Flood Zones in Berkshire County, Massachusetts: The Housatonic River PCB Superfund Cleanup

Decades of industrial PCB discharge contaminated the river and its floodplain

From 1932 through 1977, General Electric's Pittsfield plant released polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Housatonic River. The contamination didn't stay in the riverbed: seasonal flooding carried PCB-laden sediment out onto the river's floodplain, which runs up to 3,000 feet wide in some stretches between the confluence of the river's East and West Branches (in Pittsfield) and Woods Pond in Lenox. EPA testing has found PCB concentrations as high as 668 parts per million in river sediment and 874 parts per million in floodplain soil -- figures far above levels EPA considers safe for unrestricted residential or agricultural use. Floodplain land along this stretch is a real mix of private residential parcels, working agricultural land, recreational land (canoeing, fishing, hunting), and wildlife management areas -- not an isolated industrial site, but ordinary-looking rural and residential Berkshire County land that happens to sit inside a contaminated floodplain.

Under a federal Consent Decree issued in October 2000, GE was required to investigate and eventually remediate this contamination, covering what EPA calls the "Rest of River" -- nearly 125 miles of the Housatonic corridor from Pittsfield down through Connecticut to Long Island Sound. The most intensive floodplain and sediment cleanup work, however, concentrates in the first 11 miles, inside Berkshire County itself: the City of Pittsfield and the towns of Lee and Lenox.

EPA's cleanup plan: real acreage, real volume, and an active disposal fight

EPA's Revised Final Permit requires GE to excavate approximately 45 acres of contaminated floodplain soil and 300 acres of river sediment, removing more than one million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated material in total. Within the "1½-Mile Reach" segment alone, cleanup plans identify 37 residential properties whose floodplain (non-bank) areas fall inside the remediation footprint. This is not a hypothetical or long-since-resolved issue: EPA's plan for the Pittsfield-area segment, known as Reach 5A, targets roughly 200,000 additional cubic yards of sediment and soil, with a formal 90-day public input period running May 12 to August 10, 2026 and a public meeting held June 3, 2026 at Herberg Middle School in Pittsfield. Construction on Reach 5A itself isn't expected to begin until 2027 or 2028.

Where the excavated material goes has been genuinely, publicly contentious within Berkshire County. Rather than trucking or railing every cubic yard out of the region, EPA's 2020 settlement with GE and area communities allows for disposal of the less-contaminated material at a new landfill built in Lee, near Woods Pond -- over the objection of Lee's own Select Board and local environmental groups, who unsuccessfully challenged the permit before EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (which rejected the challenge in February 2022) and again in later appeals. Lee ultimately withdrew from the five-town Rest of River advisory committee over the dispute. Separately, EPA has approved rail transload sites at Utility Drive (Pittsfield), Woods Pond/Berkshire Scenic Railroad (Lenox), and Rising Pond (Great Barrington) for material headed to out-of-area disposal, expected to operate roughly 2028 through 2032.

What this means for a specific floodplain parcel

If a parcel you're considering sits in the Housatonic River floodplain between Pittsfield and Woods Pond in Lenox -- or anywhere further downstream toward Great Barrington and the Connecticut line -- it is worth checking directly whether that specific property falls inside an EPA-mapped cleanup or floodplain-properties area, separate from and in addition to its ordinary FEMA flood-zone designation. EPA maintains its own "Floodplain Properties of the GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site" listing and post-removal site control program, under which GE (not the property owner) remains responsible for ongoing inspection, monitoring, and maintenance activities on affected floodplain parcels where remediation has already occurred. That can mean recorded institutional controls, restrictions on excavation or land disturbance, and required coordination with GE or EPA before certain kinds of construction, gardening, or soil-disturbing work on an affected parcel -- on top of whatever the town's own floodplain zoning overlay and Conservation Commission wetlands review already require.

None of this means floodplain land along this stretch of the Housatonic is unbuyable -- much of it remains privately owned, farmed, and used for recreation today, and EPA's remediation plan is specifically designed to bring it back to safe residential, agricultural, and recreational use. But a buyer evaluating a specific parcel here needs a different, more specific due-diligence question than in most of the rest of Massachusetts: not just "what FEMA flood zone is this in," but "does this parcel fall inside the GE-Housatonic Rest of River floodplain cleanup area, and if so, has remediation already happened, is it scheduled, and are there recorded institutional controls on the deed?"

What to check before buying floodplain land in Berkshire County

Start with EPA's GE-Pittsfield/Housatonic River Site pages (epa.gov/ge-housatonic) to check whether a specific parcel falls inside the mapped floodplain-properties or Rest of River cleanup area, and ask directly whether remediation there is complete, scheduled, or not yet planned. Pull the title and ask the seller or a title company specifically about recorded institutional controls or environmental covenants tied to PCB remediation -- these are separate from, and in addition to, an ordinary title search for easements or liens. Confirm the parcel's standard FEMA flood-zone designation and the town's floodplain zoning overlay with the specific municipality (Pittsfield, Lenox, Lee, or another Housatonic-corridor town) as you would anywhere in Massachusetts, and check with that town's Conservation Commission for wetlands-related review under the statewide Wetlands Protection Act. If the parcel is agricultural or borders the river directly, ask specifically about any EPA or GE soil-testing history for that property.