Vulcan’s plant manager Greg Pavely estimates that 1000 pounds a year of mercury escape the facility.  "It’s evaporating," Pavely says.  Airborne emissions of mercury have been identified as the leading source of mercury contaminating the state’s gamefish, lakes and waters.

The DNR’s roster of mercury tainted lakes and waters has been growing every year and now numbers 330.  (The agency publishes and updates its health guide to contaminated fish and lakes twice a year.)  But the full extent of mercury pollution is unknown.  The DNR’s small budget and staff assigned to sampling state waters has barely scratched the surface, testing only a fraction of Wisconsin’s 15,000 water bodies.

Mercury mostly harms the body’s brain and central nervous system, although it can also damage the kidneys and liver.  It can cause numbness, tremors, slurred speech and night blindness.  Children, infants and pregnant women are particularly at risk from exposure to mercury.  Special cooking, skinning, or fileting of mercury-laced fish will not remove the toxin.

Vulcan Chemical’s thousand pound footprint makes it by far the state’s single biggest emitter of mercury.  The plant, which employs 75 people, was built in 1967 and produces a variety of chlorine and caustic chemicals.  The paper industry is the company’s number one customer, using caustic soda and chlorine for bleaching.  "That’s why we were built," Pavely notes.

Inside the factory are 24 mercury cells.  Each cell is 60 feet long and 5 feet wide.  Mercury, in its liquid state, floats inside the cells which are injected with a mixture of salt and water.  An electric current is shot through the cell, stimulating a chemical reaction in the mercury and salty brine that creates the company’s products.

Periodically, each mercury cell requires maintenance and it’s when workers pop the lids on the cells that some of the mercury evaporates and rushes out the plant’s doors and vents into the atmosphere.

A portion of the evaporated mercury rains back down locally in the Port Edwards area.  How much is unknown but DNR air management specialist Martha Makholm has studied the situation.  In 1992, Makholm set up a series of monitoring sites around the plant using lichens to measure mercury fallout.

Lacking a root system, lichens rely entirely upon airborne nutrients for their survival.  Says Makholm:  "They are extremely good at absorbing whatever hits them.  They are the perfect little bioaccumulater."  Lichens located 250 meters downwind of the factory measured mercury levels 17 times greater than background level after three months.

The lichen monitoring site 1250 meters downwind from the plant absorbed only up to  twice the background level of mercury.  Curiously, the upwind site located the same distance away had an identical mercury level.  Makholm attributes this to the sporadic, non-regular burps of mercury vapor coming from Vulcan and catching different wind directions.

Assessing the local fallout, Makholm says, "there’s definitely more mercury there than you want."  In her view, though, a large portion of Vulcan’s emissions must be entering the atmosphere for long-range transport or, she indicates, "you would be seeing big problems."

Pavely points out that the mercury escaping from the Vulcan plant is in its elemental form and not subject to uptake in the tissues of fish and other creatures.  Scientists believe, however, that bacteria in many lakes and waters will change elemental mercury into methylmercury, the form which then does accumulate and move up the foodchain.

Vulcan is not the only contributor to the state’s mercury pollution problem.  According to a recent report from the Izaak Walton League, Wisconsin’s 13 coal-fired power plants together release 39% of the state’s airborne mercury and municipal and hospital incinerators account for another 21% (Vulcan’s emissions total 20% of the state’s inventory).  Sources located outside of the state also contribute significantly to Wisconsin’s mercury rain.

"They are contaminating the fish people eat," says Ted Lind of Milwaukee and President of the Wisconsin Council of Sportfishing Organizations.  He mentions that the DNR prints only 40,000 copies of its fish advisory despite the nearly one million people who fish the state’s waters.  Lind says it’s important to get the message out about mercury contamination and he wants action taken to address the problem.

The DNR has issued a white paper on the mercury problem and has convened a stakeholders group of  businesses, legislators, environmentalists, Native Americans, hospital associations and lake associations to look at the issue. The stakeholders group has met three times and will visit the Vulcan plant in June as part of its next meeting.

The goal, explains the DNR’s Paul Koziar, "is to gain movement in a general direction that reducing air emissions needs to be done and needs to be done now."  Koziar says the DNR is seeking support for a plan that would reduce state generated mercury emissions by 20% by the year 2005 and another 30% by the year 2010.  He says management at the Vulcan plant has indicated a willingness to work on the problem.

A bill has also been introduced in the legislature that would rein in mercury emissions.  Sponsored by Democrat Brian Burke in the Senate and Republican Dean Kaufert in the Assembly, it calls for a 15% reduction in mercury emissions by the year 2005, 30% by the year 2010, and 50% by 2015.

One key difference between the DNR proposal and the Burke/Kaufert bill, says Keith Reopelle of Wisconsin’s Environmental Decade, is the DNR wants to promote trading of mercury pollution credits - something not allowed by Burke/Kaufert.  Not all mercury is the same, Reopelle argues.  He says that the mercury falling locally on Port Edwards should not be treated like the mercury released from a coal plant smokestack that can contaminate a lake hundreds of miles away.

Reopelle is quick to mention that he is concerned about the local impacts on Port Edwards.  He wonders, for example, how contaminated the soil is in garden plots near the plant.  But he thinks utilities, under the DNR’s plan, could buy Vulcan’s emission footprint (helping finance the clean-up) and escape from undertaking any clean-up actions themselves until the year 2010.  "I think this is a very real scenario," Reopelle says.

Instead, Reopelle believes all contributors to the mercury fouling of Wisconsin’s waters should take corrective action.  He suggests utilities can help by switching to cleaner fuels like natural gas, investing in renewable energy, and promoting energy conservation.

Pavely says Vulcan is investigating alternatives.  He thinks a new European technology combined with process changes can reduce the maintenance schedule of Vulan’s mercury cells.  Another option is switching to a mercury free technology already used at similar factories.  Says Pavely:  "We are committed to reducing our emissions."

Lind backs the Burke/Kaufert approach.  "It’s a baby step towards controlling this problem.  If we don’t do something," says Lind, "it’s going to get worse."