Gov. Charlie Baker still remembers the case of Pittsfield and GE from his first tour of duty in state government.
GE, or General Electric, once had a 254-acre facility in Pittsfield, employing around 13,000 employees. It was a company town, and when the company left, the departure devastated the area.
But GE also left behind a legacy of toxic contamination.
From 1932 to 1977, the company used polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemicals that weren't banned until 1979.
PCBs hit the soil. Waste from the GE facility led to PCBs discovered in residential areas, an elementary school, the Pittsfield landfill and Dorothy Amos Park.
PCBs also entered the Housatonic River, which flows through Berkshire County, into Connecticut and out to Long Island Sound. The river's watershed has a limestone bedrock and an ecosystem that includes rare plants and contains 37 species of fish.
GE eventually agreed to a $250 million settlement governing the proposed cleanup. The settlement was approved by a court in 2000.
In a letter to the federal Environmental Protection Agency 11 years later, a GE official noted that the company and the EPA have removed PCBs from "much of the former GE plant site in Pittsfield, in nearby areas and the two-mile stretch of the Housatonic River" by the GE plant site and the convergence of the east and west branches of the river.
But the two sides appear to disagree over how to approach the cleanup of the "Rest of River," which stretches from the Pittsfield area to Long Island Sound.
"The EPA is, I believe, in pretty heavy discussions with them about settling that case," Baker told MassLive.com on Monday.
"It's been around for a long time," added Baker, who worked for Govs. William Weld and Paul Cellucci in the 1990s. "And it's certainly our hope that an agreement is ultimately reached sometime soon, and that the work associated with the final chapter of cleaning up the Housatonic begins."
As the EPA and GE attempt to work out their differences, the company is on its way back to Massachusetts: Last week the conglomerate said it would be moving its global headquarters to Boston, bringing 200 senior executives and 600 other workers to the city's Seaport District. There are currently 5,000 GE employees in Massachusetts.
The GE official who headed up the search committee that picked Boston is Ann Klee, the conglomerate's vice president of environment, health and safety. The company is currently headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut.
In a letter to the EPA in October 2015, Klee said the company "remains committed to a common-sense solution for the Rest of River that is fully protective of human health and the environment," and they are prepared to implement a fix that "would be one of the largest river cleanups in history."
But the company balked at the EPA's proposals, particularly the requirement that GE dispose of over one million cubic yards of sediment and soil out-of-state. "Although out-of-state disposal will be no more protective of human health or the environment than on-site disposal in a secure, state of the art facility, it will cost a quarter of a billion dollars more," Klee wrote.
She added: "GE is even willing to do more than can be legally [required], but there is a limit to how far we can stretch."
A month or so later, Boston and state officials offered an incentive package totaling $145 million for GE to relocate, and the company plans to wrap up the move by 2018.
"There's no connection, in my view, between those two items," Baker said, when asked whether the Housatonic cleanup was brought up as city and state officials wooed GE.
"With respect to the commitment we made to General Electric, to GE, that was mostly, almost completely, a capital and infrastructure commitment, which I believe in the short term and in the long term is going to be a really good investment for the Commonwealth and for the people of Massachusetts," he said.
For its part, the city of Boston has offered to kick in $25 million in property tax relief over 20 years.
Gov. Charlie Baker talks to reporters during a press conference at the Statehouse in Boston.
State Sen. Benjamin Downing, whose district includes Pittsfield, said he's glad GE's relocation and the Housatonic River are separate.
The cleanup of the Housatonic should be based on the need for GE to be held responsible, and it shouldn't be "muddied up" by the politics of relocating its headquarters, Downing said.
"We should be able to have both," Downing said. "A good clean-up that respects the need for GE to be held responsible and the desire of the community surrounding it, and also having the global headquarters here within state. Those two shouldn't be mutually exclusive."
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., agreed. "I think that two things can be true at the same time: One, that it's good that GE has moved to Massachusetts," he said. "And two, it's also important that GE continue to clean up any of the toxic messes that have been left behind from the 20th century General Electric activities in Massachusetts."
When asked for comment, a GE spokesman sent a statement to MassLive.com, the same one that appeared in the International Business Times, which raised questions about whether it was appropriate to provide incentives to the company as GE pushed back on the EPA's cleanup proposal.
The statement said the company remains "committed to a common sense solution" and "looks forward to resolving all outstanding issues through the process provided by the Pittsfield/Housatonic Consent Decree."
The company did not respond to a follow-up request to interview Klee.
Asked on Monday whether the Housatonic will be cleaned up, Baker sounded an optimistic note.
"I have no doubt about that," he said. "I mean, I get the fact that the discussion's been going on for probably 20 years. But it's my hope that the EPA is going to be interested in getting this thing solved and that GE will be as well."
The river is capable of "returning to a healthy natural state" after a remediation process that includes careful planning and monitoring, the supervisor for the New England office of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Thomas Chapman, wrote in a 2011 letter to the EPA.
But, he added, it's "unlikely that the river will ever clean itself of massive PCB contamination that has existed for many decades and will continue to persist in the future."