PITTSFIELD, Mass. (AP) — General Electric is objecting to a $619 million federal proposal to clean chemicals from a river in western Massachusetts.
The Environmental Protection Agency proposed cleaning PCBs from more than 400 acres along a 10.5-mile stretch of the Housatonic River in Pittsfield and Lenox. It includes dredging and trucking contaminated soil and sediment to an out-of-state facility.
The Berkshire Eagle reports that GE said in a letter to EPA officials that the plan isn't a "common-sense solution."
The company is pushing for a less expensive cleanup that involves dumping excavated material in a landfill.
GE discharged PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, into the river from a Pittsfield plant from the 1930s until 1977, when the U.S. government banned the use of the chemical. It has been linked to cancer.
