Paper Valley: The Fight for the Fox River Cleanup

In this brisk account, investigative journalist Campbell (Beyond Earth Day) and wildlife biologist Allen revisit their efforts in the 1990s to uncover the damage done to Wisconsin’s waterways by the region’s paper producers, who from the 1950s to the ’70s had dumped polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a component of the “carbonless paper” used to make receipts, into the state’s Fox River. By the early 1990s, PCBs had been identified as a carcinogen and were known to accumulate in the bodies of wildlife, but Campbell, writing for the Green Bay Press-Gazette, reported on even more controversial findings: although PCBs had been banned in the ’70s, the pollution left in the sediments of the Fox River was slowly spreading into Green Bay and wreaking more environmental havoc. Allen, then working at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and Campbell’s main government source, assembled the evidence that led to the $1.3 billion cleanup of the contaminated waterway, which was paid for by the polluters and not completed until 2020, when the EPA hailed it as the largest PCB cleanup in history. This is an insightful look into how regulatory agencies and news media can act in concert to grapple with corrupt corporate power. (Apr.)