[CPEO-BIF] "Recession worsens brownfields backlog in Wisconsin"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Recession worsens brownfields backlog in Wisconsin
Long after a red icicle's discovery, industrial pollution haunts a  
Lake Michigan neighborhood

by Kate Golden, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Wisconsin Watch
September 23, 2012

OAK CREEK - Sarah Preciado, a lifelong resident of the Carrollville  
neighborhood, remembers how it was once a bustling place. Her great- 
grandfather was the first Mexican worker at the glue factory that was  
across Fifth Avenue. Her grandfather, who planted the pear and peach  
trees at her house, worked there too.

But the glue factory is long gone, along with a chemical plant,  
aluminum smelter and other factories from the past century. Now  
dilapidated buildings in overgrown lots sprawl across 260 acres,  
where the soil and groundwater are polluted with arsenic, chromium,  
lead and other chemicals, and some fences gape from vandals’ gashes.

Preciado said the abandoned properties have blighted her neighborhood.

...

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources estimates there are  
10,000 brownfields in Wisconsin, with a disproportionate number in  
poor and rural neighborhoods - the places least likely to have the  
resources to clean them up.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2012/09/23/recession-worsens- 
brownfields-backlog-in-wisconsin/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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