image description — John Staber atop the No. 1 Lake Amphibian with the crew who helped put her together in River Ranch, Fla., in February 2011. They are Bill Greenwald, left, John Werner, Barbara Fioravanti, Judy Staber and Peter Nelson.

John Staber Receives Wright Brothers Award

11:53AM / Saturday, May 13, 2023Print Story | Email Story

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — John H. Staber of Old Chatham, N.Y., is to receive the Federal Aviation Administration Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award this Saturday.

This is to commemorate his more than 50 years of accident-free flying and devoting much of his career to teaching others.

The presentation will be made at noon by Adina M. Papp, FAA Safety Team Program manager, at the Walter J. Koladza Airport located on Route 71.

While he is certified to fly most Beech, Cessna and Piper light aircraft, Staber has also specialized in maintaining and teaching the art of seaplane flying in Lake Amphibians.

He received his private pilot license in December 1963 at the Great Barrington airport and, over the next few years, added on a Commercial Pilot Certificate, instrument rating, instructor rating, multi-engine land rating and seaplane rating.

In 1999, he found parts from an early Lake Amphibian near Cleveland and brought the contents home to Old Chatham. With the help of flying friends, he assembled, painted and restored the old Amphibian discovering, to his delight, that it was Serial Number One.

The plane was reassembled finally in 2010 and flown from the Great Barrington airport. The following year, she flew to Florida for a Lake Amphibian Fly-In.

Staber has flown all over the United States and much of Canada and has accumulated more than 6,200 hours, most of which was done teaching others to fly in Lake Amphibians. He is a director of the Lake Amphibian Club, whose purpose is to make the owners of the amphibians safer pilots.

He retired from flying in November 2021 after 58 years.

Tags: airplanes, pilots,

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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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