Clean water is hard-earned, not guaranteed

When I moved to Northeast Wisconsin from Iowa three years ago, I knew one thing: I wanted to live on the water. Coming from a state that is among the nation’s nine driest, I have long jealously associated Wisconsin with “lake life.” When I talked to longtime Kaukauna mayor and Fox River resident Ron Vandehey about the importance of our waterways for this month’s cover story on the Fox Locks, he considered my backstory carefully.

“It seems like sometimes familiarity created some indifference, and if I was like you and had moved from the outside and looked at this asset … this is fantastic,” he said. “We take vacations to rivers when an asset like this is in our own backyard.”

But what I didn’t understand as a person just discovering this place in 2020 was how long people turned away from the river, and for good reason: It was more environmental mess than community asset. The Industrial Revolution made the river a key transportation resource, but it also proved to be a convenient dumpster for companies that didn’t understand or envision — at least I hope this is the case — the damage they were doing for future generations.

But this summer is an apt time for looking at our region’s wealth of water resources through fresh eyes. As our nation increasingly faces a clean water crisis, there are heroes among us in Northeast Wisconsin. Jean Romback-Bartels and Beth Olson from the Wisconsin DNR are two I spoke with last month. Olson was celebrating Earth Month by mailing letters to river-dwellers like me announcing that the Lower Fox River PCB Cleanup is officially complete after two decades of intensive labor, removing about three football stadiums’ worth of polychlorinated biphenyls from the waterway. The DNR will continue to monitor the water, of course, but the preponderance of bald eagles, pelicans and walleye we see today in the Lower Fox speaks volumes.

Olson says many refer to the cleanup as the largest of its kind in the world, and the EPA considers it one of the most successful cleanups it has ever done. The project was a collaboration between the EPA and DNR; it was funded by the responsible paper companies and managed by The Boldt Company.

The project was a successful collaboration by these key players. But first and foremost, Romback-Bartels says, it happened because the community pushed for change.

“As far as who was really pushing to get this done initially, it really came down to the communities and the people they are serving,” she said, adding that the water supplies of major communities like Appleton, Green Bay and Oshkosh have been reliant on the Fox River.

So now that we can check one of the world’s greatest jobs-well-done off the to-do list, where do we go from here?

While no one is busy directly dumping chemicals into the river these days, Olson and Romback-Bartels say today’s biggest threats to the river come from land. Phosphorous runoff can lead to harmful blue-green algae.

In the 1960s and ’70s, Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” led to an environmental movement that led to the Clean Water Act and ultimately transformed the Fox River. Olson says she’s hopeful to “see that resurgence again.” Keep dirt on the land, she says, make sound purchasing decisions, regulate wastewater and remember the river at the ballot box.

“Water-poor states would love to be in our situation with our beautiful river systems and Great Lakes,” Romback-Bartels told me. “We have to keep them pushed to the front of our minds and hearts no matter what we’re up to. Every person has a role to play if you are working, living or recreating anywhere near the Fox.”