Cleaning Wisconsin’s Waters: From
Command and Control to Collaborative
Decision
Michael Kraft
Public and Environmental Affairs
UW-Green Bay
Prepared for Green Innovations 2010
Outline of the Presentation
• Brief history of the Fox River Basin and cleanup efforts
• From the Clean Water Act to collaborative decision
making
• Focus on toxic chemicals: PCBs
• Agreement on the cleanup plan
• How is it going?
• What does its future look like?
• Implications for green operations and sustainability?
Drawn from chapter of same name in Mazmanian and
Kraft, eds., Toward Sustainable Communities (2nd ed.,
MIT Press, 2009).
The Fox River Basin
• Lower Fox River stretches 39 miles from its
source near the cities of Neenah and Menasha in
the northwest corner of Lake Winnebago north
through the Fox Cities to its mouth at the head of
the bay of Green Bay.
• The lower Fox River Basin encompasses
approximately 400 square miles of drainage area
in Northeastern Wisconsin, and about 6,400
square miles downstream, including parts of East
Central Wisconsin
The Fox River Basin
• Clean surface waters are the primary source of
drinking water for about 100,000 people.
• Industries throughout the region use water for
papermaking and food processing, among many
other industrial activities.
• High-quality surface water also helps to satisfy
the public’s diverse recreational interests—
fishing, swimming, canoeing, sailing, boating.
• The river basin and bay of Green Bay are vital to
the Great Lakes; a key part that ecosystem.
Studies of the Fox River
• The river and bay have been the object of
intensive scientific investigation
• Particularly so for movement of toxic
chemicals through the land, air, and water.
• Green Bay mass balance study was the first in
the world to measure the presence, transport,
and fate of bioaccumulating toxic chemicals in
a river and bay environment.
The Problem of Toxic Chemicals
• Among the most serious water quality problems
is persistent toxic chemicals.
• More than 100 potentially toxic substances have
been identified in the water, fish, and sediment of
the Fox River.
• These include PCBs, dioxins, and furans; mercury,
lead and other heavy metals; pesticides;
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; and volatile
hydrocarbons . PCBs are the most important.
What Will It Take to
Restore the Fox River?
Water quality experts argue that restoration of
area waters requires:
• Reduction of nutrient loading
• Reduction of solid material entering the river
• Protection and restoration of wetland habitat
• Elimination or reduction of persistent organic
chemicals such as PCBs to levels that produce
no adverse effects on the ecosystem
Focus on PCBs
• Between 1954 and 1997, area paper mills
discharged an estimated 700,000 pounds of PCBs
into the river.
• DNR risk analysis points to priority for PCB
cleanup
• Lower Fox River and Green Bay among the most
PCB-contaminated sites in nation. Comparable to
Hudson River, on Superfund National Priorities
List in 2002.
• The largest cleanup of contaminated sediments
by volume ever attempted.
Background for River Cleanup:
Federal Clean Water Act
• Improvements in water quality locally and nationally
• From 1971 to 1990, total suspended solids discharged
by point sources to Fox River declined by 91 percent.
• Between 1962 and 1990, biological oxygen demand
loadings fell by 94 percent.
• Much of the progress tied to Clean Water Act. Sought
to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and
biological integrity” of nation’s waters.
• Remaining problems mostly nonpoint sources.
• But how to deal with them and at what cost?
The Appeal of Collaborative
Decision Making
• Community sustainability in region requires use of
collaborative decision making.
• Command and control no longer sufficient.
• Replace adversarial relations between government and
industry?
• Foster participation by a diversity of stakeholders?
• Build trust, and a freer exchange of information?
• Thus lead to more open decision-making, greater
commitment to environmental quality goals, and
consensus on what to do.
Collaboration in Practice
•
•
•
•
Remedial Action Plan of mid-1980s and early 1990s.
Studies, recommendations, and agenda for action.
Green Bay RAP a model in Great Lakes Basin
Vision of future of the river and bay rooted in
ecosystem view of environmental issues.
• Broadly endorsed by RAP participants as sensible and
essential for sustainability of river basin/bay.
• Facilitated integration of science and action—for a
while. And collaboration among participants.
The PCB Challenge to Collaboration
• More than fifty contaminated sediment deposits
along the Fox. Most just downstream of industrial
outfalls. Each is unique.
• Much debate over cleanup options.
• Initial collaboration/partnerships fades.
• WDNR and paper industry create Fox River
Coalition with hope of avoiding Superfund and
leading to a lower cost remediation.
• Environmentalists critical of FRC. But DNR called
it a "national model for successful environmental
restoration”
Collaboration Weakens
• Late 1990s-early 2000s, FRC discusses options and
continues negotiations.
• Fish and Wildlife Service uses NRDA.
• EPA in 1997-1998 threatened intervention under
Superfund.
• State/local officials and mills denounced EPA action,
praised "public-private partnership" as model.
• High cost of cleanup and options to contain costs.
Removal and capping. Monitoring of deposits.
Scientists favor removal.
Collaboration Fails to Fully
Live Up to Expectations
• EPA chooses informal Superfund implementation.
Pushes parties to negotiate settlement.
• October 2001: proposed plan and 2003 RODs
• 2007 DNR approves capping to reduce costs.
• Negotiations continue over cost, landfill options.
• Late 2007. DNR orders dredging of most
contaminated sections by 2009. Disappointment:
“The project is no longer a cooperative operation.”
• Cleanup continues . Disputes with insurance
companies.
Conclusions
• Focused on history of collaboration.
• Worked in some ways, failed in other ways.
• Cleanup is finally under way, but DNR had to
order it.
• Collaboration is difficult in later stages of decision
making. Why? High costs, ill-defined goals, and
limited public understanding of issues.
• Is Fox River cleanup of PCBs a model for nation?
• Challenges reflect modern era of sustainability.