Author Greg Neuschafer published The Lower Fox River Clean Up: An Electronic Resource Library with The Teaching Press in October 2023. Email the Teaching Press to buy your copies! 

Interviewers’ notes: This interview was conducted via e-mail by Abby Jurk and Autumn Johnson, in stages, from 2022-2023. 

Why embark on this project?

Let me begin with some converging parameters.

In “The Tempest” William Shakespeare wrote “what is past is prologue”. In geology, my chosen field of university study, a basic tenant is, the Uniformitarian Principle which describes that the same natural processes that operate today in our environment have operated in the past.

Author Greg Neuschafer speaks at the book launch, October 2023

Winston Churchill in a 1948 speech to the House of Commons paraphrased American philosopher George Santayana, who said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. During four decades of oceanography research for the US Navy I learned the need to chronicle scientific processes and progress in order for new discoveries to stand future scrutiny.

For a number of years, I have supported UWGB’s Professor Kevin Fermanich’s Lower Fox River Watershed Water Monitoring Program. In a meeting with him after his annual student conference in 2018, he showed me a video clip of the operation of the high-tech filter-cake PCB cleanup process. We discussed the enormity of the Fox River Restoration in terms of scale, funding resources and time. I rhetorically asked if someone was summarizing all the effort going into this project? Dr Fermanich said he believed UWGB’s Professor Emeritus Bud Harris who had been a personal consultant to the technical cleanup operations was assembling a memoir.

Thinking on this further, it seemed an effort should be undertaken by someone to collect as much of the original documents as possible to assist any future professional scientist or student activity in assessing the many facets of a multi-decade task. It was believed that the availability and location of documents was a time sensitive situation, i.e., every passing day would reduce the possibility of discovering and capturing publications. Perhaps this could even be useful to Dr Harris’ efforts.

Why did you feel that this work needed to be written?

If one should look up the word “serendipity” in a dictionary and read down into the etymology of the word, one could possibly find this project listed as an example. All parts of this project from the origins, to the data gathering process, to identifying the user/audience, to designing a multi-level pathway to distribute the information are an “occurrence and development of events and intersection of the optimum people by chance in a productive and beneficial way”.

I have a deep love and respect for the Fox-Wolf River System and its ancient and current cultures. I grew up on my 5th generation family farm on the upstream (Wolf River) reaches.

I attended UW Fox Valley in Menasha the first two years of my college experience less than two miles away and concurrently with the PCB problem discovery.

Greg Neuschafer unfolds a prototype page with Designer Sam Vondrum

What was the process of data compilation and packaging?

The initial a few dozen documents grew to almost 28,000 pages of content, necessitating the generation of a date/topic/author centric database. All documents were converted to pdf file format which enabled specific word, name or phrase search.

Now at a crossroads, it was recognized that while it would be convenient to announce the database to the public and declare the project complete, it would be an actual disservice if not an insult to the reader. This database would in fact become just another data source on some back shelf. No-one should have to be subjected to a mountain of information without some sort of a guide.

To accomplish this, a timeline representing the documents was established, encapsulating high order concept summaries, dates and author(s). This, too, became quite large at 280 pages. The timeline was thorough, logical but due to size, in effect unreadable. Recognizing that only world class novelists can hold a reader’s interest in a book of this length, a second-generation derivative timeline was generated.

Serendipity struck again as the second-generation timeline was being formed. The thought arose of conveying the database to the public via sharing with the staff and teachers of the Lower Fox River Watershed Monitoring Program and the UWGB Library. But wider distribution was sought by a visiting the UWGB official internet site in search of a university press looking for advice and options. It appeared that up to that time, the relatively new “Teaching Press” had published creative literature and historical books. This project would be going down more of a scientific or technical path, but the “Team” enthusiastically accepted the proposal.

The author with Press interns and the Press Director

A continuation of coincidences continued during one of the early planning meetings when the plan for archiving the actual database and appended timeline would migrate from multiple DVD storage and distribution, to much more compact, easier quicker random access USB Flash Drive, and eventually to online availability at the UWGB Library. All thanks for this evolutionary thought must go to Dr Rebecca Meacham and Ms. Kate Farley. Planning meetings further amplified this project’s utility when Dr. Meacham suggested and Ms. Farley demonstrated how the incorporation of QR codes could take the reader of the timeline book to near immediate access of raw data documents via the reader’s cell phone. The Teaching Press team provided excellent writing analysis and consistency suggestions as well as an expandable/foldable timeline format. They formed the timeline into a format that invites the reader to travel a 70-year journey from the development of a chemistry of convenience, to a suspected toxin, to environmental threat to cleanup and summary wildlife recovery.

 

About the Author

Captain Greg Neuschafer is a retired US Navy Oceanographer.  Over a 36-year career he made navigation charts in the Caribbean, mapped the gravity, magnetics, and bathymetry of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, led an endangered marine mammal census, built and field-tested ship superstructure ice gauges on an arctic expedition, installed the first GPS system on a Navy surface ship, used an aircraft borne 3-D doppler color radar to image hurricanes from the inside out and worked on robotics to take divers out of high-risk underwater operations. He is a Wisconsin native, having grown up on the family dairy farm in Fremont on the Wolf River. He has shared his love of the earth sciences, through his service as a science fair judge at 265 competitions over 40 years, plus taught the Boy Scout oceanography, geology, and environmental science merit badges, including at three National Jamborees.  He has mentored 11 Eagle Scouts. This book and the associated Fox River PCB Cleanup Library which resides within the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay library system are a small token of his appreciation to the University for the launch of a rewarding career. Email the Teaching Press to buy your copies!