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Siewert and Burrows On CCW Group and Thomas St. “Toxic Material” Dumped in Holtz Krause (Audio)

 

 

 

Oliver Burrows of 1230 WXCO’s Hometown Morning interviewed Shereen Siewert, Editor of the Wausau Pilot & Review, on November 1, 2018. The full program can be found on WXCO’s website.

The interview addressed Siewert’s recent article: Toxic secrets: Pollution, evasion and fear in Wausau’s River Street neighborhood.

Burrows and Siewert also discussed the issue of the historical contributions of Thomas Street waste into the Holtz Krause landfill.

“I, without identifying the source, spoke about this when I was on the county board and we looked at Holtz Krause landfill. And we now know that some of the toxic material from Thomas Street went into that landfill,” Burrows stated.

“Yep, we have documents, too, that show that that is the case,” Siewert responded.

Burrows also mentioned that a person with whom he had served on the county board that had decades of pollution abatement experience told him that the WAULECO site on Thomas Street “should have been a Superfund.”

A November 11, 1986 Wausau Daily Herald article shows SNE Corp. (Wausau) on the DNR list of numerous companies it identified that contributed potentially hazardous waste to the Holtz Krause landfill.

In that article, Gary Kulibert of the DNR urges contributors of waste to the dump to “beat the EPA to punch,” as the Herald puts it, and to take advantage of a less-costly “state lead” program before the EPA would have the chance to step in and put the site on the Superfund’s national priority list.

Incidentally, Kulibert appears to have been heavily involved as a DNR employee with the former SNE site’s (now WAULECO) remediation activities in the 1980s when the department took a similar stance. Records show that the DNR had offered to advocate for a “state lead” if WAULECO signed a state consent order. Documents show that WAULECO did not want to be superfunded. It ultimately signed a state order; an order that WAULECO had the opportunity to review and provide input on for the final iteration.

wauleco no desire to be superfunded

Excerpt from May 15, 1991 correspondence from WAULECO to the DNR (highlight added) regarding the former SNE and former Crestline site on Thomas Street