The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency held its first meeting with the Citizens Coordinating Council since the agency announced it was cutting back how often it would convene the group to discuss the cleanup of the Housatonic River.
The council was originally formed decades ago to provide feedback to General Electric and the EPA, but GE no longer attends the meetings.
General Electric contaminated the river with PCBs and is responsible for cleaning up the river and paying for it.
At the meeting in Lenox Wednesday night, Valerie Anderson from the Housatonic Clean River Coalition, asked EPA attorney John Kilborn if the agency could require GE to attend, under the cleanup agreement known as the consent decree.
"Can you, as one of the parties to the consent decree, file a motion to have them attend the CCC meetings or be in contempt?" Anderson asked.
Kilborn said the language in the consent decree is not strong enough to file a motion to force GE to come to meetings.
"The language speaks more to them providing information and to participating in community involvement activities," he said.
Judy Herkimer from the Housatonic Environmental Action League asked if the EPA would accept a petition from the council.
"Even if it's an exercise. And just to get GE on the record to demonstrate that they will refuse to participate." she said.
John Kilborn said the agency would consider it.
Toby Berkman, senior mediator with the Consensus Building Institute said he had brought the question of GE's attendance to the company. CBI runs the Citizens Coordinating Council meetings for the EPA.
Berkman said he spoke with Andy Silfer, who previously had a seat on the council, and who is now retired from GE.
Berkman said Silfer said the company has decided not to attend the meetings, at least for now.
"They see see the CCC as a forum that has been focused on opposing the [river cleanup] remedy and airing complaints about issues that have already been resolved. So, they want to focus their community engagement elsewhere," Berkman said.
Berkman said that Silfer said GE plans to focus on sharing information with the public that is related to the cleanup and that it plans to ramp up outreach to specific communities who will be affected, in the future. The company is expected to start excavating the river by 2027.
Berkman also reported to the council that Silfer said GE would reconsider coming back to council meetings if CCC becomes what GE sees "as a productive forum."
In a statement, emailed after the meeting, a spokesperson from GE said, “We are focused on working with U.S. EPA and the community on river remediation plans."
There are 36 council members, with ten alternates. Kevin Mooney is currently listed as General Electric's only council member.
The council started meeting decades ago, in the late 1990s, even before the EPA, General Electric, Massachusetts, Connecticut and the city of Pittsfield had reached an agreement to clean up the river. GE attended council meetings when it was cleaning up the first two miles of the river.
The council meeting was one of two meetings that the EPA convened this week in Berkshire County. On Thursday, they held a public meeting in Lee to discuss its plans to reduce public risk from exposure to airborne PCBs when soil and sediment are excavated from the Housatonic River.
