Oskaloosa News Recap For December 18th, 2020
National and World News
Stocks continued to climb on Thursday as the Dow added 148 points, the Nasdaq gained 106 points and the S&P increased 21 points.
Markets and investors continue to bet heavily on a new economic stimulus package reportedly valued at 908 billion dollars. Congressional leaders on both sides say a deal imminent.
New first time jobless claims data missed expectations for the second week in a row. Initial claimants totaled 885,000 while 818,000 were forecast.
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Winter Storm Gail hit NYC midweek bringing about a foot of snow and freezing rain to the area. Temperatures dropped to 27 degrees and winds reached up to 35 mph.
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A Berkshire County environmentalist group says it plans to appeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to remediate the polluted Housatonic River.
“We are going to be launching an appeal against the EPA to challenge the permit on the basis that one, we don’t want their dump, and there’s better ways to deal with the PCBs,” he told WAMC.
The plan calls for a landfill for low-level toxic materials in Lee, which has been a focus of local protest. While the agency has defended what it calls the upland disposal facility as safe, it has acknowledged that there is the potential for air exposure to the toxic chemicals while moving materials from the river to the site. Gray has promoted the idea of chemically treating the river to remove the PCBs as opposed to the dredging the EPA permit calls for.
Published: Thursday, December 17, 2020
EPA released a finalized cleanup plan today for New England s Housatonic River, solidifying much of the agency s earlier proposal despite some criticism from citizen groups in western Massachusetts and Connecticut.
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A Revised Final Permit for the Rest of River cleanup plan has been issued under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act spells out the required cleanup measures to be followed by General Electric Co. to remove contamination caused by polychlorinated biphenyls used in the manufacture of transformers at its former Pittsfield plant. The final permit updates EPA s 2016 cleanup plan for the river, its floodplains and other surrounding areas. The permit requires GE to clean up contamination in river sediment, banks, and floodplain soil that pose unacceptable risks to human health and to the environment. The excavated material will be disposed of in two ways: materials with the highest concentrations of PCBs will be transported off-site for disposal at existing licensed disposal facilities, and the remaining lower-level PCB materials will be consolidated on-site at a location in Lee.
Four years ago, the EPA ordered a cleanup that called for all PCBs to be shipped to licensed disposal sites outside Massachusetts. Now, as widely expected, the agencyâs revised final permit allows GE to save millions by placing about 1 million cubic yards of low-level PCB soils and sediment into a lined and capped landfill in a former Lee quarry.
Cleanup efforts along the Housatonic River would be significant in Woods Pond in Lenox Dale, which contains a high level of PCBs. BEN GARVER â THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE
Dennis Deziel, the EPAâs regional administrator, said in an interview that the agency believes that the material can be stored safely, with no risk to human health.