July 11, 2000 - Woods Pond and October MountainGE/Rest of River Cleanup

From 1932 through 1977, the General Electric (GE) Company in Pittsfield released polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Housatonic River. Under a federal Consent Decree issued October 2000, GE is required to address PCB contamination of the Housatonic River, including the Rest of River (which begins two miles from the GE plant in Pittsfield and ends in Long Island Sound). View map of Reaches 5 through 8 here.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Corrective Action Permit in 2016, requiring off-site disposal of all sediment removed from the river. GE challenged the permit before the EPA Environmental Appeals Board (EAB), arguing for disposal of all contaminated material in local landfills.

After EAB ruled in favor of GE in 2018, EPA invited all parties who had participated in the proceedings to a mediation, resulting in a Settlement Agreement reached in February 2020. Based on this agreement, EPA issued a Revised Final Permit Modification to the 2016 Reissued RCRA Permit in December 2020. This permit includes a locus map of the Upland Disposal Facility, sited on a 75-acre parcel purchased by GE from the Lane Construction Co. in April 2021.

Visit EPA’s Rest of River of the GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site to learn more about the Rest of River cleanup plan of the Housatonic River.

Questions for EPA may be directed to Ashlin Brooks, Community Involvement Coordinator:  Brooks.Ashlin@epa.gov

The Town of Lenox has engaged Weston and Sampson Engineers, Inc. to evaluate various aspects of the Rest of River Cleanup. You may read their Housatonic Rest of River Remediation Project FAQ to help answer questions about the cleanup.

Please submit questions and concerns about the cleanup to the Town of Lenox here: Rest of River Survey/Comment Form. Based on your questions, the Town is working with Weston & Sampson to compile information about the project into updated FAQs that will be posted on this site. Your comments also help inform the Town’s responses to EPA comment periods.

Review of GE’s Housatonic Rest of River Transportation & Disposal Plan submitted to the Town of Lenox on January 29, 2024

Materials from the Open House held on January 23, 2024:

Technical Memo – UDF Pre-Design Report Review 10.09.23 in response to GE’s Final Pre-Design Investigation Report for Upland Disposal Facility issued in August 2023

Weston & Sampson schedule graph

Opportunities for Public Comment

The Public Comment Period for the Updated Project Operations Plan including the activities that are being and will be conducted by GE at the Rest of River, is open until April 30, 2024. A hard copy of the plan is available at the Information Desk at the Lenox Library. Comments and public input on this plan should be sent to: R1Housatonic@epa.gov.

The Public Comment Period for the Phase 1 Inspection/Evaluation Report for Woods Pond Dam is open until May 17, 2024. Comments and public input on this plan should be sent to: R1Housatonic@epa.gov.

UPLAND DISPOSAL FACILITY DOCUMENTS FOR PUBLIC REVIEW:

Watch EPA’s Community Update held April 18, 2024, on GE’s Final Design Plan and Monitoring and Maintenance Plan for the Upland Disposal Facility, which was broadcast on CTSB.

Visit EPA’s website for the full list of Opportunities for Input on Housatonic Rest of River Permit Submittals

Historical anthology of articles from The Berkshire Eagle

1971.09.23 Health peril seen in GE transformer oil
• As General Electric touted the advantages of Pyranol, an insulating oil made with polychlorinated biphenyls, scientists expressed concern over the rate of PCB buildup in the environment

1975.08.08 GE here says disposal changes reduce harm to fish from PCB
• Included the news that a test performed four years earlier revealed dangerously high levels of PCBs in Housatonic river fish

1975.09.26 Federal agency starts PBC tests here

1975.11.25 GE says disputed chemical still tops all substitutes
• GE’s rebuttal to Assistant Secretary of the Interior Nathaniel Reed’s call to ban PCB use, because he believed the nation’s rivers and lakes to be in “mortal danger”

1975.12.31 EPA will require GE here to halt PCB discharges
• GE had already begun to incinerate waste PCBs, reducing discharge into the Housatonic to a quarter pound per day

1976.05.18 GE will end use of PBC here by ’77

1977.09.23 State laboratories striving to pin down worrisome, elusive PCB threat to water
• Three wells offered by the Schweitzer Division of Kimberly Clark to alleviate Lenox’s perennial water shortages were found to have PCBs many times above the federal EPA safety guidelines for drinking water

1977.10.28 PCBs in Housatonic bring state health warning
• The Massachusetts Dept. of Health issued its first order not to eat fish or frogs from the Housatonic River due to their PCB levels

1978.10.07 Keeping the water clean (from supplement celebrating GE jubilee)
• Part of a supplement celebrating GE’s centennial, the article praised GE’s efforts to clean up PCBs at the plant in Pittsfield

1984.09.13 Officials seek PBCs burial site
• The EPA wished to find local sites, to eliminate the danger of trucking wastes out of state
• An accompanying article suggests Woods Pond itself as a dump site, with a channel built to reroute the river around the dump pond

1984.10.26 Four area sites proposed for placing PCB sediments
• Silver Lake, Woods Pond, the Willow Creek backwater basin, and an upland area on Post Farm were identified as possible dumping sites

1984.11.08 Forum backs bacteria as anti-PCB weapon

1992.09.20 River cleanup drive takes organized form
• Creation of the Housatonic River Initiative, spearheaded by state Rep. Christopher Hodgkins

1994.05.09 Kerry to seek Woods Pond action
• Senator John Kerry (D-MA) found it “crazy” that Woods Pond had not been declared a Superfund site

1999.08.27 River ducks full of PCBs
• Concentrations were found to be much higher than PCBs in ducks tested along the Hudson River

2000.10.28 PCB cleanup gets green light
• Consent Decree established future process for the Rest of River Cleanup

2003.11.26 River groups await findings of peer panel
• EPA ordered the human health risk assessment; GE claimed that there was “virtually no credible evidence” that PCBs cause cancer in people.

2005.06.20 2 studies document PCB harm

2008.09.10 Cleanup challenged
• EPA sought 150 changes to GE cleanup proposal for “Rest of River,” asking to identify where GE wanted to put a dump, and proposing trains rather than trucks to transport the waste.

Permission to provide these articles was graciously given by The Berkshire Eagle