Educational Media Reviews Online

Filmmaker Friedman combines interviews, archival footage from news broadcasts, local meetings, hearings and demonstrations, newspaper and document clips, and live sequences in a documentary that reveals the sad story of how industrial wastes containing PCBs have affected Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Buried, stored in neglected and possibly leaky drums, and dumped into the river, PCBs have polluted whole neighborhoods and stretches of the Housatonic River, which interviewees claim has seeped downstream all the way to Long Island.

Friedman and members of the Housatonic River Initiative, a group dedicated to cleaning up the river, use testimony of former employees, statistics, and documents to show the contamination is the fault of General Electric, which once had headquarters in Pittsfield. Until the 1980s, GE used PCBs in processing transformers and plastics, storing and burying the resulting waste, or, in some cases, giving it away free to be used as landfill. Former employees believe the PCBs caused serious health problems among those who worked with them directly as well as all the innocent bystanders whose homes, schools, and playgrounds were built on tainted land. For its part, GE claims it did nothing illegal and no clear cause-and-effect between its wastes and its employees’ problems is evident. GE believes it should not have to foot the bill for the environmental cleanup or compensate the affected people.

Friedman’s film, which is overly long and often repetitious, also reveals the contentiousness of the major players - local activists, politicians, environmentalists, and corporate representatives—who couldn’t agree on a cleanup plan even when they were on the verge of gaining enormous amounts of government aid. The story covers more than a decade and involves a variety of individuals and groups, but it isn’t always easy to follow the thread of the story. One thing is clear: GE created the problem, but it has been unwilling, so far, to make the demanded amends. The money GE provided to clean up the PCBs to date, came only after fierce legal battles.

The camerawork is excellent, treating viewers to lovely scenes of the peaceful Housatonic and other bucolic Berkshire County landscapes, and parades in downtown Pittsfield. One must take on faith that the PCBs lurk in the ground and under the water, able to penetrate the skin, sneak into the lungs, and wreak havoc in the body, as many interviewees claim. It shows a nice, new school built on PCB-laden land, where students are warned not to play on the bare ground. Viewers see numerous warning signs posted by government agencies.

Just because it is long and has a specific agenda, one cannot dismiss Good Things. It bears watching, if only because of its factual documentation. But it also offers unproven opinion as if it was fact and some of its conclusions are pure speculation. It is recommended, with these reservations, for college courses dealing with environmental waste and related issues.