Report says PCB contaminant levels have decreased in the Housatonic River

CORNWALL — The Housatonic River Commission hosted officials from the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Sept. 8 for an overview of Housatonic River remediation efforts in the last eight years.

The meeting, which was open to the public, was held at the Cornwall Consolidated School, where the river commission normally meets. The Housatonic River Commission includes all six towns in the Northwest Corner as well as New Milford.

A slide presentation underscored the dramatic measures taken so far to remove PCBs from the sediment in the riverbed in the two miles downstream from the former General Electric plant in Pittsfield, Mass.

Entire sections of the river were blocked off with steel walls, allowed to drain and dry, and the contaminated soil was excavated to a depth of three feet.

In some areas, the channel was too narrow for the steel wall approach, so the river was dammed and run through a couple of pipes, allowing crews to dig around them.

The city of Pittsfield had straightened the river in the 1940s, eliminating the oxbows and creating what the EPA’s Jim Murphy described as a “trapezoidal†channel.

And further complicating matters, commercial and residential development went right up to the banks, meaning that PCB contamination was not restricted to the river bed.

Testing in 2007 of the lower one-and-a-half miles of the two miles of remediated river (concentrating on the first 6 inches of sediment, where any new contamination is most likely to show up) showed a 99-percent decrease in PCBs.

The good news for Connecticut is that the amount of PCBs traveling downstream is down significantly. Downstream PCB “loadings†at three sites — the confluence of the east and west branches of the Housatonic, Woods Pond and Rising Pond dam — are down, based on projections from a model.

At the confluence, the amount of PCBs heading downstream went from 78.1 kilograms per year to 2.3, a decrease of 97 percent.

At Woods Pond, near Lenox, the decrease was from 37.3 to 15.9 kg/year (down 57.4 percent) and at Rising Pond dam, near Great Barrington, the decrease was 45.5 percent, from 26.4 to 14.4 kg/year.

Murphy, who is EPA’s community involvement coordinator, said in a phone interview, “There are no active remediation plans in Connecticut. If we do an adequate amount in Massachusetts, that will take care of the problem in Connecticut.

“Connecticut may ask us to do more. There may be something with dams — if someone wants to repair or replace a dam then they could ask GE to pay for remediation.â€

Connecticut officials continue to advise the public that fish from the Housatonic should not be eaten by anyone, especially pregnant women, women who plan to become pregnant within a year, and children under age six.

For more information see epa.gov/region1/ge.

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