Lower Fox River Cleanup

Clean Water Action Council
The Clean Water Action Council was awarded an EPA Technical Assistance Grant to hire its own advisor to help interpret technical information contained in Lower Fox River-related documents.

EPA Contaminated Sediment Management Strategy
Workplan describing the Agency’s long-term approaches to assess, reduce and prevent further risks posed by contaminated sediments in many watersheds. The strategy does not discuss the cleanup of specific sites.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Great Lakes Contaminated Sediments Program

Video: Contaminated Sediments in our Waterways: Impacts and Solutions (28 min.)

Background

The Lower Fox River, located in northeastern Wisconsin, begins at the Menasha and Neenah channels leading from Lake Winnebago and flows northeast for 39 miles where it discharges into Green Bay and Lake Michigan. Approximately 270,000 people live in the communities along the river. The river has 12 dams and includes the highest concentration of pulp and paper mills in the world. During the 1950s and 1960s, these mills routinely used PCBs in their operations which ultimately contaminated the river.(more...)

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What are PCBs?

As a result of the recycling of PCB-containing carbonless copy paper, area mill operations discharged PCBs in waste streams, contaminating sediment in the Lower Fox River. The Lower Fox River is the largest source of PCBs to Lake Michigan in the basin. From 1957 to 1971, about 250,000 pounds of PCBs were released, contaminating 11 million tons of sediment. It is estimated that some 160,000 pounds of PCBs have already left the Fox River and entered Green Bay and Lake Michigan. On average, 300 to 500 additional pounds are flushed from the Lower Fox sediment each year. Floods would flush additional thousands of pounds into Green Bay. Once PCBs are released into the bay and Lake Michigan, they are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recover.

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Site Updates

Fox River Current Newsletter (PDF) (8pp, 1.0MB) December 2009 (all issues of the Fox River Current)

October 2009

A status review of the cleanup to date has been complete. The Superfund law requires regular reviews of sites (at least every five years) -- where the cleanup is complete or where cleanup has been ongoing for at least five years -- but hazardous waste remains managed on-site. These reviews are done to ensure that the cleanup continues to protect people and the environment. In particular, EPA looked at the cleanup of Little Lake Butte des Morts (also referred to as Operable Unit 1) which started in 2004. This was the first five-year review for the Lower Fox River/Green Bay site. A "five-year review report" has been completed.

Cleanup of Little Lake Butte des Morts was completed in June. Approximately 370,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment were removed. To accomplish this, two dredges operated mostly in the southern half of the lake because it had the highest levels of contamination. After PCB-contaminated sediment was dredged from the lake, it was put into large plastic tubes nearby. Once the water was squeezed out, it was cleaned on-site and returned to the river. Contaminated sediment was taken to a nearby landfill for proper disposal. Remaining areas with lower levels of PCBs were covered with gravel and sand caps. This occurred mostly in the northern portion of the lake.

Little Lake Butte des Morts was the first of five portions of the Lower Fox River site to be addressed.

Meanwhile, dredging has continued downstream since April in a 12-mile area north of Little Rapids and from DePere to Green Bay. This "production dredging" involves working in areas with thicker zones of contaminated sediment permitting the removal of more sediment. Sediment upstream of DePere is thinner so dredging in those areas is typically slower. Also, a smaller amount of capping and covering with sand and stone started in late August.

One 12-inch and two 8-inch hydraulic dredges have been working around the clock to remove an average of about 4,000 cubic yards of sediment daily with an estimated 520,000 cubic yards of sediment to be taken out by mid-November when the project will shut down for the winter.

All dredged sediment is being pumped into a dewatering facility on State Street in Green Bay via a pipeline. There, the water is being squeezed out of the sediment by equipment called plate and frame presses. The remaining dried sediment is being loaded onto a truck to be disposed of.

Cleanup of highly contaminated sediment in the area of the Lower Fox River just below the DePere Dam was completed in 2008. The area, or "hotspot," near the dam had PCBs as high as 3,000 parts per million. Although this area contained the highest levels of PCBs in the river, it represented only about two percent of all of the contaminated sediment that needs to be cleaned up, but nearly 10 percent of the total PCB "mass."

This cleanup, which involved the removal of about 130,000 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment, was done under a federal agreement EPA and Wisconsin DNR reached with two paper companies in April 2006. The companies, NCR Corp. and Sonoco--U.S. Mills, spent about $30 million on this project.

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