Mount Everett's Top Students Announced for 2023

04:25PM / Friday, June 02, 2023Print Story | Email Story

SHEFFIELD, Mass. — Mount Everett Regional School has named Kelsey Eichstedt as valedictorian and Jay T. Seward-Dailey as salutatorian of the class of 2023.

Graduation exercises will held on Saturday at 10 a.m. at Tanglewood in Lenox.

Eichstedt has completed a rigorous course of study during her years at Mount Everett that includes one Advanced Placement course, 13 honors courses, two early college courses, and one dual-enrollment course.

She is an active member of her community and grew up tending to dairy cows on her family's Twin Rivers Farm. She has been a member of the River Valley 4-H Dairy Club for the past 11 years and a member of the New Marlborough Volunteer Fire Department for the past two years. She is also a current member of the Great Barrington Fish and Game Club and enjoys hunting, fishing, landscaping, and gardening.

Eichstedt will be attending Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield in the fall to pursue a nursing degree.

Seward-Dailey has also completed a rigorous course of study during his years at Mount Everett including three AP courses and 11 honors courses. He is an active member of the Mount Everett community and a three-sport athlete as a member of the varsity tennis team and as captain for the varsity soccer and hockey teams.

In addition to athletics, he is also a member of the Rotary Interact Club and Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD). He also was the host and technician for the "Mount Everett Morning Show," as well as the treasurer for the school's National Honor Society chapter. He has been the editor of the Mount Everett Yearbook Committee for the past two years.

Seward-Dailey will attend University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the fall in pursuit of a degree in

legal studies. He hopes to someday practice law as a criminal defense attorney.

"Kelsey is a hard worker and has much to be proud of regarding her accomplishments in the classroom," said Principal Jesse Carpenter. "Jay T. has contributed greatly to the Mount Everett community, on and off the field, in the classroom, his work with the 'Morning Show,' yearbook, and other activities."

Tags: graduation 2023, Mount Everett, val & sal,

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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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