Category: EPA

Me/We and the EPA

By Mickey Friedman May 12, 2017 I first met the Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1990s. Glad to see them because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was doing a lousy job with GE and PCBs. The EPA had the power…

The Trump Test

By Mickey Friedman December 29, 2016 Bewail and bemoan. Because you are more virtuous than those, insert here whatever variation of deplorable you prefer, who voted for that … With their explosions of righteous indignation, you’d imagine these vociferous critics…

Our Clear and Present Danger

July 19, 2016 By Mickey Friedman Anyone who has watched the ducks paddle from one end of Woods Pond to the other, would be hard pressed to appreciate that the Housatonic is our very own toxic waste repository. So very…

For Landon, Alesia, and Hazel

By Mickey Friedman April 10, 2016 My friends Landon, Alesia, and Hazel live a short walk from GE’s planned PCB-dump off Van Deusenville Road in Housatonic, Massachusetts. Depending on how much or little work GE is forced to do in…

Rise Up for Rising

March 26, 2016 By Mickey Friedman Like many stories, the story about the Lenox or Lee or Housatonic PCB Dump begins and ends with money. The money Monsanto made selling PCBs to GE and Westinghouse. The massive amounts of money…

Time is a River, Housatonic

By Mickey Friedman November 17, 2015 Not surprisingly, after all this time, politics prevailed. And the Environmental Protection Agency will allow General Electric to leave great quantities of PCB contamination in our Housatonic river system. Even though with every additional…

A Horse Named Sue

October 12, 2013 By Mickey Friedman If we lived in the Twelfth Best Small Town in America I probably wouldn’t say anything. But somehow here in The Best Small Town in America, a dollar starts out a dollar, but becomes…

The River: It Ain’t Over

October 2, 2012 By Mickey Friedman A loyal reader admonished me recently: “You haven’t written about the River in a while!” Sometimes thinking about the thirty year fight for a PCB cleanup makes me want to go to sleep for…

GE Brought A Good Thing To Life

March 10, 2011 By Mickey Friedman Having grown up on city streets, I wouldn’t have known a vernal pool if I had fallen into one. Today I’m writing about vernal pools because they are central to the battle about how…

EPA: No Pressure from White House on Rest-of-River Cleanup

By David Scribner October 23, 2011 LENOX – Even as the state Department of Environmental Protection presses ahead with its campaign for a minimal cleanup of (PCBs) from the Housatonic River floodplain, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which will have…

The Fish, the Ducks, & the Clucks

By Mickey Friedman October 21, 2011 The Fish are the fish that swim the Housatonic River; the Ducks are the ducks that travel the flyway, stopping to live for a bit in the Housatonic. And the Clucks, well read on,…