I've Got (PCBs) in the River

My hometown of Pittsfield is known for a few things. Teo's Hotdogs, where one can order twelve mini hotdogs with a "special sauce" and eat them all in one sitting. We hold (depending on who you ask) the earliest record of baseball playing in the country, an ordinance not to play baseball in the town square. We have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country. You can still get a half-foot of delicious softserve for only a dollar seventy five at King Kone on First Street. And we've also had a few problems with pollution.

This is not a "normal pollution", the kind that can be cleared up with a few colorful awareness posters downtown and maybe even a coin drive. (Though I was really good at those once upon a time. Clean up the trash from the park! Paint over the graffiti on the highway! De-asbestos the high school! -True story.) No- our pollution stems from having the main plant for the manufacturing company General Electric, aka GE. (Which, interestingly enough, we don't have anymore.)

In the 1980s Pittsfield, Massachusetts was on the map for technology. (This according to Wikipedia. I'm not sure what map we were on. But we were on it.) GE employed over forty-thousand people, more people than actually live in my town today. Everyone and their uncle was related to someone who worked at the plant, if they themselves didn't already work there. It was a city of people deeply tied around one company. Which is why, when GE collapsed sometime in the 80s, our town effectively collapsed with it.

GE manufactured Polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs, used in transformers. The problem for Pittsfield was that after a transformer was retired, GE didn't know what to do with it, or the PCBs inside it. So they decided lump it all together, throw it into barrels, bury the barrels in the ground and at the bottom of lakes, and then be done with it. The ol' out-of-sight, out-of-mind method of chemical waste disposal, which has a long storied history in the U.S.  Unfortunately for GE (and nearly everyone living in or around my hometown) over time the metal on the barrels can (and does) rust through. One might question whether GE was cognizant of this fact, as they are a manufacturing company that works with metal. Carelessness? Oversight? Cruel joke? Really, GE? 

In my teens I worked as a lifeguard at a local lake, Moorewood. The EPA would come every other week to monitor and record the water conditions. None of the lifeguards thought twice about this, as it had been happening For Ever. And since the administration was the one arranging the meetings with the EPA, we thought it was all Standard Procedure. No one knew that a problem might emerge. Literally.

As it turns out, my lake was one of many that GE buried the PCBs in. The very same lake that I visited six days out of seven during my summer vacations. The lake that I swam in, splashed in, bathed in (hey, it was summertime. Showers were scarce.) It was the lake that I inadvertently and inevitably swallowed during aforementioned swimming, splashing, bathing. We found out that Moorewood was a PCB depository for GE because one day a barrel popped up from the middle of the lake. One side of the barrel had rusted off; it was empty. We told the administration as well as the other powers that be, who told us to Not Worry, that it was Ok. Though we were now a bit wary, we continued splashing, bathing, inadvertently swallowing.

The lake was closed for a few days after barrel that had popped up. At the time, I was most concerned because that lifeguarding job was my bread and butter. I had school clothes to buy! And movies to rent! But in the end, maybe it was for the best that the lake was cleaned out.

I sometimes try to visualize the years of PCB invested water that has leaked into my system. Was it gallons, tons? If I ever seem a bit off, PCBs in my system is most likely to blame. (It was hard to swim with my mouth closed). But maybe it will achieve the superman effect, and the PCB water will actually give me super-genius intellect and/or the ability to turn into a silver puddle. It worked that way for Alex Mack.

The PCB thing was a problem for Pittsfield that never really has gone away. It certainly was something I grew up knowing, and played a recurring role in my life.

David Grover is a popular children's songwriter in my neck of the woods. He writes catchy songs for elementary schoolers to sing along with. In sixth grade he did a performance at my middle school, which was great because we got to miss class (he was already a winner in my book), sing (whee) and where (fun fact!) my twin sister got to sing the solo with him. (Chel, from an early age, was a Pittsfield prodigy. But that's a different story entirely.)

One of his classic songs was "Peace Like a River." It goes:

"I've got peace like a riiiiver, 
I've got peace like a riiiiver
I've got peace like a ri-verrrr,
And in my so-oul."

There were plenty of peace signs and expansive hand motions that went along with it. Because we had grown up with the knowledge that our water system (and all that the water system infected-vis a vis: everything) was polluted by PCB's, the song was quickly re-interpreted from the heartfelt "Peace in the River" to something a little more Pittsfield-specific:

"I've got PCB's in the riivers
PCB's in the riivers
PCB's in the riverrrs
And in my soul."

Even as sixth graders, before we knew what the acronym PCB stood for or understood the ramifications of having a deadly toxin in our drinking water, we understood the problem and embraced it as best we could: through song. Our hand motions were changed from peace signs and river/water flowing signs to new signs that spelled out "PCB" (we also learned the alphabet in sign language in sixth grade. It was a big year). It was followed by the international signal for choking. PCB's in the riivers, and in my so-oul. It was more true than we knew. Maybe the PCBs had positively affected our intellect. Too bad, though, I really would have liked to morph into a puddle.

I went to college not far away from Pittsfield. It was far enough to not really be called a townie, and close enough that I still got made fun of for being from Pittsfield. (Sorry, mom.) Many students and their parents had to drive through Pittsfield to get to college, and had some pretty firm opinions about what they saw.

"It looks kinda depressing."
"You live in Pittsfield?"
"We locked our car doors! It was sooo sketchy." (Thanks.)

It was all us Pittsfield-ers could do to joke that we have been trying to kick the crack habit and that we had the toddlers at home.

I still hold a raucous amount of pride for my home town. Sure, there's a pretty high crime rate, a resurgence of massive drug problems, lingering teen pregnancy issues, and the fact that the PCB-infected Silver Lake hasn't frozen for the last thirty years. And the fact that I may be a little "off" from years of inadvertently swallowing that water. But doesn't every city have its own problems? At least we're up front about them. And we do it through song.