Lower Fox River and Green Bay Site

Contact Information

Community Involvement Coordinator
Susan Pastor (pastor.susan@epa.gov)
312-353-1325 or 800-621-8431, ext. 31325

Remedial Project Manager
James Hahnenberg (hahnenberg.james@epa.gov) 312-353-4213 or 800-621-8431, ext. 34213

More government experts

Repositories

(where to view written records)

Appleton Public Library
225 N. Oneida Street
Appleton, WI

Brown County Library
515 Pine Street
Green Bay, WI

Door County Library
104 S. Fourth Ave.
Sturgeon Bay, WI

Oneida Community Library
201 Elm Street
Oneida, WI

Oshkosh Public Library
106 Washington Ave.
Oshkosh, WI

An Administrative Record, which contains detailed information upon which the selection of the cleanup plan was based, is available at:

DNR Lower Fox River Basin Team
801 E. Walnut Street
Green Bay, WI

Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources
Bureau of Watershed Management
101 S. Webster Street, 3rd Floor Madison, WI

EPA Record Center
77 W. Jackson Blvd., 7th Floor
Chicago, IL

Links

EPA Superfund Home Page
Region 5 Superfund
Superfund Frequent Questions

Glossary of Terms

Region 5 RCRA

Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry

Fox River Cleanup Group

Little Lake Cleanup Team

Oneida Environmental Quality Department

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...)

You will need the free Adobe Reader to view some of the files on this page. See EPA's PDF page to learn more.

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, 966K) Spring 2012 (all issues of the Fox River Current- Archive)

May 2012

Dredging in the Lower Fox River at the U.S. Highway 172 Bridge near Ashwaubenon resumed on Monday, May 14 after the federal Court of Appeals denied NCR Corp’s request for an extension of the district court’s temporary “stay” of an April 27 preliminary injunction.

Court of Appeals denial for an extension of the district court’s temporary stay of the preliminary injunction. (1pp, 95K) May 17, 2012

Cleanup work should have started April 2 in the stretch of river from DePere to Green Bay, but NCR Corp. appealed the court's ruling and asked the court for a stay of its ruling.

NCR Corp., one of the companies responsible for PCB contamination in the river, must resume full-scale sediment dredging work as part of the ongoing cleanup, according to U.S. District Judge William Griesbach's ruling.

The judge ordered NCR Corp. to continue dredging through at least November 9 to remove a minimum of 660,000 cubic yards of sediment.

The U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of U.S. EPA, filed a motion for preliminary injunction in federal court on March 19, and appeared in court to argue the motion on April 12. That motion asked the judge to order NCR Corp. to resume full-scale cleanup activities. The judge had previously ruled that Appleton Papers, Inc., which had been working with NCR Corp. on the river cleanup, was not a liable party under the federal Superfund law.

All dredged sediment is being pumped into a dewatering facility on State Street in Green Bay via a pipeline. There, the water is squeezed from the sediment by equipment called plate and frame presses. The water is treated, or cleaned, to state standards before it is discharged back into the river.

Appleton Papers Inc. and NCR Corp. had suspended dredging activities in August 2011. Since 2009, about 1.5 million cubic yards of sediment has been dredged. About 1 million tons of dried sediment has been taken to Hickory Meadows Landfill near the town of Chilton. About 62 acres of sediment were covered with sand and 52 acres were capped with sand and rock.

Other cleanup news includes the completion of dredging and capping in the Little Rapids to DePere stretch which is pending final approval. Then the last segment of the river to be cleaned up is a 7-mile stretch from DePere to Green Bay. This stretch is currently projected to be completed in 2017. Two other parts of the project, Appleton to Little Rapids and Green Bay, will have ongoing monitoring programs since they are expected to recover naturally.

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