As EPA cuts back on Housatonic River council meetings, members say that limits 'back and forth'

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is cutting back on how often it will meet with a citizens group to discuss the toxic waste cleanup of the Housatonic River.

General Electric contaminated the river with PCBs from the 1930s into the 1970s, when it manufactured electrical transformers in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The company is on the hook for cleanup costs.

The EPA announced in July that the Citizens Coordination Council will now meet twice a year. The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday at Memorial High School in Lenox.

Ashlin Brooks, EPA's community involvement coordinator, wrote in an email the agency "plans on holding more frequent meetings for the public at large, coordinating directly with municipal officials on specific topics in the future."

Next Thursday, the agency has scheduled a public meeting in Lee on airborne PCBs and what it will require GE to do to reduce public health risks.

Charlie Cianfarini, a member of the Citizens Coordination Council, said in bigger public meetings there is not enough time to ask questions — unlike the council's previous meetings.

"It was interactive and we could have exchanges back and forth," he said. "And that's an important aspect that's getting lost."

Cianfarini is the interim executive director of Citizens for PCB Removal in Pittsfield.

Judith Herkimer of the Connecticut-based Housatonic Environmental Action League said she is against reducing the number of meetings at a time when the EPA is reviewing GE's plans to build a PCB disposal site in Lee.

"Residents, citizens, homeowners [are] deeply concerned with this proposed PCB toxic landfill. We should be meeting monthly once again," Herkimer said.

The EPA said it plans to listen more in future Citizens Coordination Council meetings.

"The goal is to enable EPA to focus more on receiving feedback and hearing member concerns and advice ... to take more of a listening role and avoid detailed presentations during Council Meetings," Brooks wrote in an email.

The council first began meeting in the late 1990s before the EPA and GE had reached an agreement to clean up the river. Several council members recall they met every month back then.

According to an EPA database , the Citizens Coordination Council met three times in 2022 and in 2023. In 2006, it met seven times.

One purpose of the council, according to a 2005 document, was "to provide community input and structured feedback to GE and the government."

GE doesn't attend the council's meetings anymore.