OWEN MCCARTER, THE THREE EYED FISH
“With Industrialization, the landscape of the Housatonic River began to shift dramatically and by the late 1800s thirty dams were in place. Iron and paper mills boomed with no thought towards the environmental effects they might cause. The river was now a source of not only agricultural wealth, but a vast and exponentially growing industrial power. In 1885 William Stanley Jr., an electrical engineer and physicist, created the first practical transformer in Great Barrington, MA, a device for high voltage alternating currents that would revolutionize electricity and power distribution. As his recognition and business grew, Stanley moved locations upriver to Pittsfield, MA, founding the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company in 1890. The company did exceedingly well until 1903 when majority shares were purchased by Thomas Edison’s General Electric. The manufacturing of electrical power and plastics skyrocketed in the following decades carrying both GE and the town of Pittsfield with it. At its peak, the plant was employing over 13,000 workers, roughly 75% of the town's entire workforce.
The manufacturing of electrical transformers and certain plastics requires the use of Polychlorinated biphenyl, a group of man-made organic chemicals. They are essentially indestructible and vary in consistency from an oil-like substance to a waxy solid, making them the perfect tool for production. The chemicals’ effects on living organisms include cancer, birth defects, neurological damage, and immune deficiency. The GE Pittsfield plant produced large amounts of PCBs, discharging them into the Housatonic River and surrounding area from 1932 until they were banned in the United States in 1979. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates there are around 70,000 pounds of PCBs in the Housatonic River and its floodplains. In 1990 the 323-acre plant shut down for good, leaving the town in a state of complete post-industrial decline. In 1997 the EPA designated the plant, the areas in close proximity, and several miles of the river as a superfund site. GE’s cleanup and remediation began in 1998, and has yet to be completed.” - Der GreIf