http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Chion/NCHous.mp3
A board of toxic waste clean-up experts is meeting this week to review the New England EPA’s Housatonic River clean up plan. WNPR’s Nancy Cohen reports.
Any hazardous waste clean up that is expected to cost $25 million or more has to be vetted by the EPA’s National Remedy Review Board. That’s the case for the removal of PCBs from the Housatonic River. A General Electric plant released PCBs into the river up until the mid-1970s, when they were banned because of their toxicity. The twenty-member board advises the regional EPA to make sure national clean-up criteria are met. Jim Murphy is with the New England EPA.
“It’s mostly a pretty high level technical type of meeting. You know questioning why we’re doing something. It’s a pretty rigorous challenge or review of all the steps, all the things we’ve assembled to go in here.”
The state of Connecticut wrote the EPA in January asking that PCB contamination in the river upstream, in Massachusetts, be reduced to the greatest degree possible. But the state of Massachusetts is asking for a less invasive clean up. The U.S. EPA is expected to release its clean up plan this fall.
