On October 30, 2023, your Door County Environmental Council, in partnership with the Door County Land Trust and the Door County Library, hosted “The Fox River Fix: The First Step Toward a Healthier Bay,” a discussion of the history behind the world’s largest environmental river sediment cleanup of its kind. This free program was offered at the Kress Pavilion in Egg Harbor both in person and via Zoom.

Authors P. David Allen II and Susan Campbell discussed their role in the $1.3 billion fix for widespread PCB chemical contamination of the Fox River through its completion in 2020. In their recently published book, “Paper Valley: The Fight for the Fox River Cleanup,” Allen and Campbell provided a first-person account of their efforts to force paper companies to clean up cancer-causing PCBs released into the Fox River.

Following Allen and Campbell’s presentations, local panelists Mark Holey, retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Fish biologist, Mark Villers, Door County Environmental Council Board Member, Myles Dannhausen Jr., Peninsula Pulse, and Mike Grimm, the Nature Conservancy, discussed transferable lessons from the Fox River PCB cleanup to the problems northeast Wisconsin is grappling with today in the bay of Green Bay and whether a major environmental success like the Fox River PCB cleanup offers hope that other controversial, and seemingly intractable, environmental problems such as phosphorus might be resolved.

View a full recording of the event below.