CHP Names Chief Medical Officer for Countywide Healthcare Network

08:48AM / Tuesday, November 22, 2022Print Story | Email Story

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — Andrew Beckwith, M.D., has been named chief medical officer (CMO) at Community Health Programs.

Beckwith, who is an obstetrician-gynecologist at CHP Barrington OB/GYN, will continue seeing patients while overseeing the CHP medical staff throughout Berkshire County.

"Dr. Beckwith has served as the interim CMO at CHP for several months, and his leadership and management skills have confirmed that he is the ideal physician to lead our medical staff," said Rick Gregg, interim CEO at CHP. "We believe it's essential to have a practicing physician guiding our medical staff and operations, and Dr. Beckwith knows first-hand about our community's health care needs."

Beckwith, who joined CHP in 2018, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Penn., where he was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.

He completed his residency at Brigham & Women's Hospital/Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was a co-administrative chief resident. He also served as Division Chief of OB-GYN at Berkshire Medical Center. He previously practiced with Berkshire OB/GYN in Pittsfield.

At Barrington OB/GYN, Dr. Beckwith works with other physicians, certified nurse-midwives, a family nurse practitioner, and a support team, caring for women at all stages of their lifespan.

"I look forward to working closely with my colleagues throughout CHP and across the county to achieve the goals of CHP's mission to improve the health of the people throughout the Berkshires by delivering exceptional, compassionate health care," said Beckwith. "These are challenging times in health care, but our excellent clinicians at CHP are meeting these challenges every day."

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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."

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