User:Ebbenw/Fox River (Green Bay tributary)

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Environmental issues
In the section between Lake Winnebago and Green Bay at Lake Michigan, the Fox River flows roughly south to north and descends through a height equal to that of Niagara Falls. As such, the Fox River was an ideal location for constructing powerful sawmills that made the Fox River area famous for its paper industry. A negative side effect of this industrialization was the dumping of hazardous material byproducts of the paper mills. It was soon after this started that dumping became illegal. While evidence of these waste deposits remains to date, the Fox River is being cleaned up. To repair the ecological damage from this toxic waste, there has been a widespread effort to clean the Fox River. Dredging of the chemicals in the river began on April 28, 2009 and capping started soon after during the summer of 2009. The cleaning project concluded in 2020 and cost an estimated $1 billion. '''The Fox River will continue to be monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for many years following the project's completion. '''

The high concentration of paper mills and other industry along the Lower Fox has historically been the source of much pollution of the river. Public debate about this contamination began as early as 1923, but little was done to improve the river until the federal Clean Water Act was passed in 1972. Much effort has since been put into cleaning the Fox, but problems still exist. According to some measures of pollution (e.g. dissolved oxygen, pollution-tolerant worm counts), the Lower Fox River is much cleaner than it was before 1972. However, according to other measures of pollution (e.g., phosphorus, estrogenic compounds, discarded pharmaceuticals), the river waters are slightly more contaminated than before 1972. As a result, debate over the river's contamination continues between environmentalists, the paper industry, Indian tribes, and elected officials at the federal, state, and local levels.

While not officially designated as a U.S. Superfund site, the Lower Fox River bottom has some sections contaminated with toxic chemicals. These contaminated sediments are the river's current environmental problem. One contaminant of special concern today is a group of chemicals called Polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. PCBs entered the river from many sources, but the The largest deposits of contaminated sediments are traceable to the local paper recycling mills. '''Beginning in the 1950s, many mills along to Fox River began producing and recycling carbonless copy paper. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources explains that carbonless copy paper caused PCB pollution in the Fox River and Lake Michigan. The federal government banned PCBs in 1979 due to their environmental threat to humans and other wildlife'''. These have been part of the region's history, culture and economy, and cleanup is a complex and difficult issue.

The U.S. government and State of Wisconsin filed suit on October 14, 2010, against nine paper companies and two municipalities for their failure to pay for PCB cleanup actions to date. The government has not obtained long-term agreements from these organizations for sediment cleanup efforts. The companies named in the suit are NCR Corporation, Appleton Papers, CBC Coating, Kimberly-Clark, Menasha Corporation, NewPage Corporation, Glatfelter, U.S. Paper Mills (Sonoco) and WTM (Wisconsin Tissue Mills). The local agencies being sued are the City of Appleton and Neenah-Menasha Sewerage Commission. In 2012, a judge upheld the EPA's plan. '''Several settlements ensured that the responsible parties paid for a large sum of the cleaning project costs and other restoration efforts. A settlement, reached in 2019, required that NCR Corporation, P.H. Glatfelter Company, and Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products LP cover the cost of all future cleaning efforts. '''

Since the late 19th century, dredging of river bottom sediments has been done to allow large ships to enter the Fox River. The contaminated sediment has been used since the 1960s to fill local wetlands, causing adverse effects on wildlife and plants. After 1978 it was used to develop an off-shore engineered holding area called Renard Isle, also known as Kidney Island. '''Renard Island was capped in 2015 and its ownership was transferred to Brown County in 2017. There have been several proposed plans for the land, including turning it into a National Estuarine Research Reserve. '''

Among the wildlife in the Fox River Valley are birds such as mallard ducks and Canada geese, and fish such as walleye.

Before the 1950s parts of the Fox River were used for recreational purposes. This only lasted for a short period of time as the water quality deteriorated, and the water was considered unhealthy.

The Fox River region has been dominated by dairy farms that benefited from the rich soil and plentiful water supply.