News Headlines
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Developers Need to Follow the Law
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New Video Illustrates Nutrient Pollution Impacts to Recreation
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Berkshares Holiday Cards Available Now!
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Presentation by Local Author of “The Eskimo and the Oil Man: The Battle at the Top of the World for America’s Future”
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The Hog River Revival Collection
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Sow It Forward Garden Grants Now Available
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List of GE Pittsfield/Housatonic River Project Documents submitted to Repositories from November 18, 2012 through December 1, 2012
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Climate Summer and Ride for the Future Opportunity
Developers Need to Follow the Law
This happened in eastern Massachusetts, but if you see this sort of violation, please let BEAT know. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Albee Realty Trust have resolved a penalty action for discharges of silt-laden storm water associated with development of a seven lot residential subdivision in Uxbridge, Mass., in violation of the federal Clean Water Act.
Albee discharged stormwater from the construction site without a permit for several years. Albee also failed to install and maintain controls sufficient to minimize discharge of pollutants to the stream. On June 12, 2012, EPA issued a complaint against the Albee Realty Trust and its trustees seeking penalties as a result of these violations.
Because they are operators of a site disturbing more than one acre, Albee was required to apply for either an individual permit or coverage under a General Permit for “Storm Water Discharges from Construction Activities.” The permit requires the use of “best management practices” to prevent erosion and sedimentation of waterways that can result from construction activities. Under the agreement, Albee will pay a penalty of $24,000.
Rainwater running off construction sites can carry sediments, oil and other pollutants which contaminate nearby streams, ponds and rivers. Erosion from a one-acre construction site could discharge as much as 20 to 150 tons of sediment in one year if not properly managed. Sediments reduce the storage capacity of drains and waterways, causing flooding and adversely affecting water quality and fish habitat. Sediments and chemicals can also contribute to fish die-offs, toxic algae blooms, contaminated shellfish beds and closed swimming beaches.
To assist developers and builders into coming into compliance, EPA has developed written materials, web sites, workshops, and other products to help those involved in construction projects understand how to comply with storm water laws.
More information:
EPA Storm Water Permit Program in New England (www.epa.gov/region1/npdes/stormwater)
Enforcing Clean Water requirements in New England (www.epa.gov/region1/enforcement/water)
New Video Illustrates Nutrient Pollution Impacts to Recreation
From Water Headlines, December 11, 2012
The Choice is Yours: Clean or Green Water (1 min version)
Nutrient pollution is one of the nation’s most widespread and costly environmental problems. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus from farm and lawn fertilizer, pet and livestock waste, roads and houses, faulty septic systems, and treated sewage can turn waters green with slime and pollute waters for swimming, boating, and fishing. To help raise awareness about this growing environmental problem, EPA has released a short video to illustrate the potential impacts of nutrient pollution on recreation. The Choice is Yours: Clean or Green Water can be viewed on EPA’s YouTube Channel at http://bit.ly/11yjpcd. The new video complements another EPA YouTube video, http://bit.ly/UmlQcu that provides a broad overview of nutrient pollution. Both videos are available in broadcast quality upon request. If interested, please contact: scott.patricia@epa.gov
Berkshares Holiday Cards Available Now!
BerkShares is working in cooperation with Berkshire Bank, Lee Bank, Lenox National Bank, the Pittsfield Cooperative Bank, and Salisbury Bank this season to encourage local holiday shopping with newly-printed BerkShares greeting cards.
These greeting cards are meant to encourage people to give BerkShares as holiday gifts. For the month of December, participating bank branches will have the BerkShares greeting cards and envelopes, stuffed with BerkShares pocket directories, available behind the counter. Customers that exchange dollars for BerkShares will receive a free card with the exchange. This card can act as a money holder for people who want to give BerkShares this holiday season.
Giving BerkShares is like giving a gift certificate to the over 400 local businesses in Berkshire County that accept BerkShares. With BerkShares, one can purchase a variety of goods and services, including art and antiques, farm-fresh produce and meat, toys, restaurant meals, and even printing, dentistry, accounting, and lawyer’s services.
Giving BerkShares for the holidays, instead of U.S. dollars or gift cards from national chains, ensures that the money you give will stay within the local economy. Amazon gift cards are convenient, but they do nothing to support the livelihoods of people in the Berkshires. BerkShares can only be spent in the Berkshire region, so they will continue to circulate here, and not be sucked away into big faraway corporations. As they recirculate they will bring income to each business that they reach. Numerous studies have proven that spending money in local businesses results in greater income and wealth, more jobs, and a wider tax base for a community. According to these studies, a dollar spent in a locally owned business has an average of 2.6 times the impact than does a dollar spent in a non-locally owned business. When you spend local currency in the place of dollars, that impact is even bigger.
Businesses that accept BerkShares are encouraged to give away the cards, too. A customer can buy BerkShares at face value out of the business’s cash register and receive a free card and envelope with the transaction. The businesses that are currently participating in the program are Guido’s Fresh Marketplace in Great Barrington, The Berkshire Coop Market, Barrington Outfitters, and Berkshire Bike & Board. If you would like to have these cards available at your store please email info@berkshares.org or by call Alice Maggio at (413) 528-1737.
The artwork on the front of the cards is from Bill McKibben’s 2010 article in Yankee Magazine about BerkShares. Artist Marc Burckhardt illustrates the way that local currency helps people invest in their local economy by depicting a hand depositing BerkShares directly into Main Street. Berkshire residents can do the same by giving BerkShares this holiday season. They will be giving more business to their favorite local businesses at the same time that they are giving beautifully designed local currency to their loved ones.
Presentation by Local Author of “The Eskimo and the Oil Man: The Battle at the Top of the World for America’s Future”
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
7:00 – 8:30 pm
Berkshire Museum, 39 South Street, Pittsfield, MA
$5 – Students free
The Arctic century is upon us. A great jockeying for power and influence has erupted between nations in the high north. At stake is trillions of dollars in profit or loss, US security, geopolitical influence, and the fate of a fragile environment as well as the region’s traditional people. As the ice melts and oil companies venture north, the polar regions are becoming the next Saudi Arabia, the next Panama Canal.
Please join us on Wednesday, January 16th from 7-8:30 pm as local author, Bob Reiss gives a thought provoking presentation to delve into this issue. Bob spent 3 years traveling to the US high north to tell this story through the eyes of two men, one an Inupiat Eskimo leader on Alaska’s North Slope, the other the head of Shell Oil’s Alaska Venture, which seeks to drill for oil offshore in 2013. Their tale is set against the background of an undersea land rush in the Arctic, of Russian bombers appearing off Alaska’s coasts recently, of rapid changes in ice that will affect millions of sea mammals and affect the day to day lives of every American, in their cities and towns and also in their pocketbooks.
To get this story Bob Reiss spent time with scientists, diplomats, military planners, Eskimo whale hunters and politicians at the highest levels of Washington. He traveled to remote villages and sailed on a US icebreaker. Shell hopes to drill off Alaska in 2013 and the fight will make headlines. The Mayor of the North Slope seeks to protect his people’s 4,000 year old culture yet guarantee them income. The story begins as a fight and in the end the Eskimo and the Oil Man reflect the issues dividing every American community wrestling with the balance between energy use and environmental protection.
Co-sponsored by Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT) and the Berkshire Museum. For more information please contact Jane Winn 413-230-7321 or jane@thebeatnews.org.
The Hog River Revival Collection
from the Connecticut River Watershed Council
Running beneath the city streets in Hartford, CT is the Park (Hog) River. Potentially one of the watershed’s best kept secrets, the Hog River is encased in over 9 miles of concrete conduits and is America’s largest underground waterway.
Over the course of 18 months, Joe McCarthy and Peter Albano traveled the underground Hog River in an attempt to map, document, and spotlight Hartford’s darkest passage.
This body of work was created by combining narrative aspects of documentary photography with romantic expressions of being underground. Albano and McCarthy combined their experiences in filmmaking, photography, printing, and painting to capture a fully realized sense of space and experience of their urban exploration.
The final product is a series that relays both a realistic record of the physical space, as well as an autobiographical expression of the artists’ interaction with the Hog River.
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A new photo from the cause Kitchen Gardeners International
Sow It Forward Garden Grants Now Available
Posted by Roger Doiron (cause founder)
Kitchen Gardeners International’s Sow It Forward garden grants program is accepting applications through January 11th. We’re offering $600 grants of cash, seeds, and supplies to start new food gardens or sustain existing ones. Apply here: http://links.causes.com/s/clG56l?r=cW0B
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List of GE Pittsfield/Housatonic River Project Documents submitted to Repositories from November 18, 2012 through December 1, 2012
Documents submitted to the Berkshire Athenaeum
Letter (with attachments) from Kevin G. Mooney (GE) to Dean Tagliaferro (USEPA), November 20, 2012, Re: GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site; Upper ½-Mile Reach of Housatonic River (GECD800); 2012 Deposited Sediment and Isolation Layer Sampling Report
Letter (with attachments) from Richard W. Gates (GE) to Richard Fisher (USEPA), November 20, 2012, Re: GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site; Groundwater Management Area 1 (GECD310); East Street Area 1 LNAPL Volatilization Assessment
Letter from Dean Tagliaferro (USEPA) to Kevin Mooney (GE), November 26, 2012, Re: 2012 Sediment Sampling Report; 1½ Mile Reach Removal Action; GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site, Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Letter from Dean Tagliaferro (USEPA) to Richard W. Gates (GE), November 28, 2012, Re: Conditional Approval of General Electric’s September 11, 2012 submittal titled Summary of August 2012 Inspection Activities for the Group 4C Floodplain Properties; Floodplain Non-Residential Properties Adjacent to the 1½ Mile Reach, GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site
Letter from Dean Tagliaferro (USEPA) to Kevin Mooney (GE), November 28, 2012, Re: 2012 Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Sampling Report; 1½ Mile Reach Removal Action; GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site, Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Documents submitted to the Connecticut Repositories
Letter from Dean Tagliaferro (USEPA) to Kevin Mooney (GE), November 26, 2012, Re: 2012 Sediment Sampling Report; 1½ Mile Reach Removal Action; GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site, Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Letter (with attachments) from Kevin G. Mooney (GE) to Dean Tagliaferro (USEPA), November 20, 2012, Re: GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site; Upper ½-Mile Reach of Housatonic River (GECD800); 2012 Deposited Sediment and Isolation Layer Sampling Report
Letter from Dean Tagliaferro (USEPA) to Kevin Mooney (GE), November 28, 2012, Re: 2012 Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Sampling Report; 1½ Mile Reach Removal Action; GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site, Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Climate Summer and Ride for the Future Opportunity
Are you a young person interested in getting on a bike this summer and learning to be an environmental leader? Or do you know someone that is? Climate Summer and Ride for the Future are now taking applications for 2013! Encourage friends and family to consider the opportunity, or apply yourself. Click here for more information and the application.