Ice Glen
Thank you, thank you, to the Chief and the entire Stockbridge Fire Department for a wonderful Saturday night get together Stockbridge style.
Congratulations
Congratulations to Eighteen-year-old Stockbridge resident Olivia Netzer for saving the life of Butler University Professor Dr. Susan Adams. (See Notes from the Board of Selectmen’s meeting on Thursday, Oct. 26.) At birthday party was held in July at the Stockbridge Sportsmen’s Club. Adams suffered a heart attack, and Netzer, a part-time employee, immediately performed CPR, stabilizing Adams until emergency personnel arrived.
SBSC?
The Stockbridge Bowl Stewardship Commission has not met since August. It has a statutory obligation to meet and who hope they do soon. They have been involved in important work such as a Lake Management Plan and Dredging — dredging number one on everyone’s To-Do list. Congrats for past performance and here’s to future accomplishments.
Housatonic Water Works
The Commonwealth seeks a settlement with the Housatonic Water Works (HWW). Earlier this year, HWW requested permission to institute a major rate height increase to cover repairs. West Stockbridge, Stockbridge, and Great Barrington, on behalf of the residents in their towns who are HWW water recipients, “intervened.”
The towns questioned why HWW should compel the rate payers to pay for repairs rather than paying themselves. They also argued that the problems were caused by delayed maintenance. In addition, Stockbridge argued that it should be granted a more favorable rate because, since 1958, it has maintained, repaired, and replaced certain HWW equipment.
A decision should be reached soon, and SU will report.
Prospect Hill: Dumpster Fire
Dumpster Fire on Prospect Hill At approximately 6pm, Saturday, October 28, a fire broke out on Prospect Hill Road. The house was built in the 1950s by Mrs. Adele Brennen and has been under perpetual construction by new owners. Chemically soaked rags in a dumpster, roughly on the spot where the former Daniel Chester French structure stood, ignited. There were no personal injuries or damage to the interior of the house.
Fire Chief Vincent Garofoli adds, “The dumpster fire that occurred that night involved disposal of carbon-based animal or vegetable oils, such as linseed oil, cooking oil, cottonseed oil, corn oil, soybean oil, lard, and margarine rags. These can undergo spontaneous combustion when in contact with other rags, cardboard, paper, wood scraps, and sawdust. There was a large amount of sawdust and wood scraps in the dumpster that burned Saturday Night. Several oil-based stains, varnishes and Oil base polyurethanes have one or more of the oils listed above in them so in order to prevent spontaneous combustion fires with the items used to apply them the items should be laid out to dry in a safe location and once thoroughly dried they should be soaked in water for at least 24 hours and then, if possible, they should be disposed of in one of the used containers of oil-based stain, varnish or oil-based polyurethane. These used containers should be filled with water and the lids sealed tightly before disposal. It should also be noted that any type of oil saturated items including cooking and motor oils of any kind should not be washed and dried in your home washer and dryer as they can spontaneously combust in the dryer when they off-gas during the heating process. These items should be commercially dry cleaned, washed by hand with a degreasing soap like dish soap and hung to dry outside or just discarded altogether.
For the purpose of discussion, let’s take as a hypothesis that there are aspects of the Governor’s Commonwealth Community Block Grant has aspects that re not good for Stockbridge. Although CCBG is meant to be applied statewide, maybe, one size does not fit all. So if that is possible, how would the discussion go? Which aspects do not serve us? Since the laws are applied statewide, is there anything we can do locally to mitigate the negative elements? What are those things?
What if no aspect impacts us negatively? Nice thing to discover.
