Table of Contents
Is Capping a Great Idea or a Dodge?
Problems with CappingThe Bay Data Debate
Polluters Claim, “Capping is Faster. Dredging Will Take 60 Years.”
Appleton Papers Panel says, “Let the Army Corps Do It”
Conclusion
Write Your Elected Representatives Today
Some key concernsBush Administration Closes Websites
What You Can Do
Clean Water Action Council’s 10th Annual Banquet
Peter and Lou Berryman Benefit ConcertFor more information about PCBs visit www.FoxRiverWatch.com
About the Berrymans
Is Capping a Great Idea or a Dodge?
Appleton Papers Inc., through its “expert panel,” proposes to cap PCB contaminated sediments of the Fox River with a 12” layer of gravel and sand, instead of dredging and removing the PCBs.
It almost sounds like a reasonable alternative until you examine the details of their arguments and consider consequences.
As you read the list of capping problems below, you might ask yourself, “Why is Appleton Papers proposing capping? It doesn’t appear to save them money, time, or trouble, and it isn’t a permanent solution to the PCB problem. There must be another reason.”
That “other reason” is that the capping proposal is just a diversion. The public has the impression that the caps would cover all the areas proposed for dredging, but this isn’t true. The industry-proposed caps would cover only a small percentage of the major PCB hotspots. The largest, most serious concentration of PCBs is downstream of the DePere Dam, in the City of Green Bay. Roughly 90% of all PCBs in the entire river sit in this last section. The “expert panel” proposes to leave most of this area uncapped and exposed to river erosion. Some upstream hotspots in Appleton, Neenah and Menasha would be capped, but downstream health threats would be allowed to continue.
The polluters are trying to convince us that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can clean this largest downstream section as part of the government’s regular maintenance dredging of the shipping channel, at public expense of course. (see detailed discussion below.) This is a ludicrous idea, but they’ve convinced a lot of people.
The polluters are trying to dodge the lion’s share of their PCB cleanup responsibilities and costs.
It’s disturbing that many local elected officials have sent letters and resolutions in support of this industry manipulation.
The Clean Water Action Council continues to support dredging and removal of PCB contaminated sediments from the river and bay as the most cost-effective and permanent means of protecting public and wildlife health.
Public hearings must be held if the government truly intends to use the Fox River Group’s capping proposal in the final river cleanup plan. The polluters waited until AFTER the public hearings last fall to present their capping alternative. They must not be allowed to hijack the plan without a PUBLIC discussion and debate.
• Capping is not a long-term solution. Flowing water is powerful. It is inevitable that erosion, ice shoves, bottom wildlife activity, human disturbance, and storm floods will wear away the cap. It’s just a matter of time.Polluters Claim, “Capping is Faster. Dredging Will Take 60 Years.”• Capping is messy. When the Fox River Group dumps sand and gravel on the PCB sediment hotspots, the action is bound to stir up the sediments. The dumping won’t be a gentle, quiet activity. It’s ironic that the paper industry is raising public fears about dredges stirring up PCBs when the capping process could actually be messier. The hydraulic dredges vacuum-up the sediments on contact with the cutterhead, leaving very little to escape. In contrast, the cap dumping will “splash” onto the soft river sediments, scattering and displacing PCBs to the sides and downstream. The cap dumping won’t be moderated at all by a vacuum process.
• Capping is just as expensive, perhaps more so. The expert panel has explained that capping will be just as costly as dredging and landfilling.
• Capping requires significant long-term funding. Though capping may take less than ten years, the cap will require many centuries of expenses and staff-hours to monitor and maintain — much longer than the 10 year time frame required to dredge the river and bay (and certainly longer than the mere 40-60 years projected by the “expert panel” for monitoring and maintenance.) This is especially true in a riverine environment where the cap is exposed to failure from constant erosion or other river dynamics. Monitoring includes measurement of cap thickness over 960 acres, sediment chemistry (expensive sampling), and observations of biological recolonization. Monitoring must include evaluation of zones in the cap that may need rebuilding. Then comes the added cost of actual rebuilding. The capped PCBs will not break down in their no-oxygen buried layers. An in-water disposal of this sort will require perpetual and active long-term maintenance and monitoring, much more than an upland landfill which settles and becomes inert over time.
• It’s wrong to use the public’s river as a private dump. The caps would be permanent structures on up to 960 acres (one and a half square miles) of Public Trust Land on the bed of the Fox River, which has never been done in Wisconsin before. They are paving a huge area of the river bottom. This sets an enormous precedent. Essentially, the state would be allowing private entities to use Public Trust Land as a permanent disposal site for their private wastes --- wastes which were discharged without proper permits and in violation of the Public Trust Doctrine in the first place. At the least, such a project would require public hearings, a written comment period, and a Lake Bed Grant from the Legislature, which could seriously delay the cleanup.
• Future uses would be prohibited forever. The caps would permanently prevent any other future use of those areas. This ties the hands of residents and elected officials in a number of areas including land-planning, economics, and recreation.
• Capping doesn’t comply with DNR standard guidance. The DNR has written guidance on when to cap. (Technical Corner: Capping, July 2000). The guidance allows capping in an area where “currents are no greater than 0.15 feet/second.” Average current velocities in all reaches of the river vary from 0.25 to 1.23 feet/sec. The guidance also allows capping in areas where the maximum 100-year flood current is no greater than 0.7 feet/sec. Based on average current velocities for the different reaches of the river, the 100-year flood current may exceed the 0.7 feet/sec in all reaches of the river.
• Huge floods could happen any day. The “expert panel” recommends that capping be constructed to a standard which would enable it to withstand water forces three times what would occur in a flood so severe it would happen on average only once per century. However, a 100-year-flood (a confusing term) is a flood that has a 1% chance of occurring every year. The same flood could occur multiple times in five years. A larger flood (250- to 500-year) could also occur in the same five years. Use of a term like “100-year flood” gives a false sense of security.
• It’s never been done before. The panel admits this proposed river capping project is the “biggest ever attempted in the U.S.” The panel couldn’t name a single active river where such a cap has worked. When an engineering design is sized larger; there are new challenges, complexities and risks. Why take such an enormous risk when dredging technologies have been proven to work on the Fox River? Large scale PCB cleanup requires the best available proven technology: dredging and removal.
• They ignored the Bay. The panel ignored the high health risks and substantial PCB mass in Zone 2 of lower Green Bay when they stated that their plan would be sufficient to meet public health needs. As our toxicologist Dr. Foran has explained, the bay must be cleaned in order to meet the basic health objectives of the cleanup plan.
• Phony habitat enhancement for the river. Filling the river with sand and gravel is not “habitat enhancement.” During quiet years, the cap material would quickly mix with river silts and clays from normal upstream erosion. Pores would be plugged, and we’d be left with essentially the same type of bottom we have now (but much shallower). Besides, the river is already very productive for fishing and wildlife; the problem is that we can’t eat the fish and ducks living there.
• Upland wildlife habitat and quality-of-life would be destroyed. The cap would need enormous volumes of sand and gravel excavated locally in order to be cost-effective. Any questionable “habitat enhancement” in the river would be more than offset by the wholesale upland habitat destruction caused by the enormous sand and gravel mine needed for this project. Such mines are notorious for their disturbance of neighbors (dust, noise, trucks) and impacts on groundwater tables. This project requires 960 acres (one and a half square miles) of sand and gravel a foot thick. This equals 1,548,800 cubic yards of sand and gravel. Have the mine sites been identified? Have the neighbors been consulted? The polluters are highly critical of DNR for not specifying where sediments would be landfilled (though the landfill siting process usually involves extensive public participation.) At the same time, the polluters haven’t identified where their mine sites will be located or their truck routes, which are processes with fewer public involvement rights. They aren’t being consistent.
• Heavy trucking and noisy equipment. The transport and placement of the mined cap material will require heavy equipment. The offloading of the sand and gravel onto barges would be dusty and noisy. The truck traffic on area roads would be substantial, as the project would require between 103,252 and 129,067 dump truck loads of sand and gravel (at 12 to 15 cubic yards per truck.) The disruption on the river could easily be more noisy and upsetting to neighbors and river users than the quiet underwater operation of hydraulic dredges.
• Creates a Shallower River. Because capped areas will be much shallower, this will reduce the future use of those areas, some of which are already fairly shallow. An example would be the shallow zone above Deposit A in Little Lake Butte des Morts. This is a popular fishing spot, but could become impassable to fishing boats if filled with cap material.
• Changes the flow. Because 960 acres of the river bottom will be more shallow by a foot, this will redirect river currents, alter erosion and deposition patterns, and over time may affect shoreline property owners in some areas.
• Cap material could clog shipping areas. As the cap material erodes it could increase the clogging of downstream locks, shipping channels and marinas, increasing maintenance problems and taxpayer costs.
• Cap material could add pollution. Sand and gravel are usually dusty and dirty. The Fox River Group could introduce significant new pollution into the river when dumping this cap material, making the water more “cloudy” than usual and possibly harming fish and aquatic wildlife by clogging their gills. The material may also change river pH (acid-base levels). To avoid this, they may have to create major “washing stations” to rinse the sand and gravel first, which may require a wastewater treatment system for the wash water. Where will this be done? Again, the polluters are avoiding key details.
• Misuse of “natural attenuation” concept. In their calculation of successful results, both the “expert panel” and the DNR have assumed a 10% “natural attenuation” of river PCBs each year (meaning that 10% of the PCBs disappear “naturally.”) The Science and Technical Advisory Committee for the Remedial Action Plan has said this disappearance is more likely PCBs flowing downstream to the Bay or volatilizing into the air. The PCBs aren’t degrading, as the term “attenuation” implies. The industry and DNR use this term to claim remediation success, when the PCB problem has just shifted to a different area. This is not an acceptable, permanent solution, and the DNR should not be manipulating public opinion in this way.
• Can’t change our minds later. We need a permanent solution now, not 50 or 100 years from now, when the companies could be gone or no longer financially capable. This massive capping is not a theory we can afford to test now and fix later. The DNR says the 7 polluting companies would retain the long-term liability for maintaining the cap, but this won’t matter if the companies no longer exist when the cap fails.
• The future is too uncertain. The PCBs will remain toxic for centuries, but we have no guarantees about the future stability of human society in this area. (Consider how much has changed in the past 150 years.) We face a high risk that people in the future could forget the significance of the cap and not maintain it, or they may initiate major construction or other changes in the cap without realizing the consequences. We have a responsibility to prevent this disaster and take care of our own problems here and now.
• A dam could burst. The 17 locks and dams on the lower Fox River won’t last forever, and certainly not as long as the PCBs will last under the caps. If one or more critical dams burst, this could release a flash flood worse than predicted storm surges, and breach the caps, recontaminating the river and bay downstream, and ruining our cleanup efforts. We can’t be certain that future generations of humans will properly repair and maintain the locks and dams. We also can’t discount the possibility of sabotage of dams through insanity, terrorism, or as an act of war. Stranger things have happened. The panel admitted that the dams at Lake Winnebago and De Pere could be especially critical.
• Natural recovery won’t work. Appleton Papers’ experts have contradicted the Fox River Group’s claim that natural recovery in most of the river is sufficient to address public health concerns.
The “expert panel” mistakenly claimed dredging would violate the wastewater allocation limits for the Fox River. They claim that because the DNR has already issued pollution permits to wastewater dischargers along the Fox River, and has already allocated the maximum pollution “rights,” this means the river has little additional pollution “assimilative capacity.”
They claim the wastewater treatment and discharges from dewatering the dredged sediments would exceed the remaining capacity of the river; therefore, the pace of the river cleanup would need to be slowed down dramatically (taking 60 years instead of DNR’s projected 10 years) in order to properly meter-out the dredging wastewater in diluted quantities.
In other words, according to the panel, the 7 paper companies who dumped the PCBs (and other Fox River dischargers) are STILL polluting the river to point where there’s no room for wastewater from the cleanup effort, a self-serving argument. It is especially ironic and offensive given that the DNR gave Appleton Papers Inc. a 21% increase in their Fox River wastewater discharge allocation just a few years ago, over our objections.
However, the panel’s basic argument is flawed, for the following reasons:
• DNR staff have explained that most dischargers on the Fox are not using their full allocation, therefore a significant buffer remains before water quality standards would be violated in the river by an additional dischargerAppleton Papers Panel says, “Let the Army Corps Do It”• The allocation system is based solely on BOD (biological oxygen demand) —- a form of pollution primarily due to organic matter or nutrients in the wastewater (such as phosphorus and nitrogen). This pollution can be easily treated and reduced in the dredging water discharge, if necessary to speed up the project.
• The 7 companies responsible for PCB contamination can be required to give up a portion of their allocation for the duration of the cleanup effort.
• The bulk of the dredging would occur in the final stretch of the river, where 90% of the PCBs reside. This area is already stirred-up by shipping traffic and Army Corps of Engineer’s clamshell dredging (which is much messier than the hydraulic vacuum dredging to be used for PCB cleanup). If the wasteload allocation system is threatened by the cleaner remedial dredging, then these existing activities are likely having a serious effect. Why hasn’t Appleton Papers Inc. called for the halt of shipping and Corps’ dredging in the lower Fox River? They aren’t being consistent.
• The dumping of cap material into the river could be messier than dredging. As the sand and gravel hits the soft sediment, PCBs and other pollutants would be stirred up and displaced to the side into the flowing river current. If dredging would violate the wasteload allocation, why wouldn’t the cap dumping? Appleton Papers isn’t being consistent.
• The dredging timeline can be accelerated in many ways to clean both the river and bay hotspots in less than 10 years. By operating multiple dredging crews on several hotspots at once, the work can be fairly rapid. Just as fast, or faster than capping.
The “expert panel” mistakenly claimed that the Army Corps of Engineers’ dredging of the Green Bay Harbor shipping channel would be adequate to remove the bulk of PCBs between the DePere Dam and the mouth of the Fox River. This is ludicrous, for several reasons:
• This section of the river contains roughly 90% of all the PCBs in the entire Fox River. It also causes some of the highest health risks. Yet the panel seems to be shrugging off the paper industry’s responsibility for this area. The polluters should not be allowed to shift the costs of remediation to the Army Corps, public taxpayers or harbor users. The remediation costs should be borne by those who dumped the PCBs: the Fox River Group of paper industries. In fact, the polluters should reimburse the taxpayers for all the extra costs incurred over the past 30 years to dispose of sediments the Group contaminated. The small amount allocated in the DNR’s proposal is not sufficient.Appleton Papers’ expert plan is actually MUCH slower and messier.• The shipping channel extends only halfway upstream to the DePere Dam. It stops at the old Fort Howard Turning Basin. The upstream half of this area would be untouched by the Corps, leaving large quantities of PCBs still in the river.
• The channel is only a narrow strip dredged down the middle of the river, completely missing the old PCB deposits to either side.
• The Corps channel maintenance equipment is not designed for remedial toxic chemical cleanups. They use the messiest form of clamshell dredge, which, ironically, is the kind of equipment which has been harshly criticized by the Fox River Group of polluters. On one hand the paper industries have aggressively criticized the minor downstream PCB leakage which occurred during the 2 dredging demonstrations using the cleaner hydraulic dredges, while at the same time they seem to be promoting a MUCH more risky form of dredging by the Corps. This is a major inconsistency. If Appleton Papers’ own expert panel believes it’s all right for the Corps to dredge, then Appleton Papers should concede that remedial dredging projects are equally acceptable.
• The Corps does not have a disposal site which complies with hazardous waste requirements. The Bayport Project on the bay’s west shore, where channel dredgings go currently, is not a fully engineered landfill, and when it was exempted from Wisconsin’s solid waste law, our organization was promised by the Wisconsin DNR that it would not be used for remedial dredge spoil disposal.
• The Corps dredges a relatively small quantity of sediment from the channel each year. Even if we assume that the sediments to the side would eventually fall into the channel and be removed, it would take an unbearably long period of time before all the contaminated sediment could be removed. Centuries, perhaps. And this assumes that no fresh sediment would be added from upstream. Meanwhile, the public faces serious health risks now, and results are needed as soon as possible. The expert panel falsely claims that the DNR’s dredging plan will take 60 years, when this pace would be speedy compared to the Corp’s minor channel maintenance dredging. The “experts” aren’t being consistent.
Appleton Papers’ “expert panel” made several major mistakes in their analysis which calls into question their central claim that the cap will be erosion-proof for centuries. We doubt their fundamental credibility on this key issue.
Write Your Elected Representatives Today
Please write your federal elected officials and let them know what you think of the industry PCB capping proposal and the bay data problem. Please send a copy to the President and state legislators as well (addresses on page 7.) The DNR and EPA are now reviewing public comments on the cleanup plan, which could take several months. In the meantime, industry will continue to lobby for their position and local citizens need to stay involved and vigilant.
Senator Russ Feingold
U.S. Senate House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20510
Congressman Thomas Petri
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
Senator Herb Kohl
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C.
President George W. Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
20510 Washington, DC 20500
Congressman Mark Green
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
(Also contact your County Executive, Mayor, County Supervisor and Alderman. See “local goverments” in your phone book.)
For more information, visit http://www.foxriverwatch.com
The public needs an immediate independent investigation of the DNR’s claims about PCBs in the bay.
In November, our engineering expert William Acker discovered a disturbing discrepancy in the DNR’s proposed Fox River cleanup plan.
He noted that the DNR’s consultant, Remediation Technologies, Inc. (RETEC),
stated in the proposal that 154,000 pounds had escaped the Fox River to
contaminate Green Bay
(with 69,000 pounds concentrated in Zone 2, the extreme southern end
of the bay.)
At the same time, RETEC included other data in their documents,from the UW-SeaGrant Institute, claiming only 19,000 pounds of PCBs are found in all of Green Bay. The widely different figures were incompatible, but apparently no effort was made to reconcile the amounts.
Over the past 3 months, Mr. Acker has contacted several agencies and we have attended numerous meetings where this discrepancy has been discussed, trying to get to the bottom of the issue.
Last week, a letter surfaced from three Sea Grant Institute scientists to the DNR. They harshly criticized the DNR’s higher PCB numbers in the bay, and claimed the DNR documents were “seriously flawed and should not be published in their present form.” (The full text of the letter is available on the www.FoxRiverWatch.com website, linked from the front page.)
The letter was particularly critical of DNR’s apparent misuse of Sea Grant Institute data in the middle and northern part of the bay.
The letter speculated in detail that DNR or RETEC had deliberately fudged the numbers to make their “mass balance” work out. The DNR has estimated that a certain quantity of PCBs was discharged by the mills, and the Sea Grant Institute scientists accused them of artificially inflating the bay PCB deposit figures to account for those PCBs -- to make the PCB output equal the input.
The DNR has been equally adamant in its own defense and insists that its numbers are correct.
• We need answers. This is a serious issue which must be resolved soon. The concentration and location of PCBs in the bay is fundamental information needed to determine how much Bay cleanup is needed to protect public and wildlife health.What You Can Do• What did we get for our taxdollars? After 30 years of expensive studies, how can this basic data still be in dispute? RETEC was paid roughly $4 million by DNR and EPA to prepare the Fox River cleanup plan, but took no new samples in the bay. In addition, the Green Bay Mass Balance Study cost $13 million, but we’ve learned now that only ONE sample of PCBs in sediments was taken in all of Zone 2 (south of Longtail Point and Point Au Sable.)
• Has DNR committed fraud? If the Sea Grant Institute’s allegations are correct, the data contained in the proposed Fox River cleanup plan are deliberately fraudulent. This is a serious charge which needs to be settled as soon as possible and those responsible held accountable under the law. The public should be able to have confidence in government data. Our agencies cannot be allowed to manipulate public opinion with false information.
• Flawed study by Sea Grant. On the other hand, the Sea Grant Institute may also be wrong regarding the southern bay data, because they made the decision to take only ONE sample in Zone 2, during the Mass Balance Study, on the west side of the bay in Deadhorse Bay, and they missed all of the PCBs concentrated in hotspots along the east shore and center of the lower bay. One sample is clearly not enough. This is an embarrassment for the Sea Grant Institute and they seem genuinely upset that anyone should now question them. Their attack on the DNR seems to be partly due to wounded pride and self defense, but Sea Grant should be held accountable for this serious bay data gap.
• Decisions should not be based on bad data. It’s even more disturbing that the Sea Grant Institute now claims a lower bay cleanup is unnecessary based on limited research. This is not sound science. The scientists say that based on samples taken by Blasland, Bouck and Lee (BB&L) levels of PCBs in the lower bay are not sufficient to warrant a cleanup there; however, BB&L took only 8 samples from Zone 2, still not enough to get a clear picture of this large area. Worse yet, BB&L is a consulting firm used heavily by the Fox River Group of industries, as well as General Electric and other corporations around the country fighting against PCB river cleanups. BB&L has a large incentive for showing that a bay cleanup is unnecessary, and has already been caught red-handed by EPA staff on the Manistique River trying to take faulty samples. The Institute, and the government in general, should not rely on data from such a biased source.
• RETEC’s Conflict of Interest. To make matters worse, Clean Water Action Council has been concerned for 4 years about the conflict of interest arising from the DNR’s choice of Remediation Technologies (RETEC) as the consultant to write the cleanup plan. RETEC was recommended to DNR by the seven companies who dumped PCBs in the Fox River, and the consultant’s parent company has direct business and financial ties to the paper industry along the Fox River. RETEC generally works for industrial clients, not governments working in the public’s interest.
• Limited sampling points and missed hotspots. The DNR and RETEC estimate of 69,000 pounds of PCBs in the lower bay was based on 3 sets of data: the one SeaGrant Institute sample, the 8 samples by BB&L, and approximately 6 samples taken by DNR around the Kidney Island (Renard Isle) confined sediment disposal facility near Bay Beach Amusement Park. None of the agencies took samples of a large uncontained area in the middle of the lower bay where the Army Corps of Engineers dumped shipping channel dredge spoils for decades before open-water disposal was banned in the mid-1970s. An estimated 3 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment were dumped there during the worst periods of PCB dumping in the Fox River, but for some reason the agencies took no PCB samples from this site. This is an unbelievable “oversight” on the part of both the DNR and Sea Grant Institute. If they didn’t sample there, they obviously weren’t serious about trying to locate and delineate PCB hotspots in the lower bay.
• The models are nearly useless, which means bay cleanup may be more feasible now. If the Sea Grant Institute is correct, the DNR’s computer model and timeline projections for the Bay are clearly unreliable. These models were key factors in deciding which hotspots were worth cleaning up. The DNR discounted the bay as too contaminated with dispersed PCBs to make cleanup worthwhile. Perhaps, based on new bay data, it won’t take more than 100 years to heal afterall. Perhaps we can make major progress much more quickly. This would be good news, and it may strengthen the call for a strong bay cleanup plan because results could be MUCH more beneficial more quickly.
• Skimming the top off. The Sea Grant Institute also claims that virtually all the bay PCBs are in the top 4 inches of sediment (not buried deeply as DNR claims). This would make cleanup of Zone 3 hotspots along the east shore (in the middle bay) more possible, because less sediment volume would be involved. Areas such as the Dykesville PCB hotspot should be sampled and scrutinized more carefully so we can get a better picture of what is possible.
• Cleanup targets don’t change. The total mass of PCBs in Zone 2 doesn’t change the need to apply the .25 ppm cleanup target level to the bay, where it’s violated. Basic public health standards should still apply.
• Put the settlement $$ to use. The DNR and EPA should use a portion of the recent $40 million settlement with Appleton Papers and NCR Corporation to take at least 100 more layered sediment core samples in the lower bay south of Long Tail Point and Point Au Sable, and at the Dykesville hotspot. This should be done right away this spring, to make the data public as soon as possible.
• Hold the bay decision. The EPA should not issue a final Record of Decision for the bay portion of the PCB cleanup plan until we’ve all seen and discussed better scientific data, If new bay data is significantly changed from DNR’s published data, additional public hearings should be held because this will change public and agency recommendations for the bay. It should be possible to complete this in time for the 2003 summer work season, and it shouldn’t delay the total cleanup. The EPA must not settle-out with the polluters until this issue is properly resolved.
• Public efforts confounded. The Clean Water Action Council spent a lot of money and time focusing our technical experts on the implications of the DNR’s bay data, only to learn that data may not be reliable. It is very frustrating to face a limited public comment period and realize that essential data is up in the air. We chose to assume DNR’s higher Zone 2 bay numbers are closer to the truth (as we believe they are), and prepared our presentations, ads and newletters accordingly, but we are angry at being put in this position after all these years of delays for “further studies.” This bay data debate should not be
happening.• DNR manipulation, again. We’ve all gotten the strong impression that the DNR and RETEC made up their minds long ago that a bay cleanup was unnecessary and slapped together the recent Fox River cleanup proposal in a way that would support their conclusion. They deliberately lumped together bay-wide data to make PCBs appear too widespread and deep in the sediments. They lumped together total bay cleanup costs to hide the fact that more limited PCB hotspot cleanups in the lower bay (and possibly along the middle east shore) were economically and technically feasible. The DNR has done this to us before. Isn’t it about time that our elected officials investigated the obvious dishonesty of the DNR? The DNR isn’t serving the public or protecting our health --- they just feed us information to support actions they’ve decided are the politically easiest to take.
Please write to your Governor and elected representatives in the state Legislature and tell them what you think about bay data problem and PCB sediment caps. (Send copies to your federal representatives too, listed on page 1)
Gov. Scott McCallum
Room 115 East, State Capitol
Madison, WI 53702
Senator __________________ ,
P.O. Box 7882
Madison, WI 53707
Rep. (Last Name, A thru L)
P.O. Box 8952
Madison, WI 53708
Rep. (Last Name, Mc thru Z)
P.O. Box 8953
Madison, WI 53708
(If you don’t know who your elected state representatives are, call the toll-free Legislative Hotline at 1-800-362-9472 on weekdays, between 8:00 and 5:00).
Bush Administration Closes Websites
The Bush Administration has blocked public access to key information on the $176 to $333 million Fox River and Green Bay restoration and compensation plan completed in 1999 by the Clinton Administration.
We have responded by putting extensive reports by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on our own website: www.FoxRiverWatch.com
For 2 months, these reports (thousands of pages worth) were inaccessible during public comments on the Fox River cleanup plan. It was a major loss of information needed to evaluate our PCB problem, documenting PCB fish and bird injuries, pathways, fish consumption warnings, and recreational fishing & surface water economic damages. In early December, Gale Norton, Pres. Bush’s Secy. of the Dept of Interior, chose to respond more broadly than necessary to a judge’s order in a federal lawsuit regarding online security issues and Interior’s management of Native American trust funds online. Norton ordered the entire Department to go offline, shutting down virtually ALL their websites (except for the U.S. Geological Survey) and preventing employees from using e-mail or the Internet indefinitely. Today, they are STILL offline with no resolution in sight, making agency work inefficient, more costly (for printing, postage, phone and faxes) and disconnected from valuable information sources online.
(Interior agencies affected are the Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Bureau of Mines, Bureau of Reclamation, and Office of Surface Mining Reclamation & Enforcement.)
Most of the websites have nothing to do with Native American trust funds. It makes no sense to shut down the websites unless the true motivation is to prevent public access to the information or cripple Dept. effectiveness. Fox River documents are also important for the Kalamazoo River (Mich), Hudson River (NY) and the Housatonic River (MA). These are all PCB contaminated rivers where NRDA compensation plans are being written. Citizens, local governments, and other agencies along these rivers should have access to government websites, to compare notes and learn what they should expect in their areas. Other PCB poisoned areas would also find the Fox River reports useful.
We’re getting many calls for information, when individuals should be able to get this information from the government agencies set up for this purpose. Taxpayers paid millions of dollars for the preparation of these Service reports, but we’re not getting the information we all paid for. Now, we’ve had to pay for more memory for our website, to let us post the reports.
Norton restored online campsite reservations for the National Parks Service, but doesn’t place an equal value on technical websites. (Bush needs happy campers?)
This website obstruction doesn’t bode well for the implementation of the Fox River and Green Bay NRDA compensation plan, which should begin this year (2002).
Clean Water Action Council’s 10th Annual Banquet
We’re very excited to have Peter and Lou Berryman as the centerpieces
of this year’s dinner and concert.
They’re great fun and homegrown in the Fox Valley, too!
They met in highschool in Appleton in the 1960s
and from there began a lifetime of musical entertaining, producing
12 recordings, several songbooks, and thousands
of performances across the continent. Recently, they were
featured on Prairie Home Companion.
We know you’ll enjoy them.
Peter and Lou Berryman Benefit Concert
at the Historic West Theater, corner of Walnut and
Broadway, downtown Green Bay, just west of the Fox River
Friday, March 15, 2002
5:00 to 6:00 p.m. —- Social Hour and Cash Bar
6:00 to 7:30 p.m. —- Buffet Dinner, Elections and Awards
7:30 to 9:30 p.m. ---- Peter and Lou Berryman in Concert
May attend concert only --- reservations required.
The Historic West Theater is a beautiful, refurbished classic. The old
stage has been restored, and the front seats removed to install an open
dining area (also used for dancing). We can seat approximately 100
people for dinner, and another 150 in the fixed cushion theater seats remaining
further back from the stage. The Theater is now under new management,
and was previously known as the West Pitcher Show.
For this year’s banquet, we offer a buffet prepared by the Theater’s
excellent cooks, all you care to eat. The main dish will be a choice
of roast chicken and/or vegan lasagna (no meat, dairy or eggs). Additional
courses include: Italian seasoned baked potato wedges, steamed vegetable
medley (broccoli, carrots, cauliflower), warm Italian bread, fresh greens
dinner salad with a choice of dressings, fresh fruit,dessert bars, coffee
and milk. Ingredients comply with vegan diets (except milk and dessert
bars), with butter on the side for non-vegans. A cash-bar will be
available.
Please send your reservations right away! Don’t miss your chance to see these wonderful performers.
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Reservation Form --- 10th Annual Clean Water
Banquet & Benefit Concert, March 15th, 2002
Name(s) __________________________________________ Date __________________
Address _____________________________________________Phone (______)___________
City______________________________________________________State ________Zip
Code _____
Proceeds to benefit the Clean Water Action Council
Enclosed please find $ ___($25/person, $45/couple, $20/students) for #___ Banquet Tickets (includes concert)
Tom Paxton: When it comes to being funny, I think I’ve spent the first thirty years trying to be as funny as Tom Lehrer and the last part will be trying to be as funny as the Berrymans. They don’t come any funnier than that...
Matt Watroba, Sing Out!, Fall 2001: Every new recording is full
of material that stretches and explodes with original ideas and fresh musical
wordplay. It is that distinctive mosaic of melody and lyric that keeps
their fans hanging on every line and sometimes every word. Lou and
Peter Berryman win new fans
everywhere they go. And the old fans? They keep coming to hear the
new songs and to watch the
astonished reaction of the folks hearing this delightful duo for the
first time.
The San Francisco Bay Chronicle: Once in a while a song comes along that so successfully crystallizes familiar thoughts that you feel you could have written it yourself...A lot of people feel that way about [Lou & Peter’s] “Why Am I Painting the Living Room”.
Victoria (BC) Times Colonist: ...Quirky, wry, ironic humor. Peter’s
highly literate lyrics and skewed
perspective are unique. When enhanced by Lou’s soundscapes, the duo
makes magic. By the time the Berrymans encored with their wistful, fumbling
love song “We Strolled On the Beach” I was in love too. I’m a fan of this
clever duo now.
The Boston Globe: Lou & Peter Berryman write very eccentric, very funny satirical songs...delightful Wisconsin performers... If Tom Lehrer had grown up in America’s Dairyland, his songs might sound like theirs.
Pete Seeger: Lou and Peter Berryman! Long may they wave. Their F-Word song “A Chat With Your Mother” is one of the great American folksongs of the 20th Century.
Robert J. Lertsema, WGBH, Boston: It is very rare that I ever put on a recording for the 1st time and actually break out in audible laughter. I thought Lou & Peter’s DOUBLE YODEL was fantastic.
The Winnipeg Folk Festival: Sharing a fascination with language and a unique perspective on the world, Lou & Peter Berryman offer refreshing observations on the human condition in a style blending folk music with musical comedy. They manage to translate it all into hilarious songs that have become instant classics. Songs that feel like they had you in mind when the words and music came together.
10# FIDDLE, Lansing, MI: Their songs and performances are unfailingly wacky, and just as dependably 100% right. No one writes songs like Peter and Lou, but everyone recognizes the truth and the clear vision behind each one.
The Freight & Salvage, Berkeley, CA: This once-married duo from the upper Midwest is among the most entertaining acts we’ve ever had at the Freight. Their songs are crafted from often unpromising raw material (sports headlines, mother love, state pride) but invariably as the lyrics unroll the audience begins to roll on the floor...
Mike Agranoff, THE FOLK PROJECT, Basking Ridge, NJ: Peter
& Lou Berryman... have obviously achieved a classic level of comedic
songwriting in the ranks of Tom Lehrer or Flanders & Swann. Responsible
for such gems as “A Chat with your Mother” (the “F”-word song), “The Speculator”,
“Why
AmI Painting the Living Room?” and dozens more, they have identified
the exact point where the English language meets the funny bone, with a
special flair for songs in which two voices singing entirely different
things somehow manage to mesh into one cacophonic, yet clear, message.
Golden Link Folk Singing Society, Rochester NY: It is given to
few songwriters to make songs that become instant classics; the Berrymans
have produced dozens—’taint fair. No one writes songs like the Berrymans,
but everyone recognizes the truth and the clear vision behind each one.
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