BEAT's Blog

The February 2 issue of our newsletter, The BEAT News, carried the following story.

Busted for dumping snow in Merrimack River

Tuesday February 1, 2011
LAWRENCE, Mass. (AP) — An investigation has been launched after surveillance video caught a contractor allegedly dumping snow plowed from a parking lot into the Merrimack River in Lawrence.

Mayor William Lantigua says he personally witnessed the dumping, which involved 42 trucks over a three-hour period late Sunday night and into Monday morning.

Police Chief John Romero tells The Eagle-Tribune that dumping plowed snow into water is a violation of federal clean water laws, because the snow contains salt, oil and other contaminants.

Police have informed both state and federal environmental regulators.
<full story with video>

Lawrence DPW workers suspended for dumping snow in river
Source: eagletribune.com

One day after Mayor William Lantigua caught a private contractor dumping snow into the Merrimack River, he suspended three public works employees, one of them a School Committee member, for allegedly doing the same thing.

We also posted on February 2 a reminder to residents and to municipalities that dumping snow in the river is not an acceptable means for disposing of snow – it is in fact illegal.

Recently we observed snow-removal equipment sending snow into the river along West Street in Pittsfield.  On February 13 the following letter to the editor appeared in the electronic version (probably the print version too) of The Berkshire Eagle.

Sand, salt don’t belong in river

Sunday February 13, 2011

My wife and I made our daily trip to Harry’s on Elm St. Monday afternoon and were amazed to see the city’s self-propelled sidewalk snowblower unit removing the nasty sand and salt snow from the bridge near the Clip Shop by sending it right over the sides and into the river! When we left Harry’s the other side was being done.

Isn’t there some kind of EPA law being violated here? Couldn’t that snow have been blown into the back of a truck?

BILL PLUDE

Pittsfield

To which we responded online:

Yes there certainly is a law against that. Dumping anything in the river without a permit is a violation of the federal Clean Water Act. We recently put a reminder of this in our newsletter, The BEAT News. You can always call Mass DEP’s Environmental Strike Force at 1-888-VIOLATE (1-888-846-5283) when you think you see a violation. Thanks for the heads-up.
Bruce Winn (Berkshire Environmental Action Team)

We would like to remind everyone again.  It is illegal to dump anything in the river without a permit.  BEAT has reported the violation to the City of Pittsfield (Mayor’s Office), the Pittsfield Conservation Commission, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and the DEP Environmental Strike Force.

The Consent Decree – everyone knows what it is, and nobody has anything good to say about it.  This is the legal agreement made in 2000 by which the cleanup of PCBs in and around the Housatonic River is conducted.  The participants in the agreement were:  the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), General Electric (GE), the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the State of Connecticut, the City of Pittsfield, and the Pittsfield Economic Development Authority (PEDA).

From time to time, the parties involved in the cleanup wish to modify this decree.  The Consent Decree has in fact been reopened at least ten times – usually when GE is inconvenienced by one or more of its provisions.  EPA refuses to open it for environmental groups, because they fear that high-powered GE lawyers will take advantage of the opportunity to make more of their own own changes.  Does this make any sense?  Isn’t it more likely that GE will use any opening in the usually locked-down decree to their own advantage when they are the ones planning the opening?

Even when the decree has been opened, environmental groups have little input.  Take the case of the opening of the decree just last September.  This was a reopening of the decree to allow GE to modify the remediation plan for Silver Lake.  BEAT and other environmental organizations thought this might be a good opportunity to make some of our own adjustments to how the cleanup of Silver Lake should proceed.   Our concerns fell on deaf ears.  Only GE’s concerns were addressed.  This makes it difficult to take seriously EPA’s rationale for refusing the requests of environmental organizations.  The rule seems to be that only GE can reopen the decree, even though the decree itself places no such restriction on the process.  EPA won’t act for fear of GE’s lawyers, and now, for political reasons, this situation may get worse. Read more…

Lately I’ve been trying to understand the motivation of those people in our community who are arguing against a cleanup of the Housatonic River and are arguing instead that GE has the correct perspective in saying that the river should be left to heal itself. I understand GE’s motivation. Any cleanup will cost them money. They are bound as a corporation to protect the interest of their shareholders, which means they must protect their bottom line even if it means leaving their poisons in our river. But what about those in our own community who don’t want the PCBs removed from the river and who have been spending quite a bit of money to add their voices to GE’s PR campaign? Read more…