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$1B Fox River Pollution Scandal: 10 Companies, 2 Municpalities Face Lawsuit
WASHINGTON – The Environment and Natural Resources Division announced the filing of a major lawsuit against 10 companies and two municipalities to require continued environmental cleanup work at Wisconsin’s Lower Fox River and Green Bay Site.
The lawsuit seeks payment of associated government costs and natural resource damages, with total cleanup costs and damages for the Green Bay Site expected to exceed $1 billion. The Superfund lawsuit targets risks to humans and wildlife posed by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in bottom sediment, banks, and shoreline areas of the Fox River and Green Bay.
The suit also names two municipal sewer system operators that discharged relatively large amounts of PCBs to the Fox River, and targets paper companies that contaminated sediment in the Fox River and Green Bay when they made and recycled a particular type of PCB-containing ‘carbonless’ copy paper.
NCR Corporation and its affiliates produced that paper with PCBs from the mid-1950s until 1971. The remaining dredging and capping work could cost an estimated $550 million more, bringing the total cleanup costs to over $1 billion.
In addition to the complaint, the United States and the state of Wisconsin filed a proposed settlement with one of the newly-named defendants, Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products LP, which would agree to pay $7 million to reimburse a portion of the government’s unpaid past and future costs.
The proposed settlement is subject to a 30-day public comment period. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state and tribal trustees for natural resources in the area also have a stake in the cleanup efforts.
The cleanup remedy at the site was jointly-selected by the EPA and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and will remove much of the PCB-containing sediment from the Fox River by dredging, while containing contaminated sediment in place with specially-engineered caps.
The parties performing the ongoing cleanup work under the previous administrative order have protested, and have not agreed to take full responsibility for completing the cleanup or paying all damages for injuries to natural resources.
A large amount of cleanup and natural resource restoration work has already been done in the area under a set of partial settlements and the EPA administrative order, with more than $300 million in cleanup work already completed.
Key Facts
- State: Wisconsin
- Category: Environmental Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release ↗
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