Berkshire Museum Awarded Grant For Playground Equipment System

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PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Dr Pepper Snapple and national nonprofit KaBOOM! have awarded the Berkshire Museum a $13,200 Let’s Play Improvement Grant to use toward the purchase of an Imagination Playground in a Cart, an innovative playground equipment system.

The grant, which will allow the Berkshire Museum to install the system at the museum, is part of Let’s Play, a community partnership led by Dr Pepper Snapple to get kids and families active nationwide. Imagination Playground in a Cart is an innovative design in play equipment that encourages creativity, communication, and collaboration in play. With a collection of custom-designed, oversized blue foam parts, Imagination Playground provides a changing array of elements that allow children to turn their playground into a space constantly built and re-built by their imagination.

“We believe creative play offers us the best opportunity to carry out our mission to spark creativity and innovative thinking for our youngest participants,” Berkshire Museum Executive Director Van Shields said.
 
Families with children coupled with student groups make up the majority of the Berkshire Museum’s existing audience and in recent years it has developed a strong focus on early childhood education. Recognizing the museum’s commitment to the importance of play to its audiences, the Berkshire Museum was deemed a perfect partner to share the Imagination Playground in a Cart experience.



“The ability for children to create and re-create their own environment will help us meet our child development goals through creative play year-round," Shields said. "The real beneficiaries of this grant are the children we serve.”

Unstructured, child-directed play has proven to help kids develop physically, emotionally, socially and intellectually, yet today’s kids have less time and fewer opportunities to play than any previous generation. As a result of expanded Let’s Play grants and projects, more than 1 million kids will benefit from new or improved playgrounds around the nation between 2014 and 2016.

Created in 2011, Let’s Play provides the tools, places and inspiration to make play a daily priority. The initiative began with a three-year commitment to KaBOOM!, the national non-profit dedicated to giving all kids the childhood they deserve, filled with balanced and active play, so they can thrive. Through the first three years, they built 41 playgrounds, with more than 2,300 DPS employees contributing nearly 19,000 volunteer hours in the construction, and provided grants ranging from $500 to $30,000 for the improvement of another 2,004 playgrounds by the end of 2013.

 


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EPA Lays Out Draft Plan for PCB Remediation in Pittsfield

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

Ward 4 Councilor James Conant requested the meeting be held at Herberg Middle School as his ward will be most affected. 

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency and General Electric have a preliminary plan to remediate polychlorinated biphenyls from the city's Rest of River stretch by 2032.

"We're going to implement the remedy, move on, and in five years we can be done with the majority of the issues in Pittsfield," Project Manager Dean Tagliaferro said during a hearing on Wednesday.

"The goal is to restore the (Housatonic) river, make the river an asset. Right now, it's a liability."

The PCB-polluted "Rest of River" stretches nearly 125 miles from the confluence of the East and West Branches of the river in Pittsfield to the end of Reach 16 just before Long Island Sound in Connecticut.  The city's five-mile reach, 5A, goes from the confluence to the wastewater treatment plant and includes river channels, banks, backwaters, and 325 acres of floodplains.

The event was held at Herberg Middle School, as Ward 4 Councilor James Conant wanted to ensure that the residents who will be most affected by the cleanup didn't have to travel far.

Conant emphasized that "nothing is set in actual stone" and it will not be solidified for many months.

In February 2020, the Rest of River settlement agreement that outlines the continued cleanup was signed by the U.S. EPA, GE, the state, the city of Pittsfield, the towns of Lenox, Lee, Stockbridge, Great Barrington, and Sheffield, and other interested parties.

Remediation has been in progress since the 1970s, including 27 cleanups. The remedy settled in 2020 includes the removal of one million cubic yards of contaminated sediment and floodplain soils, an 89 percent reduction of downstream transport of PCBs, an upland disposal facility located near Woods Pond (which has been contested by Southern Berkshire residents) as well as offsite disposal, and the removal of two dams.

The estimated cost is about $576 million and will take about 13 years to complete once construction begins.

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