American dream and a Toxic Legacy: Has GE Permanently Poisoned Pittsfield? - Bibblings| David Scribner's journal for thought, ideas, commentary, images, fiction observed and imagined

American dream and a Toxic Legacy: Has GE Permanently Poisoned Pittsfield?
02/20/06
Pittsfield, Mass.

On warm spring days, when students at Allendale Elementary School in Pittsfield, Mass., break for recess, they can run down to a playground equipped with sparkling new jungle gyms and slides, and play games in a spacious recreation area, flat and broad, perfect for soccer, the whole circled by a track for strolling or jogging. The sprawling, one-story school building is situated in a dense, tidy residential neighborhood which sends 340 children to Allendale.

The school has been recently remodeled. Its hallways are painted in cheerful pastels; brightly-lit classrooms look out through panoramic windows at the play areas below. Imagine a safe, supportive public school environment, serving a warren of single-family homes, on streets named for the states, built in the 1950s to house the workforce for the nearby - and now mainly shuttered - General Electric manufacturing complex, a residential development suggestive of domestic tranquility that was the soul of advertisements back when GE was bringing good things to life and every house had a housewife, cheerfully tending her nest with GE appliances while dressed in a skirt, apron and high heels.

But this American dream, like so many others, rests upon a toxic legacy. Its breadth and durability continue to threaten the health of the surrounding community and the city at large. The school and its playground sit atop a foundation of poisonous dirt. Once a swamp, the property was filled in with an absorbent used to soak up PCB-based lubricants from the floor of GE's transformer manufacturing factory. When it was discovered that General Electric had let a schoolyard - as well as public parks and hundreds of residential yards - be contaminated with carcinogenic material, GE replaced the surface of Allendale's playground with clean soil, and installed the recreational equipment. They repaired the residential and park properties, too.

At the edge of the playground, on GE property, a 38-foot high, 5-acre toxic landfill is swelling like a dusty tumor. These are the infamous Hill 78 and Building 71, dumps used by GE for many decades and so contaminated that their removal or reclamation was a non-negotiable, deal-breaking item in the contentious "settlement" that led to the ongoing $500 million cleanup of the PCB-doused transformer plant and the river that runs through it.

On a clear day, shiny silver trucks toil to the top of Hill 78 and Building 71 to dump their loads of muck and debris dredged from the PCB-contaminated banks of the Housatonic River and other polluted company territory. A swarm of yellow backhoes scuttle over the mound like dung beetles, tamping and scraping the bad earth, raising plumes of dust in their wakes.

And this is what worries Dr. David Carpenter, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the State University at Albany, N.Y. His research strongly suggests that by concentrating exclusively on the dangers of ingestion and skin contact with PCB contaminants, environmental and public health officials here have overlooked airborne PCBs as a serious, pervasive exposure pathway. And he calls the operation - and expansion - of a toxic waste dump next to a school "asinine." What's worse, contingency plans call for the creation of an additional PCB landfill next to Hill 78 and Building 71, at the intersection of Merrill Road and New York Avenue, should the cleanup run out of space to stash the debris.

Based upon his studies, Dr. Carpenter warns that PCB-polluted air can be circulating within a three-mile radius of the landfills - and there are numerous other sites within Pittsfield where PCB-impregnated soil are exposed to the open air, allowing the carcinogen to volatilize.

If his conclusions are correct, the air throughout much of Pittsfield - and not just near the Allendale School - may not safe to breathe over an extended period, especially for children who are more susceptible to developmental disruption and injury caused by PCB concentrations accumulated over time in their bodies.

Dredging up and landfilling industrial toxic waste may pose a wider, more insidious health risk than was assumed when the EPA signed off six years ago on a cleanup agreement allowing the retention of Hill 78 and Building 71 because GE insisted on local storage and did not want to get to the bottom of what was in those dumps. In retrospect, the EPA may have traded one pollution problem for another, one exposure pathway for another.

Meanwhile, 590 GE workers in Schenectady, New York, are taking matters into their own hands. They've filed a $2 billion lawsuit in New York Supreme Court against Monsanto, the maker of PCBs used by GE in manufacturing. The workers claim they were never informed of the health risks their PCB-contaminated workplaces presented. A group of GE retirees is expected to file a similar class action suit against Monsanto. And when will GE retirees from the Pittsfield Works join in?

An equally pressing question: Who's going to go to bat for the children at Allendale School? And who will have the chutzpah to challenge local, state and federal officialdom which prefers to bury objections to the landfills? And who will have the courage to stand up to the EPA and demand those dumps be taken down before they poison the population of Pittsfield.

Short takes

Superhero challenge: The Capeless Crusader, Berkshire County District Attorney David F. Capeless, the only DA in the state who's known for trying to put teenage joint swappers behind jail for two years, is going to have an opponent in the November elections.

Writes a Capeless critic: "We have a candidate. There are many possibilities to both reduce crime and deal with some of the structural imbalances especially in Pittsfield. We can try to develop creative and effective solutions besides prison. It's time to enter the 21st century."

Adventures in the skin trade: What Berkshire town would you guess recently hosted a performance of male strippers? Starched-shirt Adams? Rough and tumble Hinsdale? Gritty Pittsfield? Give up? Why, it's none other than Great Barrington, Hampton of the Berkshires, haven of moral and sexual permissiveness.

The Chicks Who Kick Ass, the duo which rocks on each Thursday night on WBCR-LP FM 97.7 in Great Barrington, reports a group of male strippers from Schenectady were on display at the VFW on South Main Street on Saturday night a few weeks ago, wowing the VFW-ettes. Bills (that's currency, folks, not, you know...) were earnestly tucked into jock straps. Sad to report it was a girls-only affair, but boys (and girls) the CWKA have heard that a female stripper show is in the offing.

Crushed. Crushed at news I wouldn't get the call to be in Gregory Crewdson's wintertime recreations of his notorious photographs of downtown Pittsfield. Word came from his casting director, Jessie Thurston. "It is looking like Gregory is leaning more towards older men, in their 60's for these pictures," she e-mailed. That was some consolation.

I stomped around the SADA office: I'm going to change agents, I sputtered to myself. These rejections are becoming too much to bear. What is it with Gregories. First, it was Gregory Whitehead in his latest radio play. He'd cast me as an editor in his Lenox send-up, "The Club." The part was written out. And now this...

But all's well that ends well. To hear about the rest of the story, go to the "In person" section of Scribbyworld.

Legends on the move: Legends Barbership on Linden Street, a West Side fixture for many years and a lively neighbor of both The Lantern and the Starving Artists Detective Agency - there were so many vigorous, raucous discussions on the sidewalk in front of the shop.

We liked watching them out of the SADA window. Now, it will be Starr Essentials, hair and beauty care, run by Sabrina Powell.

Legends has relocated, with more parking, over to West Housatonic. A longtime Legends customer I know, a white guy from Chicago, says he's disappointed he won't be able to get the best buzz cut in the city, followed by the best burger in the city next door, but he'll stick with Legends' owner Henry Aimable and his colleague Chris for hair.

"I go to Legends because Chris is such a good barber and my hair grows in a funny way that if not cut just right it leaves a ridge peak at the top. Chris understands this.

"You meet a pretty rough crowd in there sometimes, guys I'm sure are drug dealers, along with older, respectable black men and white punks on their best behavior. Chris keeps a baseball bat under the counter. I have never seen him use it, and I suspect the mere threat of it keeps most people in line."

That's life in the big city.

2/21/2006
David,

The fight against GE and the EPA is in good hands. I'm surprised you didn't mention the Housatonic River Initiative (http://www.housatonic-river.com/), an organization that formed fourteen years ago by a bunch of local men and women who actually had the PCBs in their backyards. They are a thorough, intelligent, and relentless group..They even have a member of their Board of Directors specifically assigned to the Allendale School (John Nalepa). You may have seen him last month on local access television. He was the stout-voiced, lightly Long Island-accented man who had the floor of January's open mike (I think) of the City Council meeting. I know you'd remember him, although sadly, I'm sure the locals heard his voice and turned him off...They missed a good show: a piece of intellect and persuasion I've never seen in a City Council meeting before.

You're right on the mark about the other question: When WILL those Pittsfield retirees step forward and and take their swing at GE. Allendale School was built right on top of the toxins...GEs workers and their families...their children...lived among, played in, and breathed those toxins for decades.

My problem is with the entire city. How can we let Hill 78 exist? Why isn't it the city's first priority to clean and renovate the side of Pittsfield GE turned into a wasteland?

Wish your column was more frequent...

2/21/2006
Dear First Bibbling Commentator:
I applaud the efforts of the Housatonic River Initiative which has steadfastly defended the well-being of Pittsfield residents against the depredations of industrial polluters and their apologists. In fact, it was HRI that turned me on to the research done by Dr. David Carpenter at SUNY. I've posted several letters from HRI members, including Tim Gray and Mickey Friedman.

That being said, however, the reason there is a terrible leadership paralysis about doing anything more than the Consent Decree allows about the remaining PCB contamination and its dangers � or even admitting to its continuing dangers � is that, in my view, Pittsfield leaders are afraid of what it will mean to the city economically if the truth comes out. So there is an unspoken code of silence and denial. It's crippling Pittsfield.

Scribby