WBSM Listener Reports an Ed Markey Sighting in New Bedford

It's pretty sad when the sight of one of your two United States Senators on the streets of New Bedford is newsworthy enough of reporting. That's just what happened on my Tuesday radio program on WBSM when a listener called to report having spied U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D) on the city's waterfront.

To think, Markey is not even close to being up for re-election, having iced upstart Congressman Joe Kennedy III, who dared to challenge Mr. Frosty last fall.

So what's the big deal? Let me ask you this: have you ever directed your eye sockets at Sen. Ed Markey in person? Most New Bedford area residents have not. Probably three-quarters of New Bedford's 101,000 residents have never seen Markey in the flesh, and many couldn't pick him out of a police lineup.

That's not my opinion, it's fact. I'd bet my new Apple Watch on it.

Ed Markey should have been in New Bedford on Tuesday, and I congratulate him for being here. The occasion was a long-anticipated announcement that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) decades-long clean-up of PCB contamination from New Bedford Harbor is almost complete.

That's a big freakin' deal.

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I remember when Jack Markey was Mayor of New Bedford back in the early '80s, and the harbor was designated an EPA Superfund top priority hazardous waste site. There was so much toxic waste at the bottom of the harbor that expert scientists feared it could explode if the sediments were disturbed.

Many people alive today don't remember when industrial waste was routinely disposed of in the Acushnet River and New Bedford Harbor. We've come a long way to reclaiming both, and that bodes well for our future.

I'm glad Ed Markey thought it important enough to come to New Bedford on Tuesday. I wish Sen. Elizabeth Warren had come, too.

More importantly, I am glad the EPA came to New Bedford, and my grandchildren will be as well.