GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – A project to clean up the Fox River has just completed a decade of work and leaders say their end goal is in sight.
The Fox River Cleanup Project wrapped up its 10th season of dredging, capping, and covering the river in November.
Scott Stein, project spokesperson, explains what they’ve been doing.
“Crews have been out on the river dredging some areas, capping and covering others, as a way of reducing the impact of the PCB’s,” says Stein.
Polychlorinated Biphenyls, or PCB’s, are a toxic chlorine compound. Stein explains how they were introduced to the river.
“From the manufacture and recycling of carbonless paper, back in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s,” he says.
The PCB’s pose a significant risk to human health, as well as the environment. In some cases, those two areas can cross over.
“They get into the food chain by fish consuming the organics and then those fish eating advisories [are] in place for people to limit their fish consumption,” he explains.
Stein says major progress has been made in the past ten years, even though you might not be able to tell.
“There’s nothing that you’d see,” says Stein. “The PCB’s are not soluble so they are adhering to organics basically in the river’s sediment.”
Operations in 2018 produced nearly 325,000 tons of processed sediment and other materials.
That type of heavy workload required more than 13,000 truckloads in order to haul the various material to the Hickory Meadows Landfill in Calumet County and the Ridgeview Landfill in Manitowoc County.
Also in 2018, the project continued to move downstream and was able to have 52 acres of river bottom either capped or sand covered.
The project is now suspended for the winter, which is typical, but when work resumes again in 2019 it might be the final go around.
“When things get going again in spring, in March or April, it is expected to be the final year of work on the river for this project,” says Stein.
Project officials also point out that in more than 2.6 million accumulated work hours there has not been a single lost time incident recorded.
