Depending on who you ask, the Upland Disposal Facility, a 13-acre landfill planned for construction in late spring in Lee, is either an environmental solution, an environmental risk, or both. The site will hold 1.3 million cubic yards of sediment containing low levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from the Housatonic River, sediment that will be cleaned up by General Electric over the course of at least the next decade.

Residents of Lee and nearby towns are concerned about both short and long term impacts of the facility, ranging from noise and air pollution during its construction to the potential for release of PCBs into the air and water if infrastructure fails. Others say that the risk to human health and wildlife can’t be worse than it is now.

“Right now, the dump is the river,” said Jane Winn, founding director of Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT). “That’s where all this toxic material is getting into the air, passing through the water. Right now, people are being exposed.” While she wishes GE would dispose of all of the sediment out-of-state — the most concentrated sediment will be — she says that the PCB landfill is a better idea than leaving the chemicals in the open environment.

Housatonic Valley residents do not all support the landfill or agree on cleaning up the river at all. But there’s one thing they have in common: the burden of being watchdogs. People and wildlife in the Housatonic River Valley have been living among PCBs since the 1930s, when GE began disposing of them improperly during the manufacture of electrical transformers. These pollutants have persisted in the soil, water, and wildlife around the prior GE site in Pittsfield and at least 125 miles south of the city, long after the production of PCBs was banned by EPA in 1979 when their health impacts were uncovered. Wrestling over the construction of the disposal facility is the current chapter in a decades-long effort to ensure that a multi-billion dollar corporation and a major government agency do right by the residents of the valley.

Mike Lucia, a toxicologist by trade who lives in Lenox, a few miles from the disposal facility site, is one of many who has devoted time to researching this project. At this point, years into the process, he understands that clean-up and disposal is a done deal — it’s been ordered by EPA. But he takes issue with the premise that the clean-up is the best of bad choices, arguing that PCB exposure from the river is avoidable and that pollution related to the disposal site — including truck pollution and potentially releasing PCBs in the air — may not be.

“[EPA] said the risk is from eating the fish from the river. That is your exposure. And because the fish have PCBs, nobody here is eating fish from the Housatonic River,” he said. “And so, we’re exchanging one avoidable hazard for an unavoidable hazard, and that part of it doesn’t feel very fair. Because we can choose not to eat the fish, but we can’t choose not to breathe the air.”

While no studies have demonstrated a causal link between the presence of PCBs and health outcomes of residents in the Housatonic Valley specifically, the literature widely points to health effects in animals and humans. EPA and the International Agency for Research on Cancer have classified PCBs as carcinogens. Studies show immune effects, endocrine effects, neurological effects like decreased memory and learning deficits, and reproductive effects including decreased birth weight and a decrease in gestational age.

Josh Fontaine, EPA’s lead remediation project manager at the GE-Pittsfield Housatonic River superfund site, said that those risks are the reason continued clean-up is happening. A 2005 EPA study found that human health could be affected by consuming contaminated fish and waterfowl and prolonged direct contact with certain floodplain soils around the Housatonic River. There were also health risks identified for wildlife, including mink, otter, osprey, amphibians, and a range of creatures that live on the river’s bottom.

“Those are the real risk reasons why we have to move forward … with the remediation,” said Fontaine.

Robert Wespiser, a doctor who sits on the Town of Lee PCB Advisory Committee, thinks there should be more health data collected before trying to remove PCBs from the remaining areas. While PCBs pose a known risk to human health, he argues that not enough local studies have been done to demonstrate the real life impact on residents’ health.

“We don’t know that taking them out is better … or not,” he said in an interview.

Carolyn Hogencamp, who lives in Lee near the site of the facility, also expressed mixed feelings.

“From [the perspective of] an average resident … it is pretty concerning to think that there could be this … site near our home,” she said. “Is that a safer option than not cleaning the river?”

The facility will be at the site of a former quarry next to Woods Pond, where 50 percent of all the sediment that’s going to be disposed of is coming from, according to EPA. Having the site close to that area reduces the need for truck or train travel.

“We are planning on using hydraulic dredging and transportation of the materials, which would remove the need completely of using trucks and trains” to move the sediment at Wood’s Pond, said Fontaine.

GE has begun clearing trees, establishing a construction entrance, and putting up fences at the site, said Bill Callen, a community involvement representative for GE. The landfill will be built with a lining designed to last between 400 to 800 years under “normal” conditions. Chris Brittain, Lee’s town administrator and member of Lee’s PCB Advisory Committee, has concerns about this.

“We have looked [at]… literature reviews, media reviews of where do these dumps fail? And there have been anecdotes of liner failure, dump leakage problems with abandonment, all kinds,” he said.

He added: “No company is saying: ‘Yes, my liner will hold up the PCBs in 1,000 years from now. … The liners all will degrade before the PCBs.”

Advocates from BEAT think that the best strategy for addressing potential leakages down the road is holding GE and EPA accountable with air and water quality monitoring and eventually working toward remediating the landfill with technologies — like introducing bacteria that can degrade PCBs — that are currently in early stages of development.

“We ought to get it contained now and force them to clean up whatever dump — including the ones in Pittsfield — as soon as we’ve got technology that’ll really break down the PCBs,” said Winn.

According to Jo Anne Kittrell, an EPA spokesperson, the agency is looking into possibilities for remediating the facility down the line and says the evaluation of this technology is still ongoing.

Kittrell says that GE is responsible for maintaining and monitoring the disposal facility in perpetuity. EPA’s website already houses air quality monitoring data — collected by GE starting in 1999 — from the two disposal sites in Pittsfield, which received contaminated sediment between 1999 and 2006. During the years air samples were collected, PCB concentrations never reached levels that EPA required additional steps be taken.

Additionally, a review of the site will be conducted by EPA at least every five years to evaluate the cleanup and effectiveness of the remediation. “During this time, EPA will review existing [monitoring] data and may require GE to conduct additional monitoring to aid in its evaluation of the site,” Kittrell said.

Residents can still weigh in on aspects of the disposal site. GE submitted a Supplementary Design Plan to EPA on Feb. 18 that contains travel routes for utility vehicles and a proposed construction schedule. Residents will have a 45-day public comment period, after which EPA will decide whether to issue the permit for construction to begin.

“We think [the facility] is the best solution that we can get,” said Winn. “At this point, we will forever be pushing to have the PCBs eventually destroyed. But we agree with EPA that we have not seen a technology that you could just sprinkle fairy dust and have it go away.”