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, 864K) Winter 2011 (all issues of the Fox River Current- Archive)

January 2012

Cleanup of the Little Rapids to DePere stretch of the Lower Fox River was completed in 2011 leaving only one segment left—DePere to Green Bay. This part of the river contains the most PCB contamination, so it will take the longest to clean up. It 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.

Last August, Appleton Papers Inc. and NCR Corp., the companies responsible for the cleanup, suspended dredging activities. However, capping and covering sediment with sand and stone continued through October.

"Production dredging," downstream in a 12-mile area north of Little Rapids from DePere to Green Bay, involved working in areas with thicker zones of contaminated sediment permitting the removal of more sediment. Upstream of DePere, the sediment wasn't as thick so dredging in those areas was faster but removed less volume of sediment. Three hydraulic dredges operated weekdays around the clock to remove an average of about 4,000 cubic yards of sediment daily.

By August 2011, about 240,000 cubic yards of sediment had been dredged with 104,000 tons of dried sediment taken to Hickory Meadows Landfill near the town of Chilton. Additionally, 50 acres of river bottom was covered with sand

All dredged sediment was pumped into a dewatering facility on State Street in Green Bay via a pipeline from 2009 to 2011. There, the water was squeezed out of the sediment by equipment called plate and frame presses with water being treated, or cleaned, to state standards before it was discharged back in the river. The rest of the river cleanup will also use this facility.

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