Eau Claire utility will pay $40M to clean Superfund site

NSP-Wisconsin, an Eau Claire-based utility, has agreed to pay about $40 million to clean up a Superfund site on Lake Superior, according to a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The cleanup program was agreed to by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and NSP, a subsidiary of Xcel Energy Inc.

The 40-acre site, located in Ashland on the shore of Lake Superior’s Chequamegon Bay, once was home to a manufactured gas plant. For more than a century, it was used for a variety of industrial purposes and now is contaminated with a variety of volatile organic compounds.

As part of the agreement, NSP will transfer 990 acres of land along the Iron River to the DNR, and 400 acres of land will be transferred to the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians.