SPARE America's Wildlands

Fox River, Wisconsin

The Fox River, which flows north from Wisconsin and empties into Lake Michigan, was the childhood playground of Sierra Club founder John Muir. He wrote lovingly of the Fox River:

"Along the Fox River, we found dewberries and cranberries, and a glorious profusion of huckleberries, the fountain-heads of pies of wondrous taste and size, colored in the heart like sunsets."

But today the Fox River is very different from the river John Muir explored as a child. From the 1950s to the 1990s, seven paper companies dumped more than 250,000 pounds of toxic polychlorinated biphenals (PCBs) into the Fox River as wastewater and sludge. Most flowed into Green Bay and Lake Michigan, but about 90,000 pounds sank to the bottom of the river into the muddy sediments. If the river is not cleaned up, these probable cancer-causing toxins will continue to wash into Lake Michigan for the next 100 years - polluting fish and threatening the health of the people and animals who eat them.

The Sierra Club is working in coalition with other environmental groups, anglers, and Fox Valley families to urge the governor, the Environmental Protection Agency and the paper industry to clean up these dangerous toxins before more damage is done.

Photo courtesy Scott Jolliff

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