APPLETON, WIS. — Jim Hahnenberg, project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup of PCBs in the Fox River, provides an update on the progress two years into the project in the second installment of Lawrence University’s four-part environmental studies lecture series “The Fox River Through Time.”
Hahnenberg presents the slide-illustrated address “Fox River PCB Cleanup” Thursday, Oct. 19 at 4:45 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102 on the Lawrence campus. The event is free and open to the public.
The Lower Fox River, among the most highly industrialized rivers in the world, is the focus of the largest environmental sediment cleanup project ever undertaken in North America, involving the removal of 8.6 million cubic yards of PCB contaminated sediments. The river was contaminated by the discharge of approximately 345 tons of PCBs — polychlorinated biphenyls — between 1954 and 1971 by local paper mills that were recycling carbonless copy paper.
Dredging operations on the first phase of the project — on Little Lake Butte des Morts — began in September, 2004. The EPA estimates this initial phase of the cleanup will take six years of dredging to remove and dispose of one million cubic yards of contaminated sediment. The cleanup of the entire 39-mile waterway is expected to take up to 20 years at a total cost of $715 million.
Hahnenberg joined the EPA Superfund program as a remedial project manager in 1989 after spending nine years as an oil exploration geologist. In addition to the Fox River cleanup, he has worked on sediment projects on the Manistique, Kalamazoo and Pine Rivers in Michigan.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University and a master’s degree in geology from Western Michigan University.
The “Fox River Through Time” environmental lecture series is sponsored by the Spoerl Lectureship in Science in Society. Established in 1999 by Milwaukee-Downer College graduate Barbara Gray Spoerl and her husband, Edward, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on the role of science and technology in societies worldwide.
