U.S. DOJ and WDNR recently filed action against 10 companies and two municipalities seeking continued cleanup of Wisconsin's Lower Fox River and Green Bay Area. The lawsuit also seeks payment of government oversight costs and natural resource damages. This latest lawsuit is one of the many enforcement and judicial actions initiated by federal and state authorities in response to PCB contamination in and around the Fox River.
The lawsuit will proceed against the following non-settling defendants: NCR Corporation; Appleton Papers Inc.; CBC Coating Inc. (formerly known as Riverside Paper Corp.); City of Appleton; Kimberly-Clark Corp.; Menasha Corp.; Neenah-Menasha Sewerage Commission; NewPage Wisconsin Systems Inc.; P.H. Glatfelter Co.; U.S. Paper Mills Corp.; and WTM I Co. (formerly known as Wisconsin Tissue Mills Inc.).
The cleanup remedy at the site was jointly-selected by the EPA and the WDNR. The remedy will remove much of the PCB-containing sediment from the Fox River by dredging. In other portions of the river, contaminated sediment will be contained in place with specially-engineered caps. According to EPA and WDNR, the dredging and capping will reduce PCB exposure and greatly diminish downstream migration of PCBs to Green Bay. More than $300 million in cleanup work has already been done at the site. The remaining dredging and capping work could cost an estimated $550 million more. The total cleanup costs and damages for the Green Bay Site alone are expected to exceed $1 billion.
More information about the lawsuit and related activities is available at http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/October/10-enrd-1150.html.