Lee Schools Seek Info on Water Bead Shooting

Staff ReportsiBerkshires
12:38PM / Tuesday, September 26, 2023Print Story | Email Story

LEE, Mass. — School officials say members of the Lee High cross-country team were targeted by someone with an airsoft gun on Monday. And they're asking for help in identifying the culprit.

"This afternoon a very upsetting incident occurred," Superintendent Gregg Brighenti wrote in an email to parents late Monday night. "As the members of our cross country team were running down East Street, a dark SUV drove past them and targeted the group with an airsoft gun (or something similar)."

He said six students and a coach were hit.

"Fortunately, none of the injuries were serious ... but it could have been much worse," he wrote.

The incident has been reported to the Lee Police Department but Brighenti said he's also asking the community for help because "in a small town, information often spreads by word of mouth."

Brighenti said it's possible the incident is related to an old TikTok challenge, called the "Orbeez Challenge," in which people are shot with the water beads.

"I ask all members of our community to call the school if you hear any information that may be related to this incident," the superintendent wrote.

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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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