Prognosis appears good for Fox River
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Lee Bergquist
Despite pollution problems, the Fox River has attracted development, including luxury housing. The boat in the foreground, part of the massive cleanup project along the 39-mile lower segment of the Fox, carries booster pumps that send contaminated river sediments to a processing plant.
As the cleanup of toxic chemicals along the Fox River prepares to pause for winter, the project is ahead of schedule - but the price tag has grown.
Green Bay — The dredges on the Fox River motor past abandoned factories, city parks, million-dollar homes and, inevitably, paper mills.
Eventually, 4 million cubic yards of toxic sediment - a legacy of the region's dominance in papermaking - will be removed from the river.
It's a massive undertaking that starts on the dredges and ends on shore with mountains of processed dirt shipped off to landfills.
The 39-mile Fox is the largest source of polychlorinated biphenyls on Lake Michigan. An estimated 620 pounds of PCBs flow into Green Bay every year.
This fall, as workers wind down on the first season of the biggest phase of the cleanup, estimates show the cost of the project has escalated to as much as $875 million, more than double the cost of building Miller Park. The project will pause for winter and resume next spring.
A year ago, state records showed costs then had increased more than $200 million from previous estimates to about $750 million.
Contractors and regulators say the true expense of cleaning up the river is better understood now that the dredges are methodically digging up the river bottom and a Wal-Mart-sized processing plant is in operation.
The project limped along for years with little progress. But now that the work has begun, it's ahead of schedule and targeted for completion in 2017, according to regulators and contractors. Officials estimated the work would take nine years when it began in May.
The goal is to one day make fish safer to eat.
Computer modeling by the state Department of Natural Resources shows the state's fish consumption advisory for PCBs on the Fox would go away by 2036 - 19 years after the project is finished.
For example, the advisory recommends that people should limit their consumption of walleye to one meal a month. Walleye larger than 22 inches shouldn't be eaten.
"If we did nothing, the modeling tells us that fish advisories would continue for many decades - maybe 100 years," said Bruce Baker, a DNR administrator overseeing the cleanup.
Despite the problems with PCBs, the Fox is popular among anglers, boaters and homeowners. Large new homes have been built along the river. Walleye fishing alone generates $6.2 million each year for the local economy, according to the DNR.
The DNR and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which are monitoring the cleanup, say they are pleased with progress so far.
"We consider ourselves to be the good guys around here," said the project manager, Ray Mangrum of California-based Tetra Tech.
Battles aren't over
Still, controversy and unease swirl around the project.
Regulators have tussled with some of the companies responsible for the PCBs that believe it would be more cost-effective to do nothing.
Also, the polluting companies are embroiled in a major battle over how to split the costs. Nearly 100 lawyers are expected to take part in a lengthy trial in federal court in December in Milwaukee.
And now that the work is proceeding, the negotiated plan of removing and covering over sediments continues to rile some environmentalists. They fear capping won't work.
"I do believe that we are starting to make some progress," said critic Rebecca Katers of Clean Water Action Council of Northeastern Wisconsin.
She's been an observer of the process since 1984.
"But they want to declare victory as soon as possible so that the politicians can declare 'mission accomplished' - even if it's not," Katers said.
Since the 1970s, stricter regulations have improved water quality across the country. But culprits such as PCBs are proving to be more difficult.
Earlier this month, the EPA's inspector general said that the agency lacked a coordinated plan to rid PCBs from 43 "areas of concern" around the Great Lakes.
Part of the problem has been a lack of funding or uncertainty over who was responsible for the pollution.
The sites, which include the Milwaukee and Kinnickinnic rivers in metropolitan Milwaukee, represent costs of nearly $3.5 billion, the inspector general's report said.
As it stands now, it could take 77 years to finish all the work, the report said.
But progress has been faster on the Fox, in part, because the source of the contamination - the paper manufacturers - is known.
That's triggered a collaboration of sorts. While the EPA ordered the companies in 2007 to clean up the largest section of the river, the companies also willingly have spent tens of millions of dollars to gather data and do early cleanup work.
"All of this kept taking away the argument that doing nothing wasn't an option," Baker said.
After preliminary work, the cleanup took a major step forward this spring when work began downstream near Green Bay and De Pere - where nearly 90% of the PCBs have been found.
Until a settlement can be reached among all the polluting companies, the work is being funded by Appleton Papers, Georgia Pacific and NCR.
24 hours a day
On the water, flat-bottomed boats and their crews work 24 hours a day, five days a week.
Dredges are outfitted with computer screens that help guide operators to a large rotary device that gobbles up river sediments.
Pumps push the slurry of water and sediments underwater through plastic pipes as far as 10 miles to the giant processing plant on shore.
The plant is a few miles from Lambeau Field. The electric bill alone costs $87,000 a month.
The slurry is dewatered and processed to separate sand and silt. PCBs cling to the organic silt.
Sand is cleaned and recycled for road construction and other uses. PCBs are squeezed with giant presses that turn out material that resembles potting soil. Workers in front-end loaders scoop it up from large piles and toss it into dump trucks.
More than 9,000 loads of soil with low levels of PCBs have been trucked to Hickory Meadows, a landfill in Calumet County. Sediments with the highest levels of PCBs are trucked to a special landfill in Michigan.
The process of capping sediments works nearly in reverse:
Sand or gravel is pumped through miles of pipes to a barge outfitted with a spreader that noisily scatters the material into the river. In other areas, large boulders will also be dropped in for cover to keep the sediments from floating away.
"The goal is to place this stuff in as accurately as possible so it won't float away," said Greg Smith, project manager for J.F. Brennan, a La Crosse-based marine contractor handling the dredging and capping.
Capping is one facet of the project that worries environmentalists the most.
"It's not all going to stay," Katers said. "This has never proven to work on a river of this size."
She worries the river's currents and wave action and the destructive forces of ice will upend the rock and sand and expose the PCBs again.
Jim Hahnenberg, manager of the Fox River project for the EPA, said the caps will be laid in areas with mild currents and more protections.
"These areas should be stable for a very long period of time - nothing is going to escape," Hahnenberg said.
A 2007 study by the National Research Council, a nonpartisan scientific panel, endorsed the approach.
Katers' other complaint is that the regulators lowered the standard - to 1 part per million from 0.25 parts per million - for an acceptable level of PCBs to remain in the river.
But contractors will effectively meet that goal when all the sediments are averaged together, Hahnenberg said.
Dredging, he said, will never be able to remove all PCBs.
"It's not possible," he said.
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