40 steel drums pulled from country club lake
from Berkshire Eagle

PITTSFIELD -- The Country Club of Pittsfield has finished removing 40 steel drums from a small lake on its property, but officials said yesterday that tests being run on the barrels' contents are not complete and they still don't know what the drums contained.

The drums were found in Morewood Lake earlier this year, where some environmental advocates suspect General Electric Co. may have dumped barrels containing PCBs decades ago. The Housatonic River Initiative, or HRI, had brought its suspicions, which were based on reports from former GE workers, to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

And that's a country club. Imagine for a moment what must be in the bottom of Sawin's Pond

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40 steel drums pulled from country club lake

By Jack Dew
Berkshire Eagle Staff

PITTSFIELD -- The Country Club of Pittsfield has finished removing 40 steel drums from a small lake on its property, but officials said yesterday that tests being run on the barrels' contents are not complete and they still don't know what the drums contained.

The drums were found in Morewood Lake earlier this year, where some environmental advocates suspect General Electric Co. may have dumped barrels containing PCBs decades ago. The Housatonic River Initiative, or HRI, had brought its suspicions, which were based on reports from former GE workers, to the state Department of Environmental Protection. An investigation in 1997 turned up six barrels that had been used as flotation devices for a small dock.

Earlier this year, the DEP returned to the site and found 40 55-gallon steel drums, most of which were buried in deep water and heavy sediment near the Morewood Lake shoreline, close to railroad tracks. An environmental consultant was brought in to supervise the removal of the drums, which country club officials said was completed in November.

Kept in storage sheds

The drums have been encapsulated and are now being kept in locked storage sheds on the country club's campus, according to the DEP. The consultant took samples from the barrels, which are being tested for toxins, including PCBs, metals and petroleum.

"We are not speculating or trying to connect [the barrels] to anyone until we have those analytical results," said Eva Tor, a DEP spokeswoman.

The country club's president, Philip A. Weiner, said he does not know what was in the barrels for certain, but suspects it is nothing more harmful than water. "We believe they were barrels we used to float our docks and rafts, and there was probably an accumulation over the years."

HRI, an advocacy group that has been closely involved with the investigation of GE's PCB pollution in Pittsfield and in the Housatonic River, says it does not know what the barrels contain, but nonetheless suspects it may be more than water.

"We don't know what they are, but what we do know is that back in 1997 people surfaced at public meetings and told us personally that there were barrels in the bottom of that lake," said Tim Gray, HRI's director. "Some of those folks were GE workers, but we never knew for sure where [the barrels] came from or what they are, but we thought they should be investigated."

The lake has long been used for swimming. After the 1997 investigation led to the discovery of six barrels that had been used as flotation devices, the country club said tests did not detect any pollution and the lake "was deemed acceptable for use."

Reapproached in 2002

In spring 2002, the DEP approached the country club again. Gray said that HRI had again called the site to the agency's attention, concerned that the reports of barrel dumping had never been thoroughly investigated. The DEP's spokeswoman said yesterday that the agency learned about more barrels in the lake from a diver who had been in the water.

GE used PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, at its Pittsfield plant for decades, using a mixture of PCBs and oil in its giant transformers. The federal government banned the chemical in 1977 and declared them a probable cause of cancer in people.

PCBs from GE's plant have been found in locations around Pittsfield and in the Housatonic. In 1998, a contractor hired to cap the Pittsfield landfill accidentally uncovered hundreds of 55-gallon drums from the GE plant. In all, contractors pulled 668 barrels from the landfill, about one-third of which contained detectable levels of PCBs, and a large number of which contained other forms of hazardous waste.

posted by prof_booty | 01:29 PM