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…

Remember the story of the “green goo” going into the Housatonic River (1,2). iBerkshires has an update on their webpage today. The City of Pittsfield has been fined $6,325 by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection for sending 4,700 gallons of a solution used to clean boilers at Pittsfield High School into a floor drain that went into a storm drain and then straight into the river.

High-school personnel thought they were sending the liquid, which contained sodium nitrate, sodium hydroxide and whatever had just been cleaned out of the boilers, into the city’s sewer system (not that that would have been OK). After being caught, the city filed a report with DEP saying that there had been no significant impact to the river. Apparently DEP disagrees. Read more…

Last week I wrote about a Pittsfield official telling the City Council that the City of Pittsfield had “elected” not to comply with state-mandated environmental monitoring regulations in an effort to save money.  In case you think this is an isolated incident, let me tell you about a few things that happened over the course of the last couple weeks and are still going on. Read more…

Why is it that people, whether in an office in Pittsfield or on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, always think they understand public safety issues better than the regulators. Recently, Bruce Collingwood, Pittsfield’s Commissioner of Public Works and Utilities, stood before the city council during budget hearings to discuss the mayor’s new budget. Mr. Collingwood was asked by a councilor to explain the fact that his department had asked for $106,000 for environmental monitoring but had received only $30,000. Why did this happen and what were the implications of the mayor not putting the full amount in Mr. Collingwood’s budget the councilor wanted to know.

Mr. Collingwood explained that the city had “elected” not to do this monitoring although it is required by the state.
Read more…

A recent Pittsfield Gazette story highlighted the controversy surrounding flooding in the area around Deming Park in Pittsfield. Local residents are angry over mistakes made by the Pittsfield Parks Commission and the Pittsfield Conservation Commission. A second, seemingly unrelated story has me concerned.

According to the Gazette, “Ontario Street homeowners led by Dan Miraglia have challenged the city’s activities at the park, which they feel have violated the law and contributed to an ever-worsening flood problem impacting their residential properties. ‘There is a constant flooding problem in that particular area,’ he said.” (1)

Part of the controversy centers on a new batting cage that was built for the Babe Ruth baseball league in Deming Park. There was no permit issued for this work by the Conservation Commission even though the work was in the floodplain.

According to the Gazette, “The parks commission approved the batting cage — paid for by the Babe Ruth league — in February, during a meeting when all votes were illegal because a quorum was not present. The cage was then installed and in March, the commission ‘corrected’ the votes by voting as a package to reaffirm all February actions, without any deliberation. (1)
Read more…

Pittsfield has suffered from an unusual amount of flooding over the course of the past year. Of course nobody is blaming the City for the recent heavy rainfall. But the kind of extreme storms we have been experiencing lately may become more common in the future. Global climate-change models have been saying for years now that climate change in our area will mean more rainfall and more extreme and intense rain storms. (1)

Although nobody is saying that Pittsfield caused all the recent flooding, I believe that the decisions made by the Pittsfield Conservation Commission have made the flooding worse than it otherwise would have been. For example, take their decisions regarding the reconstruction of Wahconah Park. Read more…

Guess what! You know that nice, new grassy area that the City was in such a hurry to put in at Wahconah Park, just outside the stadium? The work that BEAT complained was being done against existing environmental regulations? That grassy area is going to be torn up soon by the City. It seems a storm-drain pipe under Wahconah will have to be dug up so that a new one can be put in. The new grassy area (already dead from being constantly under water) and the new pavement that the City just put in are about to be torn up by the City.

The interesting thing is that the City had planned this storm-drain work before they started the work at Wahconah. In other words, the City performed the work at Wahconah knowing that it would just have to be undone by a later City project. As a matter of fact, the state certificate to perform the work at Wahconah “strongly encouraged” the City to coordinate these two projects. BEAT pointed this out to the City at an open meeting before the work at Wahconah Park started. But the funds were available, so they did the work anyway. Your tax dollars at work. It’s amazing how many problems could be solved just by following existing laws and regulations, but our leaders always seem to have a better idea. I’m just glad we didn’t need any of that wasted money for other things, like social services. We didn’t, did we?

If you have been following BEAT’s Blog, you know that we have a few themes.

1. All BEAT asks is that the City of Pittsfield follow existing laws and regulations.

2. The Pittsfield Conservation Commission does a poor job of protecting Pittsfield’s lakes, rivers, streams, and other wetlands.

3. The purpose of Pittsfield City Government seems to be to take in tax money and grant money and control its distribution.

All three points came into focus for me recently as I looked at two engineering plans related to the work being done at Pittsfield’s own water theme park; Wahconah Park. Read more…

To say Wahconah Park was flooded last week would be an understatement. People were actually kayaking and swimming in the parking lot. I guess even pumping the overflow into nearby wetlands (which the City of Pittsfield has done) couldn’t help. Of course, it wasn’t just Wahconah Park that was flooded. Pittsfield is seeing an unprecedented amount of flooding. Can anything be done? BEAT has been saying for some time now that the Pittsfield Conservation Commission does a poor job of protecting the city from flooding. Read more…