The Berkshire community sits on the banks of the Housatonic River, the county’s main waterway that GE polluted with toxic forever chemicals in the mid-20th Century. As a controversial cleanup plan first announced in 2020 slowly navigates legal challenges and public outcry, residents face the reality that Lee will soon be home to both a new landfill and the nucleus of a massive project that will take at least 15 years and $600 million.
“We don't consider it a good cleanup proposal, leaving 75 to 80% of the toxic materials still in the river, moving those materials just a few hundred feet from the river above a major aquifer," said town administrator Chris Brittain. "And recently, the EPA even put out that there was 98 different proposals for alternative cleanup methods that could be used in their challenge grant.”
On Thursday, Brittain and other Lee leaders will make their way to Sam Adams Park in downtown Boston by GE’s corporate offices to hold a rally protesting the cleanup.
“We're just trying to point out that this is not an adequate cleanup for Lee and Berkshire County, that there are other better methods, and that we're asking for General Electric to do the right thing and do a proper cleanup of the river,” Brittain told WAMC.
Little has come so far from Lee’s legal efforts to challenge the cleanup, and Brittain says GE has managed to almost entirely avoid direct contact with the town.
“The only communication we've gotten is anything that's- Forums that have been set up through the EPA, we've never had the opportunity to actually sit down with GE and talk about this," He said. "It's been through whatever meetings have been set up through the EPA and just seeing a GE PowerPoint.”
The goal of the rally is to tie Lee’s fate in with larger national narratives about corporate malfeasance and the price local communities pay.
“What's happening in Berkshire County and Housatonic River Corridor is just a microcosm of what's been happening elsewhere across the country, not only with GE but with other multibillion dollar corporations. It has been a terrible environmental catastrophe that's been unfolding for decades now," said Select board member Bob Jones, who agrees that the proposed cleanup is inadequate for the Lee community. “We're not looking to punish GE, even though they did commit, these are actually major crimes that have been committed since the late 1930s- We're not looking to punish them. We're looking to find a way to resolve this in a constructive way, so that this can actually be the very beginning of a cleanup that will be improved over the years for the next generations, instead of just kicking the can down the road.”
For Jones, Brittain, and other members of both the Lee and Berkshire community, the Housatonic River and its treatment at the hands of GE remains an open wound.
“It's an environmental treasure trove, with the animals, the various species that are here," said Jones. "It's an absolutely beautiful, pristine river. And we know going back all the way to the to the first people here, the indigenous people, it's a main artery for us. And the reason the very towns, the towns even exist along this where they do is because of the river- And that has been taken away from us.”
Jones says that examples of how other communities have better negotiated environmental policies are not hard to find.
“All you have to do is you can go to Vermont, different areas where the rivers are not polluted, and you see thriving communities, tourism, beautiful homes, and they they're able to build upon their rivers," he told WAMC. "We have signs along our rivers- Don't eat the fish, don't go in the water, don't breathe the air. And what is that? That's not something that Lee or any of these towns brought upon ourselves- This is something that's been perpetrated by a multibillion dollar corporation.”
With new leadership at the EPA in the form of Trump appointee and former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin, WAMC reached out to the agency to ask if the Housatonic cleanup has been impacted.
In a statement, the EPA says Zeldin had been “very clear about his commitment to the agency’s mission of protecting human health and the environment,” and that the Trump administration is committed to continue the cleanup of toxic sites.
GE issued its own statement to WAMC, saying that the company is “focused on achieving EPA approval for a Housatonic River cleanup plan that protects human health and the environment.”
GE presented its most recent draft of the revised cleanup plan at a December meeting in Pittsfield.
