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by Rebecca Leighton Katers

As the final decision looms on the Fox River clean-up, the Wisconsin DNR is continuing with it's  manipulation of news media coverage of this issue.  We've written previously about their dishonesty, but two other arguments of theirs deserve special comment:

1.  Phantom High Costs --- Bruce Baker, of the Wisconsin DNR, was quoted in the Green Bay Press Gazette saying that it would cost $38  million to dredge and maintain the federal shipping channel between the DePere Dam and the Georgia-Pacific Plant (the old Fort Howard Mill).  He raised the issue presumably because Congress will be finalizing the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) in July.  The Senate version (but not the House version) of the Act  includes a new provision for the abandonment of the historically authorized shipping channel which is currently authorized at 18 feet in depth, in the 3 miles between the DePere Dam and the Georgia-Pacific plant.  That provision would allow the channel to be drastically narrowed and filled to only 6 feet in depth (and shallower to the sides), never to be deepened again.

Baker implied it would be better to abandon that channel, rather than struggle to find the $38 million dollars to dredge it

But that's a nonsense argument and a red herring.  NOBODY is proposing to dredge that section of channel anytime soon.  The point is that the future opportunity or option to dredge deeper should be kept open, as the Fox Valley continues to develop over the coming decades and centuries. 

Mr. Baker's argument was a blatant scare tactic.  He should be fired for his deliberate dishonesty to the public.

Contrary to Mr. Baker's claim, the opposite could be true:  The channel currently costs nothing to maintain, but filling the channel could create significant new costs for the County and other local governments.  If the federal shipping channel status is taken away by Congress, the Army Corps of Engineers will have no responsibility to maintain its depth, so all future costs will fall to local governments.  The corporations propose to cap contaminated sediments to a 6 foot depth in the channel and more shallowly to the sides, but the river will continue to deposit new material on top of the caps every year.  Currently, no dredging is required in those 3 miles, but after capping, NEW dredging will be required to remove additional sediments that interfere with lighter boat traffic.  In addition, it is not known how regular dredging over the tops of the caps will affect the stability of the caps --- but it surely won't help.  These dredging costs were not discussed at the time that the Brown County Board voted to allow the WRDA provision, but Brown County taxpayers deserve to know what their true long-term costs will be.

2.  Capping Residues Only? --- The DNR and EPA both have deliberately misled and confused audiences and readers many times on the issue of dredging versus capping, by mixing up their arguments for capping.  They say that dredging "always leaves a residue on the surface," so capping is beneficial for achieving more substantial PCB exposure reductions, by laying a 6 inch sand layer over areas which have been dredged.   The sand is used as a dilution layer and everyone expects the sand will erode from many capping sites over time. 

But many of the sites proposed for capping on the Fox River will NOT be dredged at all, or will be only partially dredged, and the caps will be thicker and designed to be semi-permanent (perhaps to 100 year storm standards.). 

The agencies are mixing  these 2 kinds of caps in their justification arguments, giving the media and public the impression that capping is only to address the residue problem.  In fact, the agencies propose to leave several large masses of PCBs under the thicker type of cap.  Those thicker caps are the ones we are most concerned about leaking or breaching over time.

Our government "servants" can't be trusted to provide straight unbiased information.

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