“The retreat brings people together, builds community in the forest, gets participants outside and off their screens, and uses nature sustainably to heal and inspire minds and souls,” stated Great Mountain Forest Executive Director Michael Zafros. Retreat registration closes on July 30.
Neal added, however, that even though great gains have been made in the field of renewable energy, "plentiful natural gas" should remain an option, in part because it "does less harm" to the environment.
The $300,000 Brownfields Community Wide Assessment grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be used to perform Phase One and Phase Two environmental assessments of several properties, most of them in and around the village of Housatonic.
The latest episode saw the public hearing on the airport's quest for three new hangars continued to July 10, but only after the selectboard heard from both sides of the controversial proposal, with noisy airport antagonists drowning out proponents.
In his letter to the editor, Benno Friedman writes: “In a fair and accurate fashion, the article did not shy away from describing a complex and complicated set of issues and arguments.”
Front and center in the arguments was GE’s insistence on site disposal at Woods Pond on the Lee-Lenox border, Rising Pond in Great Barrington, and near Forest Street in Lee.
E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, said he would replace the academic scientists with representatives from industries whose pollution the agency is supposed to regulate.
GE has formally objected to EPA’s final cleanup remedy, challenging the agency’s directive to transport and dispose of the PCB waste to an off-site facility.
Although EPA’s final remedy requires the General Electric Company to transport and dispose of PCB waste in a federally approved landfill, the company is fighting tooth and nail to dispose of contaminated waste locally.
On March 15, the Court held that the Natural Gas Act does not allow pipeline companies to leapfrog over state administrative procedures in order to expedite their projects. This is the first time a federal Circuit Court has interpreted the relevant language in the Natural Gas Act.
“There are a lot of people trying to do organic farming around here. This [resolution] is about protecting our local organic farmers. If you get GMO seed into your field, you’re done.”
-- Selectboard member Bill Cooke, who introduced a draft resolution intended to protect the integrity of organic farms and their produce.
