,

After Decades, Cleanup Work Remains On Sheboygan River

Industrial Pollution Contaminated Waterway With PCBs

By
Chuck Quirmbach/WPR

The cleanup of industrial pollution in waterways that feed the Great Lakes has been a very gradual process. Hundreds of millions of tax dollars have been spent over the last 30 years, trying to clean up five contaminated Great Lakes harbors and tributaries in Wisconsin designated as “areas of concern,” but it appears completion of the projects is still years away.

That’s certainly the case for the Sheboygan River in southeast Wisconsin. The section of the river that flows through Sheboygan Falls is placid and picturesque.

But decades ago, high amounts of harmful compounds known as PCBs were coming into the water from a now-torn-down riverside foundry owned by the Tecumseh Corp.

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Longtime Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources employee Vic Pappas said that wasn’t the Sheboygan River’s only problem.

“I would get calls and people would say, ‘Hey, I think there’s an oil spill in the river,’ and I’d ask them where they were. And we knew it was probably a product from a coal tar that was coming out of the sediments in one location,” said Pappas.

The chemicals and other pollutants led to 14 miles of the river and Sheboygan harbor being listed as an AOC.


PCB remedial action on the Sheboygan River circa 1990. The cleanup process has stretched three decades. Wisconsin DNR (CC-BY-ND)

Even now, people aren’t supposed to eat the fish that live in the river. Tecumseh said they’ve spent about $30 million on sediment cleanup, Environmental Protection Agency officials said taxpayers have kicked in tens of millions more toward habitat restoration and dredging. Some local residents say they’ve seen improvements.

Charter boat owner Dan Welsh said all the dredging has not only removed unwanted sandbars, but made for cleaner water.

“Water depth was our concern,” Welsh said. “But it definitely cleaned up the bottom sediment as well, and PCB levels definitely went down and it was good for the whole area.”

Federal limits on dredging, both for commerce and navigation, in the Sheboygan AOC have now been lifted, but eight other benchmarks for quality of life for humans and wildlife have not been fully restored. The DNR’s Sheboygan AOC coordinator Camille Bruhn said there are still several so-called “beneficial use impairments” on the Sheboygan River, things like restrictions on fish and wildlife consumption and bird or animal deformities or reproductive problems.

Bruhn said work continues on all eight impairments, with a focus most recently on more reductions in the phosphorus that contributes to algae growth.

Willow Creek is one of the Sheboygan River tributaries that could be carrying farm runoff that contributes to algae. Aaron Brault, the Sheboygan County planning and conservation director, said there are questions ahead.

“Do we invest in the treatment plant, or do we invest in tackling the solution upstream? And there are a lot of unknowns upstream,” Brault said. “The farmer sells the land and the new owner doesn’t want to participate.”

Local resident Ryan Pickart fishes on the Sheboygan River, trying to catch salmon and brown trout. He said there are decisions to be made. But he said he’d like the cleanup job finished, “so future generations can do what I and many people do, which is enjoy fishing and actually consuming the fish.”

More taxpayer dollars are likely coming to the cleanup, but it may be at least five years before the Sheboygan River joins the handful of other Great Lakes AOC’s that have been delisted.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional information from the Tecumseh Corp.