HRI - Working toward a fishable, swimmable river since 1992.

There is a different side to the story when you hear people writing that the clean up didn’t work in the Pittsfield two mile stretch of the

Housatonic River. Here is what was found during remediation. This is Dense Nonaqueous Phase Liquid. A mixture of PCBs and other toxic chemicals under the water table. Some of these plumes that were discovered during the clean up had PCB concentrations thousands of times what EPA considers safe.  GE and Mass DEP are using this stretch of the river to imply the clean up destroyed the river.

Housatonic river restored after PCBs removal

Other parties to this discussion don’t show pictures after restoration has been allowed to take hold. They only show you the river during and immediately after dredging. Restoration takes time!The picture on the left shows the first half mile with 10 years of growth. Below is a picture of the second mile and a half clean up with five years of growth. So do we clean the PCBs and restore the river or leave the PCBs where they are?