WisWatch Blog
Partial settlement for Ashland’s toxic coal tar site
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The federal government and state have negotiated a proposed cleanup settlement for part of Ashland’s waterfront that has been contaminated with coal tar for more than a century.
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The federal government and state have negotiated a proposed cleanup settlement for part of Ashland’s waterfront that has been contaminated with coal tar for more than a century.
Whoever is deemed responsible for the century-old toxic waste in Ashland, community residents — and others in Wisconsin — will pay for millions in cleanup costs.
Millions of gallons of contaminated groundwater and thousands of gallons of gooey black coal tar lie underneath Ashland’s downtown waterfront. It is by far the thorniest cleanup of an old manufactured gas plant in Wisconsin — both because of the difficulty in cleaning it up, and in finding someone to pay for it.