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This area's new Congressman, Steve Kagen, D-Appleton showed remarkable political courage last week when he blocked a key portion of a congressional bill which the polluting corporations depended on for their capping plan on the Fox River.

He pulled a provision from the House of Representatives version of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) that would have enabled the federally authorized river channel depth from Georgia-Pacific upstream to the De Pere dam to be reduced from 22 to only 6 feet in depth, and the width from 150 to only 75 feet. 

The provision would have allowed the corporations to dump huge quantities of fill into the area, as so-called "permanent caps" for PCB hotspots in the sediment, as part of the amended and weakened Fox River cleanup plan proposed last November.  (That weakened plan would leave 44 percent to 48 percent of the PCBs in the river, instead of dredging them out, as called for in the previous, stronger plan.)

Also, the provision would have eliminated any substantial future commercial shipping in roughly 3 miles of the river upstream of Georgia Pacific Corporation.   Shipping would no longer be an option.  Maybe G-P doesn't care (because it would still have access), but the City of De Pere would be cut off from the Harbor and Great Lakes commercial shipping forever.

Former Rep. Mark Green inserted the provision into the bill last year, but luckily, it never came to a vote. 
 

What You Can Do: Please call Congressman Kagen's office and tell his staff what you think about this issue: Phone: 1-920-437-1954 He's getting a lot of political pressure from the Corporations, Chamber of Commerce  and other politicians who want him to back off and go along with the capping plan.

Since his action, Congressman Kagen has been attacked by the Chamber of Commerce, the corporations, and the DNR and EPA.   The Green Bay Press Gazette, which is always happy to attack Democrats, printed a scathing editorial against Kagen accusing him of thwarting the chosen path of all local government officials.  They implied that because several local governments voted to support the WRDA provision in Congress, that meant they supported sediment capping and abandonment of the shipping channel between the DePere Dam and the Georgia-Pacific Plant.

That was NOT the case.  I was present when the Brown County Board voted to allow the upstream shipping channel to be abandoned. They were very upset at being railroaded into voting before they had all the information. Georgia-Pacific had all their lobbyists out in force telling them they had to make a decision THAT NIGHT or basically be responsible for blocking the Fox River cleanup and eliminating "options." They were lied to, plain and simple. They were being forced to decide without ANY scientific justification that capping would be safe. It was pure and masterful manipulation by Georgia-Pacific. The County Board caved in to the pressure. That does not mean the County Board supported the capping of the channel, only that they were willing to leave it as an option, but only if the science justified it.  That is all. 

As it turns out, the so-called "science" used to support capping by Georgia-Pacific, EPA and DNR is pitifully poor, and has been shredded by many independent scientists. Here are two technical analyses as examples: 

• Comments by Dr. Peter DeFur, independent expert consultant
• Comments by the Science & Technical Advisory Committee for the Fox River Cleanup

Kagen is the first local politician I've seen with a BACKBONE on this issue! 

It's about time!

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