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Site 56/57 Dredging Demonstration |
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This was a much larger 80,000 cubic yard project downstream
in the city of Green Bay, downstream of the Fort James Corporation discharge
pipe (now Georgia-Pacific). The project was badly designed from the beginning
as part of a surprise secret deal in January 1997 between Governor Thompson
and the 7 paper companies responsible for PCB dumping. We believe the project
was manipulated from the start by the companies to make dredging look too
risky. Under the deal, the companies provided only $7 million for the project.
Site 56/57 is actually just one part of a continuous 7-mile bed of PCB contaminated sediment between the DePere Dam and the mouth of the river. It was the worst, most concentrated hotspot in the entire Fox River, with up to 700 ppm PCBs. (50 ppm is considered hazardous waste.) DNR designed a demonstration project with a hole sized to fit $7 million,
cut 10 feet deep in the middle of this much bigger sediment bed.
Again, this much larger project was started late, on August 30, 1999, and they removed only 31,350 cubic yards (only 39% of the project goal) before winter set in. A monitoring report in March showed that extremely hot layers had been exposed but not removed (the top layers with a concentration of 4 ppm PCBs were skimmed off to expose a 3 acre hole with 310 ppm PCBs on the surface when they were done.) About 1,400 lbs of PCBs were removed. It was gross incompetence or deliberate, and the subcontractor issued a news release saying they were set up to fail with inaccurate information about the nature of the sediments. The DNR took no action. The following spring, U.S. EPA stepped in and forced Fort James to sign a consent decree to finish the job under greatly improved guidelines. This phase of the project was completed in less than 3 months and showed that dredging can be done properly and quickly. During this second season, another 50,316 cubic yards of sediment were dredged and an additional 670 pounds of PCBs were removed. Overall, the 1999 and 2000 seasons removed approximately 2,070 pounds of PCBs from the river. Dewatered sediment was trucked to a landfill owned and operated by Fort James Corporation (now Georgia Pacific). Again, costs were elevated due to serious management errors and inflated landfill cost estimates by the company. Fort James Corporation claims the total project cost about $20 million. Key Concerns: We were very disappointed that EPA and DNR did not require this "demonstration" project to demonstrate any of several promising methods of PCB detoxification, even though this was the most concentrated PCB hotspot in the river. In addition, the contractor was not required to go deep enough --- they left up to 9.5 ppm behind on the surface. We are also concerned that the sediments were not covered or capped quickly enough to minimize the volatilization of PCBs into the air. Links to Site 56/57 Articles, Letters and News Releases Dredge Used to Complete Successful PCB Clean-Up from Fox River, Ahead of Schedule (2nd Season)back to top |
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CONTENT BY: Rebecca Leighton Katers WEB DESIGN BY: DataScouts WEB HOSTING BY: Doteasy |
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