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July 3, 2008
Celebrate
Milwaukee's Urban Wilderness!
July 6, 2008, 2-4pm: Urban
Ecology Center,
1500 E. Park Pl. Milwaukee
 Get
ready to experience the paradox of Urban Wilderness:
Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed, a new book by
Milwaukee photographer and FMR board member, Eddee Daniel.
Join FMR for a preview party on July 6 at Urban Ecology
Center,
1500 E. Park Pl., Milwaukee from 2-4pm.
Sponsored by FMR, Urban
Wilderness intertwines photography and storytelling to
promote an appreciation for clean water and natural
environments in our community. The book celebrates an
intriguing and unexpected reality: natural beauty in an
urban setting. Documenting the conditions within the
Milwaukee River watershed, it envisions the preservation and
restoration of natural areas along the region's rivers and
streams.
Urban Wilderness may be
preordered from Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers by contacting
Erin Hartman at 414-287-0207x 34. Profits from all books
ordered through Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers will return to
the organization.
 More
information
July 3, 2008
Clean-up standards to be set for Cedar Creek
The
WDNR is accepting comments on a TMDL for the clean-up of
PCBs in Cedar Creek and the Milwaukee River. So what is
a TMDL? A TMDL or “Total Maximum Daily Load” is
essentially the amount of a certain pollutant that an
individual stream, river, or lake can receive before
exceeding water quality standards set to protect that
water body. TMDLs essentially determine the amount of
pollutants that can enter a waterway and identify
solutions for cleaning up those waterways so they can
meet their full potential. This TMDL is being put forth
to set up clean-up standards for PCBs for Cedar Creek
(downstream of the duck pond) and for the Milwaukee
River from the confluence of Cedar Creek in Grafton to
the Thiensville Dam.
So
what are PCBs?? PCBs or polychlorinatede biphenyls were
widely used in manufacturing and banned in the 1977, as
they do not readily break down in the environment and
bioaccumulate in the tissues of fish and other animals.
Fish in Cedar Creek and the Thiensville-Grafton segment
of the Milwaukee River should NOT be eaten due to the
high PCBs in their tissues (about ¾ of fish tested in
the past have exceeded safe fish consumption values for
PCBs). PCBs in these streams are largely from the
now-closed Mercury Marine and Amcast Industrial
facilities, which discharged PCBs in the
past—contaminating water, sediments and soils in the
process. Most of the studied area for TMDLs is within
the Federal Superfund Site for Cedar Creek. This TMDL
plan will set clean-up limits for contaminated sediment
that are needed to clean-up the water and enable us to
be able to eat the fish again some day. These limits, if
approved by EPA, will also guide the clean-up standards
for the future Superfund cleanup of these sites.
FMR
will be commenting on this TMDL and comments should be
posted next week on our website. The WDNR is taking
comments through Monday, July 7th.
Comments can be mailed to the WDNR: Valerie Villeneuve,
DNR WT/2, 101 S. Webster St., Madison WI 53707 or
emailed to
Valerie.Villeneuve@wisconsin.gov.
More
information on the TMDL
PCB information
More
PCB information
FMR's
comments [PDF]
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