Citizens Coordinating Council

AGENDA

September 19, 2007 Crowne Plaza Hotel, One West St., Pittsfield, MA

5:30 Opening of Meeting, Introductions, Overview of Meeting – Dean Tagliaferro, GE-EPA Housatonic Project Manager – Suzanne Orenstein, Facilitator

5:45 Update on remediation projects in Pittsfield, post-remediation surficial sediment sampling, and on anticipated milestones for fall, winter and spring – Dean Tagliaferro and Susan Svirsky, Rest of River Project Manager

6:40 Updates on DEP-led activities in Pittsfield – Susan Steenstrup, MA DEP

7:00 Review and discussion of EPA proposal for outreach for the Rest of River decision process – Jim Murphy, Community Relations Coordinator, EPA – Susan Svirsky

7:20 Review and discuss the proposed schedule for the CCC (.doc file) for the period September 2007 to September 2008 – Suzanne Orenstein

7:30 Public Comment Period

8:00 Adjourn

Citizens Coordinating Council (CCC) meetings are held with the General Electric Company (GE), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and open to the public (although you might not get a chance to ask questions, you usually do get an opportunity toward the end of the meeting).

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• EPA lost 3 people on this project – Bill Lovely and Sharon Hayes were promoted within EPA, and Angela Bonarrigo left for the private sector. Replacing them are Rich Fisher, Skip Hull, and Jim Murphy.
• EPA said they are blocking the two pipes under Hill 78 and installing new ones around the Hill on the West side. Both the sewer pipe and the storm drain pipe will be rerouted. They tested the water coming out of the storm drain pipe and it did have PCBs (low level – I’ll have to look up how low in the monthly reports) and they tested the soil in the swale the pipe  dumps into.
• This move will take awhile because GE has to test the soil in the location the pipes will be moved to. Actually, GE is testing the whole “Hill 78 remainder area” (other than the Hill and Building 71 areas) in a 50′ grid pattern as part of the Consent Decree work – roughly 40 acres. They have about 60 days to do this work.
• GE owns Tyler St Extension.
• OPCAs – Building 71 is now capped. It still needs mid-slope swales to carry the rainwater off the hill. In the last big storm there was some erosion of the cap, but just the topsoil layer.
• Hill 78 is at — I think they said 80% of capacity. GE will cap at least 1.9 acres starting after Memorial Day.
• It is possible that some demolition debris from the GE building removals will go to Hill 78 – only brick and concrete with PCB concentrations less than 50ppm. Yes, some of the concrete has PCB contamination.
• EPA believes the building debris that is buried on site was crushed to less than 3″.
• Lyman St parking lot to be capped.
• Silver Lake – monthly monitoring for PCBs. Finally – they are studying the outflow and coming up with a flow curve. This will give us some idea of how much PCBs is getting into the river from this source.
• During the capping experiment on Silver Lake there was a massive (in BEAT’s opinion) amount of sediment that flowed into the river. EPA says this was just the organic material in the cap (BEAT said wrong color for organic material? and wrong timing – well after the material was put down. EPA disagrees and says the data back them up. BEAT has not reviewed the data, yet.) GE monitors NTUs (measure of turbidity) If the NTUs are greater than 50 ppm they then do Total Suspended Solid (TSS) sampling daily (rather than the weekly sampling they already do). EPA says the pilot capping study has been very effective at showing the difference among the different capping methods – which is what the study was designed to do. 12 sampling points in each of the 3 methods of capping were tested. There were PCBs in each of the three cap methods.
• The geotextile material used in the capping – and in the river – is PERMEABLE TO PCBS as well as water. It was never designed to keep the PCBs from migrating back into the river or lake! That is what the sand layer above the geotextile is supposed to do. They will test the sand layer to find out how fast the PCBs are getting up through the sand layer. Current expectations is that it will take 100 to 400 years to get through the sand layer.  BEAT comment –  The geotextile material was never supposed to stop the PCB flow! EPA knew that this was a temporary fix – they just expect it to take more than a life time to fail. BEAT does not believe that the sand layer will necessarily stay where it is put. We need extensive monitoring for the first few decades and continued monitoring for the lifetime of this problem – not just our lifetimes.
• Water column monitoring in Silver Lake shows it is contaminated with all sorts of chemicals. Yes, this flows into the river above most of the clean up. Until BEAT raised a fuss about no outflow data from Silver Lake, we had NO way to estimate how much was entering the river. Once we begin to get flow data, we can come up with estimates.
• HEAL asked about the testing of the inflow and outflow of Silver Lake. EPA answered about the testing of the inflow from the GE property and the outflow to the river. BEAT pointed out that EPA had not answered HEAL’s question, which included the HUGE inflows from “city” storm drain pipes. EPA suggested that would be the City’s responsibility. BEAT pointed out – as HRI has in the past – that the flow from those pipes is likely to be contaminated because GE used to pump Silve Lake water up to the reservoir in Springside Park. EPA commented about the pond in Springside Park and appeared to be unaware of the HUGE swimming pool-like reservoir covered with cement that is located in Springside Park that is deteriorating. All the groups asked for the inflow to Silver Lake be tested – and the reservoir, too. EPA suggested we contact Roger Janson of the EPA NPDES permitting to find out what is required under the NPDES permit for both GE and the City.
• Bank sampling around Silver Lake showed high levels of lead, PCBs, chromium and cadmium (pretty sure we have those right). Those areas need to be better defined, but there will be removal of those soils – for PCBs down to 10-25ppm recreational standard.
• GE will be released from liability if they do everything that is asked of them.
• Lyman St. – will need to do floodplain compensation. They are going to cap the parking lot, i.e. put down a two foot soil layer on top of an impermeable barrier.
• missed something about the 60s area – 200′ removal?
• Unkamet Brook – GE is dividing their study area into two – the parking lot area and the rest of the area. They are trying to measure flow but are having trouble with the culverts. The one at Dalton Ave was basically full. The one near the railroad tracks was a problem They will try farther downstream. The City of Pittsfield is doing a major study? on Unkamet Brook. BEAT thought they had a grant to do the work. We will check on this, but we had already worked with Anna Symmington of the MassDEP to be sure any work would not change the flow as this brook enters the highly contaminated GE site.
• EPA will be testing the surficial sediments in the first two miles of the river this year at 39 locations. This counts as year 5 after the remediation. Then in years 10 and 15 the sediments will be tested again. After that the schedule will need to be worked out. Remember, they know the cap will fail – they just expect it to take more than our lifetime. We will need more than a lifetime of testing.
• EPA did a macroinvertebrate study in three areas of the river before the remediation began. They will start macroinvertebrate sampling again this year.
• Testing of the water at Pomeroy Ave consistently had PCBs until December 2005. This sampling has been Non-Detect since that time.
• Susan Steenstup of MassDEP gave a summary of the back and forth between MassDEP and GE, trying to hammer out the details of the clean up to be preformed at Dorothy Amos Park. GE still needs to submit the results from additional testing to define the extent of the lead contamination. The cleanup should happen this year.
• West Branch – no one could figure out why the sediments behind the dam at Mill Street have never been tested. Pittsfield appears to be about to get a grant to do this.

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