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Despite EPA's final permit, Berkshire residents still plan appeals of Housatonic River cleanup plan

A section of the Housatonic River in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where PCB-contaminated sediment was excavated and removed. Some of it was disposed in PCB disposal sites in the city.
Nancy Eve Cohen
/
NEPM
A section of the Housatonic River in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where PCB-contaminated sediment was excavated and removed. Some of it was disposed in PCB disposal sites in the city.

Environmental groups and other opponents to the EPA's cleanup plan for the Housatonic River say they are not done fighting.

The agency issued a final permit for the plan this week, following last month's ruling by an EPA appeals board that the work should move forward.

General Electric polluted the Housatonic with PCBs decades ago when it operated a factory in Pittsfield.

The two groups who lost before the EPA Environmental Appeals Board, the Housatonic River Initiative and Housatonic Environmental Action League, have until the end of May to appeal — this time in the U.S Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Their attorney, Stephanie Parker, said many in the community are strongly opposed to the plan, which was reached in a closed-door mediated settlement. It includes a disposal site in Lee that the EPA said will contain low-level PCB sediment.

"The wide ranging sentiment in the communities that are in that area is so strongly opposed to the remedy that EPA has reached here, in terms of putting a dump near their homes and schools and communities, and continuing to burden these individuals with the pollution that G.E. caused," Parker said. "And we feel strongly that EPA has not reached the right result here."

Another group of Berkshire residents are appealing a Berkshire Superior Court decision to allow a motion to dismiss their case, which argued town officials in Lee should not have agreed to the PCB dump without giving residents the chance to weigh in.

The EPA's New England office said it "has no comments on potential litigation."

G.E. said it can't comment on the appeals.

"We will continue to work closely with EPA, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and local communities and stakeholders to complete the design process now underway and to ensure the successful completion of the cleanup of the Housatonic River,” the company said in a statement.

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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