General Electric on Wednesday will discuss its revised plan to transport and dispose toxic PCBs from the Housatonic River cleanup. The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at Taconic High School in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
After GE released its first plan more than a year ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asked the company to do a different analysis that considered using more rail and fewer trucks.
U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey urged GE Chairman and CEO Lawrence Culp "to fix" its "truck-centric" proposal in order to protect public health.
GE is on the hook to pay for the cleanup after it polluted the river with PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, decades ago.
The new proposal calls for using hydraulic pumps to remove about 79% of the toxic waste it gets out of the Housatonic. Most of the pumped slurry would be transported in a pipeline to a new disposal site, which will be built in Lee. An estimated 4% of the pumped waste would be moved by truck to the Lee dump. Another 13% would be moved to Lee using a combination of truck and rail.
The revised analysis identified three locations in Berkshire County to load material on rail cars — in Pittsfield, Lenox and Great Barrington.
A small percentage of the waste which has higher average concentrations of PCBs would be carried on rail cars to regulated facilities out of state.
Charles Kenney, a physician who chairs the Tri Town Health Department for Lee, Lenox and Stockbridge, said a big benefit of the new plan is trucks won't carry toxic waste through downtown Lee.
"But the benefit is overshadowed by the fact that we are still being deceived. The dump [in Lee] does not have to be as big as GE wants it," Kenney said. "They should make a diligent effort now to get as much stuff out as soon as possible, and not wait for the dump to be completed."
The EPA said the disposal facility in Lee will be built and ready to receive PCB waste by 2027. Once it is constructed, the agency said, GE will start removing PCB waste from the river.
Kenney wants more to be taken out of state, as does Lee Select Board member Bob Jones. The EPA has said there are no restrictions on how much can be disposed of at off-site facilities.
Jones said GE's new proposal substantially reduces truck traffic, which he said, is a "step in the right direction."
"We've won the battle, but there is still a war going on. And we are still not satisfied that this couldn't have been done in a better way," he said.
Jones said no matter how much is removed from the river, "we don't think it should remain in the Berkshires. If they are going to take anything out, they should transport it out of state."
The out-of-state federally regulated facilities that can accept waste from the cleanup are in Oklahoma, Utah, Indiana, Michigan, Alabama, New York and Pennsylvania.
In a statement, Markey said he is "monitoring closely local feedback on the new transportation plan ... and will continue to support our local communities to ensure that GE does not get to cheap out on cleaning up the mess that they caused through their reckless and irresponsible pollution of our river and environment."
GE used PCBs to manufacture electrical transformers in Pittsfield from the 1930s into the 1970s. Congress banned the manufacture of PCBs and phased out most of their use in 1979. The EPA classifies the chemical compound as a probable carcinogen.
In 1999, the EPA, General Electric, the city of Pittsfield and the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut reached an agreement to clean up the river. The cleanup of the first two miles south of the plant has been completed.
In February 2020, communities along the river, the EPA, GE and others negotiated in a closed-door mediation the details of cleaning up another 10 miles from Pittsfield to Great Barrington. That agreement includes a disposal site in Lee. The EPA said the disposal site will be “state-of-the-art” with a double liner at the bottom and a leachate collection system.
