Fox River Update --- February, 1997

Secret $10 Million Settlement ---
How Did It Happen?

by Rebecca Leighton Katers, Clean Water Action Council

 
After years of stagnation, the Fox River and Green Bay Clean-up debate has heated-up rapidly.
 
The Natural Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA), begun by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service two years ago, is finally bearing fruit.  This federal agency had lost patience with the failure of the state's "voluntary, cooperative approach" and began the formal legal process from the federal level.
 
As a result, the federal and state agencies have been in a tug-of-war over who should control the issue.  Governor Thompson, DNR Secretary George Meyer, local government leaders and the polluting industries have levied enormous lobbying pressure on the federal government to back off --- but the Service has had the courage to stick to its guns.
 
The Service has offered, even encouraged, the state to become a formal party in the NRDA as a co-trustee (as the Oneida and Menominee Tribes have).  They even entered secret negotiations last month with state officials to try developing a cooperative NRDA.  But we've been told the state wanted to take the lead in the NRDA and control its outcome, and the Service wasn't willing to relinquish this control to such a weak regulator.
 
This is good news.  We had feared that DNR's last minute attempt to enter the NRDA process was exactly with the intent of weakening the results.  The DNR has been anything but helpful in the preparation of the NRDA over the past two years, so we were deeply suspicious of their intentions.
 

Secret Meetings

A week ago we learned that the DNR, Governor, Attorney General, and the polluting industries had been meeting secretly --- without the knowledge of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service --- to negotiate a secret agreement.
 
They have said they will only tell us what they want us to hear, and then perhaps they will allow the public to comment.
 

Pre-emptive Strike

The state's secretly negotiated "settlement" was announced on January 31st, the day before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was scheduled to formally announce the culmination of their 2 years of NRDA preparation:  their "Notice of Intent to Sue" the responsible polluters.
 
The state helped the polluters put a positive media spin on the issue by announcing that the paper mills were great guys who were "voluntarily donating $10 million to clean-up the Fox River."  The media gushed about their generosity.
 
Not surprisingly, the next day's coverage of the Service's "Notice of Intent to Sue" was covered as only a subnote on the state's actions, with smaller headlines and definitely not front page news.  The public (and media) were confused by the comparison between the two government actions, so the news emphasis was on competing agencies, rather than the serious harm caused by polluters.
 
It was perfect media manipulation, from the paper industry's standpoint.
 

More Diversions

Two more staged events were clearly planned by the industries and state in quick succession:

A supposedly independent professor from UW-Green Bay issued a  "research report" slamming the NRDA process, but it turns out that this professor is also a Commissioner of the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District, which could also be assessed for clean-up costs.  He's also terribly cozy with the paper industry folks.
 
Then the Governor came to town to brag about his environmental leadership and to slam the NRDA.
 

"Let's Just Be Friends"

All three staged media events emphasized the importance of the "cooperative, voluntary approach."  They all criticized the supposedly old-fashioned and hopelessly out-dated efforts of government to "command and control" polluting industries through regulations.
 
It's ironic that in the very next breath they emphasize that the paper mills shouldn't be held accountable for the damage they caused, because the DNR didn't "command and control" them to prevent PCB discharges.
 

A Drop in the Bucket

Not a single cubic yard of PCB contaminated sediments has been cleaned up since the state's official clean-up planning began 11 years ago with the Remedial Action Plan.
 
The new state "settlement" settles nothing.  The $10 million donation (which wouldn't have happened without the NRDA pressure) is less than one hundredth of the total money which may be needed (up to $1.2 billion).
 
Furthermore, a large chunk of this money is to be used for unrelated projects --- such as parking lots at Point au Sable and recreational sites at Thousand Island Nature Center.  And the state and industries claim that a large share of the rest of the $10 million will be used for more studies of Fox River clean-up needs and in developing a clean-up plan.  This is exactly the same activity that's been underway for 11 years --- assessment and planning, but no clean-up.
 
The Fox River Coalition had already received a $500,000 gift (our taxdollars) from the EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office, to clean up one small hotspot --- so at least one site may be acted on this summer (1997).
 
But even if all the $10 million were to be spent solely for clean-up, it wouldn't be enough to take care of the Little Lake Butte des Mort hotspot (Deposit A) which had been scheduled years ago for clean-up.  That project alone would cost up to $15 million, and there are more than 34 additional hotspots in the river upstream of the De Pere Dam.
 
In fact, the bulk of the PCBs are downstream of the De Pere Dam, in grave danger of escaping into the Bay before clean-up occurs.   The Fox River Coalition hasn't even begun to plan how to address this area, because it has focused so much on starting upstream.
 

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