Mount Everett's Top Students for 2021 Announced.

01:53PM / Friday, June 04, 2021Print Story | Email Story

SHEFFIELD, Mass. — Mount Everett Regional School has named Cecelia Caldwell as valedictorian and Madison Tinker as salutatorian of the class of 2021. Their profiles are as submitted by Principal Jesse Carpenter.

This year's graduation will occur at 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 6, at the high school.

Caldwell is the daughter of Gail Belmuth and Scott Caldwell.

She is a passionate learner with a love for exploration, and is confident, curious, and full of promise. The future holds many exciting possibilities for Caldwell, as she is reliable, committed and has her eye on impacting the world. We have no doubts she will succeed in that endeavor. She has a natural and efficacious way to convey thoughts through her written word.

Caldwell has been a longtime member of the chorus and theater programs, enthralling audiences with her performances. She has

established herself as a quiet but fierce leader through her work in founding the Mount Everett Social Justice League as well as the Southern Berkshire Regional School District Sustainability Coalition. While her interests are varied, when she commits to an idea or goal, she is 100 percent behind it. From her desire to travel and explore to her commitment to animal conservation, volunteerism, and sustainability, Caldwell has the ability and capacity to do or be whatever she chooses.

She will be attending Middlebury College in Vermont in the fall, where she plans to study anthropology and archaeology with a minor in linguistics.

Tinker is the daughter of Sandra and Todd Tinker and sister to Shelby Tinker. She has established herself as a student with a kind and caring soul, perhaps more so than most people realize. She has been an outstanding role model for younger students, her calm and steadfast presence will surely be missed. "Madison" could stand in for the definition of dependable. Tinker is always the first to volunteer and is extremely hard working.

She always goes above and beyond; she is very detailed in her work, taking great pride in the materials that she submits. She always works tirelessly to get it as close to perfection as possible. Tinker has been a longtime member of the high school band and tennis program as well as student government as she is always ready to get involved. As a student and president of the National Honor Society, she has proven herself to be a self-starter, methodically working toward whatever the end goal might be. Tinker has set lofty goals for herself; we are eager to watch her accomplish those goals and have all the confidence in her success.

In the fall, she will be attending Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y., where she plans to study history and eventually work toward her doctorate.

Tags: graduation 2021, val & sal,

iBerkshires.com Text Ads

rk MILES Blding Materials

Are You Ready to Update Your Home? Start With rk MILES. 4 Locations (800)670-7433

www.rkmiles.com

Now's the time...

to harvest value from your home. Click for more details about a HELOC. Insured by NCUA.

www.greylock.org

If you would like to contribute information on this article, contact us at info@iberkshires.com.

Lee Wants Bioremediation in Housatonic River Vernal Pool Study

05:24AM / Thursday, September 03, 2026

LEE, Mass. — The town has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and General Electric to include PCB bioremediation in its vernal pool study on the Housatonic River.

Lee officials are urging the EPA to require GE to add a bioremediation treatment arm to the vernal-pool study or provide the public with a clear explanation for why such testing is being excluded.

"This is exactly the kind of question EPA and GE should be asking before final remedy decisions are locked in," Select Board Chair Bob Jones said in a statement released to the press. "The town is not asking to slow the cleanup. We are asking EPA and GE to make the cleanup smarter, less destructive, and more protective over the long term."

An open house was held in Pittsfield earlier this summer for the Vernal Pool Pilot Study on Reach 5A of the Housatonic River, a five-mile stretch between the river's confluence and Lenox border.

EPA has required GE to conduct a Vernal Pool Pilot Study as part of the Housatonic River Rest of River remediation, comparing excavation and restoration with activated-carbon-based treatments, including a product called SediMite and powdered activated carbon, the town said.

Ten vernal pools will be cleaned of polychlorinated biphenyls in total, five with excavation and five with active carbon, and seven additional vernal pools will be monitored as controls. Construction will be complete around October, but the pools will be left to their natural processes and monitored with surveys and sampling for three years.

The Lee PCB Advisory Committee wrote a letter calling for the 21st-century approach it said could reduce long-term toxicity, avoid unnecessary destruction of sensitive habitats, and improve the effectiveness of the cleanup.

It states that Lee supports the study's purpose and agrees that EPA and GE must understand how cleanup activities affect sensitive vernal-pool ecosystems.

"The current pilot includes 10 treatment pools and seven control pools, while local officials understand that roughly 100 vernal pools may occur in the broader remediation corridor," the Aug. 27 letter reads.

"That makes the pilot study consequential: the methods tested now could shape how many sensitive wetlands are excavated, reconstructed, treated, or left with PCBs managed in place."

View Full Story