A river and region face a toxic past

Among the hangups: money issues, and uncertainty about how best to clean up polluted sediments. "There are still a lot of unknowns," Mr. Ells says. "If you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars, you want to be sure it's going to be effective. That's why no one's jumping into these things."

Fox River illustrates the costs, the time consumed and the political challenges. "This is a touchy one," says Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt. "You have the environment and you have industry, and we need both to build and grow the city."

The lower Fox is not only one of most heavily industrialized rivers in the Great Lakes region but also the site of the world's largest concentration of paper mills. Paper dominates the local economy, providing thousands of jobs and creating the kind of steady prosperity that many industrial areas would envy.

It also has transformed the Fox into one of the worst toxic sites on the Great Lakes. From 1954 to 1971 the mills discharged hundreds of thousands of pounds of PCBs into the river. That prompted a state warning to limit consumption of fish and ducks from the river.

Seven paper companies have accepted responsibility for the PCBs in the Fox. But questions remain about details of the cleanup and how much it will cost. The firms hope to avoid dredging as much as possible and instead to cover the contaminated sediments with thick layers of rock and sand - a method the EPA says is unproven and may not save money.

"We just want to make sure the cleanup is done in a logical manner with the best scientific resources available," says Patrick Schillinger, president of the Wisconsin Paper Council, which represents the companies.

Environmental groups say the paper mills have dragged their feet and that the federal and state agencies responsible for enforcing a cleanup have been too willing to compromise. So far, the paper companies have committed about $140 million in damages and cleanup costs, a small fraction of what the government says they owe.

One result of the delay in cleaning the Fox is that only about a fifth of the PCBs still remain in the river. Most have been washed into Green Bay, making the river the largest source of PCBs in Lake Michigan. These PCBs are virtually irretrievable, says Mr. Allen.

The delay has also prolonged a clear threat to public health. Fish advisories have failed to prevent many people from catching and eating Fox River fish, especially Mexican and Hmong immigrants.

The work that's started on the Fox will take six years and remove about a tenth of the PCBs. Officials hope that by then a second phase of cleanup will begin, focusing on the 90 percent of PCBs on the last seven miles of the river. That phase could take 10 to 18 years. It could take 20 years after that for PCB levels in fish to be safe.

For Scott Hughes, an electrician who lives within sight of the dredging here, the hope for progress is personal: "I'm glad to see them clean it up," he says. "I have a little kid, and I like it that when he grows up, he'll be able to eat the fish."

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