EPA To Discuss Housatonic Clean Up With Massachusetts, Connecticut

The U-S Environmental Protection Agency has decided to meet with biologists from the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts to discuss the clean up plan for the Housatonic River. As WNPR’s Nancy Cohen reports the meetings will delay the release of EPA’s clean-up proposal.

The Housatonic River is polluted with PCBs, a toxin that was once used in the manufacturing of electrical transformers at a General Electric plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. G-E and the U-S EPA have dug up the PCBs from the first two miles of the river south of the old plant.  The EPA says it wants a clean up in the rest of the Housatonic (which flows into Connecticut) that would allow people to eventually eat fish out of the river again. But the state of Massachusetts says the ecological benefits of digging up the channel of the river are outweighed by the ecological harm. The state of Connecticut says it wants the PCB pollution to be reduced to the greatest degree possible. The EPA has responded by offering to delay the release of its clean up plan and meet with experts from the environmental agencies from both states. Jim Murphy is with the EPA.

“We thought it was worth taking another two to three months  to have a series of technical discussions with both states  and identify any of the differences to see if we could narrow them.”

Murphy says it’s too early to say whether the EPA would change its clean up plan after these meetings. He says the agency’s proposal will be released by early 2012.

For WNPR I’m Nancy Cohen.