“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.
“It’s all coming to a point where I feel like I can do my little thing — a symbolic push — bringing attention to what all the warriors along this river have done and what they are doing. I’m the messenger not the hero.”
-- Denny Alsop
General Electric proposes to stash PCBs from the river in three landfills: one next to Woods Pond in Lenox Dale, another near the Mass Pike in Lee, close to Goose Pond, and the third adjacent to the Rising Pond dam in Housatonic.
The fact that 1Berkshire would take a position on the Kinder-Morgan natural gas pipeline while accepting funds from Kinder-Morgan raises many questions, just as it did when they opposed the Housatonic River cleanup while accepting a large, secret donation from General Electric.
According to the Federal Register, EPA scientists have stated that toxic landfill liners are no guarantee and that landfill pollutants can “migrate into the broader environment. Eventually liners will either degrade, tear, or crack and will allow liquids to migrate out of the unit.” GE wants three more PCB landfills in the Berkshires. But the EPA insists on out-of-state disposal in an approved PCB facility. The matter will likely be settled in court.
Massachusetts could have conditioned the move to Boston on an expeditious, cooperative cleanup of the Housatonic River; there is no evidence that that happened. On the contrary, GE appears to have received benefits and incentives in the East, and no reminder of its responsibilities in the West.
We are the stewards of our community, and every decision we make matters. Letting our high school slide into disrepair…letting the character of our Main Street be lost.
“We have before us a [cleanup] that allows significant concentrations and volumes of PCB-contaminated sediment, soils and water to remain in the water after completion of remediation activities…”
-- Rest of the River Municipal Committee, composed of Lenox, Lee, Stockbridge, Great Barrington, and Sheffield
Any time a state agency performs such an abrupt about face, it’s reasonable to suspect the presence of an unseen actor. Who got to the DEP? Consider this: the Log Homes site has another neighbor, the Housatonic River, which as we all know is the special responsibility of a certain Fortune 500 corporation.
It is “disappointing” that while there will be some drainage improvements to Great Barrington’s Main Street from the reconstruction project, there aren’t more significant changes. He expressed concern about a large stormwater pipe that releases into the river, near the skateboard park off Bridge Street.
---Landscape designer Craig Okerstrom-Lang
In January 2011, 1Berkshire received $300,000 from General Electric and then proceeded to develop a public relations and social media campaign to oppose dredging GE’s PCB pollution from the Housatonic River. The surreptitious funding and anti-environmental campaign led to the resignation of two 1Berkshire directors, both members of Berkshire Creative.
Selectmen and life-long Lenox resident Dave Roche invoked the concept of an environmental legacy. “Let’s leave something better for our children,” he said.
The reason why natural gas costs so much more in New England than it does in Pennsylvania is that other states have made a commitment to building pipelines.
In 1964, Mount Greylock Tramway Authority planned to transform the highest mountain in Massachusetts into a downhill ski area with a 100-foot tower on the 3,491-foot summit of Mount Greylock for the “world’s largest” aerial tramway.
If successful at the Log Homes site, bioremediation could revolutionize the way thousands of industrial parcels across the country are cleansed of pollutants.
