LENOX, Mass. - Nearly a year after local environmentalist groups filed a legal challenge to the EPA s Housatonic River cleanup agreement, the Environmental Appeals Board in Washington D.C. ruled this week in favor of the EPA. 

What You Need To Know

  • The Environmental Appeals Board ruled in favor of the EPA in a legal challenge to the Housatonic River cleanup agreement
  • Local environmental groups had hopes to block the plan, which includes building a landfill for contaminated soil in Lee
  • The judges wrote the groups failed to show the EPA “clearly erred” in their cleanup plans
  • The groups will now file an appeal in the 1st Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals

The Housatonic River Initiative and the Housatonic Environmental Action League had hoped to block the EPA’s plan to dispose of contaminated material at a landfill to be built in Lee.

They argued the plan doesn’t take enough PCBs out of the river, the EPA should be looking to use new technologies for the cleanup, and the state of Connecticut should have been included in the agreement.

“We know that Connecticut is contaminated,” said Tim Gray, executive director of the Housatonic River Initiative. “There are signs up and down the river in Connecticut that say don’t eat the fish, don’t eat the critters, all those kinds of things, and EPA is doing nothing.”

In the decision issued on Tuesday, the judges wrote the groups failed to show the EPA “clearly erred” in their plans for the clean-up.

Now, the groups will file an appeal in the 1st Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, where Gray hopes they have a better chance of winning.

“And you know, in the end, the politics and the dirtiness of everything that’s going on may win out the day, and that’s just the way sometimes these battles go,” said Gray. “But, if this dump goes in, in history it’ll be remembered as one of worst mistakes the Berkshires ever made.”

Gray said they’re just starting the process of filing the appeal, and it’s uncertain when it will be taken up by the court.