Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker helped bring General Electric’s headquarters to Boston by offering $120 million in grants and other incentives. And now officials in Berkshire County are hoping that relationship pays off for Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
General Electric has about 200 acres of land in Pittsfield, once the home of a bustling plant that employed 15,000. The jobs have been gone for decades, but the battle over the PCB’s GE left behind in the Housatonic River still rages on.
State Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier said Governor Baker and other state officials could use their new friendship to move along the next phase of the river’s cleanup.
“We have maybe a better negotiating position now that they are right here in Massachusetts and they want what’s best for the commonwealth in the place they are making home,” Farley-Bouvier said. “And they will think of the Berkshires as part of their home.”
“When they talk to the governor, they aren’t just aren’t talking to the governor who helped bring them to downtown Boston,” says State Sen. Ben Downing. “They are talking to the governor who wants to make sure that they do right by Pittsfield, Lenox, Lee and the other communities where the rest of the Housatonic River flows.”
In a statement, GE didn’t mention its relationship with Massachusetts. But regarding the PCB contamination, the company said it remains committed to finding a “common sense solution.”
There’s another issue for Downing: How GE can help redevelop all that vacant property it still owns in the city.
“Certainly there’s potential and again, anywhere there’s a conversation, maybe that potential can lead to a spark,” Downing said.
And that’s a conversation Downing said he’d like to have with GE officials.
The history between Pittsfield and General Electric is long and complicated, said the city’s new mayor Linda Tyer. And she wants to change that.
“The fact that they still have a presence here in our city and still own land certainly makes them an important corporate citizen here in Pittsfield,” Tyer said.
It’s clear as a new relationship starts, officials in Berkshire County want to rekindle an old one with General Electric.
This story was originally published at New England Public Radio.