Dreadging the Sheboygan River

SHEBOYGAN — The long-range plans are still as fluid as the river itself, but one thing is certain — the most PCB-contaminated sediments in the lower Sheboygan River and inner harbor will be removed this summer.

Plans for the dredging were outlined for a crowd of about 50 people in the University of Wisconsin- Sheboygan Fine Arts Theater by city, county, state and federal officials.

“We want to try to get as close as we can so we’re back to the days where the river is as deep as it was in 1969,” County Board Supervisor Mick Anic told the audience.

To get to that point, what Sheboygan Mayor Bob Ryan said would be 10 feet deep from the 14th Street bridge to the Eighth Street bridge and 14 feet deep from there to the harbor, would take local funds of up to $7 million, according to the mayor.

That’s because the Superfund cleanup, funded totally by private sources, will only clean up the so-called ‘hot spots’ — areas of sediment on the river bottom where polychlorinated biphenyl contamination has been identified at more than 50 parts per million.

That would amount to about 50,000 cubic yards of material to be removed from the river bottom, drained and then shipped to a landfill in Michigan licensed to handle PCB-contaminated soil, Rick Nagle of the federal Environmental Protection Agency explained.

A major concern for a number of those in the audience is where that contaminated soil would be placed during the dewatering process before being trucked to the landfill.

Several areas of the UW-Sheboygan campus are among the sites being considered for that process, but several people connected with the university expressed fear about the damage that might do to the campus, in particular the still under construction Bookworm Gardens.

Ryan stressed that the UW campus is just one of the sites being looked at for the dewatering process, which will require two to six acres of land. He added that the city would prefer one of the other sites under consideration, including industrial land on New Jersey Avenue between 19th and 20th streets and the Schuchardt property along Taylor Drive and Lower Falls Road.

Ken Auckerman of Pollution Risk Services, which will be conducting the dredging, said citizen concerns and impacts would be one of the factors in the final decision on a dewatering site. “There will be a cost/benefit analysis of all the potential sites.”

“We want to make sure there is no long-term impact,” county Planning and Resources Director Jim Hulbert, who hosted the informational meeting, explained.

Auckerman said the Superfund cleanup work would probably take all of this summer. He assured the audience that all of the contaminated soil would be taken to licensed landfill sites for disposal. The lessheavily contaminated soil will go to a Veolia landfill in Chilton.

“All our measures are to make the community knows that we are taking the PCBs out of the river and not putting them anywhere else,” in the community, Auckerman added.

Nagle said the Superfund cleanup, which is expected to cost $7 million to $10 million, has already been paid for by Tecumseh Industries, identified as one of the parties responsible for the original contamination. Those funds have been paid to PRS through Tecumseh’s insurance carrier.

To dredge the river deeper, local officials are hoping to utilize a grant from the EPA Great Lakes Legacy Program. However, that program requires a local match of 35 to 40 percent of the total cost of the project.

Marc Tuchman of the EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office explained that the program has $75 million in its budget for 2010.

The program has already completed or undertaken eight cleanup projects around the Great Lakes, including two in Wisconsin — the Kinnickinnic River in Milwaukee and Hog Island/Newton Creek in Superior — Tuchman told the audience.

Ryan said he would like to see the river dredged to the depths it was at 50 or more years ago. Such a river channel would allow more commercial and recreational fishing and boating along the river. It would also allow for docking Great Lakes cruise ships in the Sheboygan harbor, which can not be done at the harbor’s current depth.

Scientists and engineers have not yet been able to determine exactly how much sediment would have to be dredged from the river to reach that depth, although Ryan said it has been estimated that another 160,000 cubic yards of soil would have to be removed.

That could cost anywhere from $7.5 million to $20 million, depending on how contaminated the additional sediment is and where it could be disposed of safely and properly.

The local match could include in-kind services as well as donations from the private sector and organizations, officials noted. “That’s the fluid part of the plan,” Ryan conceded.

“It’s kind of a chicken and egg thing,” Anic added. “The local funding requirement would be somewhere between $3 million and $8 million. The local means anything other than the federal government, (but) I don’t think we’re going to do this with brat frys.”