investigative reporting has been recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Regional Award for Hard News, along with awards for features and spot news from the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA), American Women in Radio & Television and the Society of Professional Journalists.

She has reported on repatriation to Native nations, criminal justice for survivors of child sexual abuse, linguistic and digital barriers to employment, fatal police shootings and efforts to address climate change and protect the environment. She has done extensive reporting on the EPA's Superfund cleanup of the Housatonic River.

Previously, she served as an editor at NPR in Washington D.C., as well as the managing editor of the Northeast Environmental Hub, a collaboration of public radio stations in New York and New England.

Before working in radio, she produced environmental public television documentaries. As part of a camera crew, she also recorded sound for network television news with assignments in Russia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia.
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