Battle of the Housatonic Pits GE Against EPA

[ttweed@wildrockies.org (Tony Tweedale)]

          "Paterson, New Jersey [Across the USA]."  USA Today, 23 July 98,
          13A.
               A month after the Heterene Chemical Co. released noxious
               fumes that sickened more than 50 people, authorities have
               seized records and tested for illegal chemicals.



Battle of the Housatonic Pits GE Against EPA, The Wall Street
Journal, July 27, 1998, pB1&B2.

     The recent EPA suggestion to designate an old General
Electric plant on Massachusetts'  Housatonic River as a Superfund
site has put the electric company up in arms.  EPA's decision to
nominate the Pittsfield, MA plant and thirty miles of the river
as a possible cleanup site is based on the Agency's  claim that
the river is dangerously contaminated with polychlorinated
biphenyls or PCBs as a result of leakage from the plant.
     GE has filed more than 100 pages of objections to the
nomination and is calling local businessmen and politicians to
join in the battle, claiming that the Superfund designation will
hurt tourism to the area.
     At the company's annual meeting, GE's Chairman Jack Welch
announced that PCBs are harmless, which drew direct comment from
EPA Administrator Carol Browner.  Browner wrote to Welch last
month and suggest he and GE stick to circulating "accurate"
information on PCBs.
     GE used PCBs to make electric transformers at the plant for
over 45 years, until 1977.  In 1977 the U.S. government banned
the use of PCBs after experiments on animals showed them to be a
probable cause of cancer.  Thus, the plant was shut down.
Although GE says it spent more than $120 million cleaning up the
plant, PCBs continue to show up in the Housatonic, which flows
south through Massachusetts and Connecticut before emptying into
Long Island Sound.
     John DeVillars, head of EPA's Region 1 office in Boston,
says that fish in the Housatonic have PCB concentrations of up to
206 parts per million, among the highest levels found in the
country, and 100 times higher than the limits set by the Food and
Drug Administration.
     EPA says that children and teenagers playing along one area
of the river have a 1 in 1,000 risk of developing cancer from
PCBs.  General Electric counters that there is no evidence that
PCBs cause harm in humans.  "It's very tough to get a significant
dose" of PCBs into the human body, says GE Vice president Stephen
Ramsey.  Last year a GE ad campaign said that only eating "large
amounts of dirt" would heighten health risks.
     Besides arguing over the effects of PCBs, GE and EPA
officials are also haggling over the proposed cleanup efforts.
EPA has asked for $25 million in natural resource damage alone,
while GE has offered $10 million in cash and $10 million in other
work it would do.  When difficulties in negotiations developed
this past April, EPA threatened to declare the site an emergency
order, an action which would cost GE $50 million in emergency
cleanup actions.
     GE officials are fuming at what they feel is EPA's
exaggeration of the situation. "This is a nonemergency emergency
order, says Mr. Ramsey.  "It's based on things like a one-year-
old playing on steep riverbanks five days a week, seven months
every year, for five years, wearing only swim trunks."
     Pittsfield Mayor Gerald Doyle has asked the EPA to give up
the Superfund designation,, and to reach a settlement with GE.
However, the two groups have begun negotiations once again.   Mr.
DeVillars has given GE until August 14 to come up with a cleanup
plan.  If they fail to meet the deadline, they will have to face
both Superfund and the emergency order.