Two state legislators announced Thursday their intent to introduce a bill into legislation that would require insurance companies to help pay for the cleaning of the Fox River, which runs through Green Bay and Appleton.

The bill, known as the “Fair Claims Act,” is co-sponsored by Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, and Sen. Robert Cowles, R-Green Bay, and would work to quicken the cleanup process of the river.

The environmental issues surrounding the Fox River stem from the recycling efforts of the paper mills that led the Fox River to become contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

Once paper mills realized there was a problem, they stopped using contaminated inks.

“This whole thing is an adverse result of good intensions — recycling,” Cowles said. “[The paper mills] didn’t know until much later that the recycling involved dangerous PCB contaminated inks.”

Cowles said the Fox River clean up is the biggest PCB reduction effort in the nation, and their proposed legislation will protect jobs and the environment.

“[The bill] would require the insurance companies to pay up to the amount of their policy,” Cowles said. “Then the money could be used to pay the contractors to start cleaning up the river.”

Currently, paper companies are required to pay for the cleanup under a federal order and have invested $130 million in clean-up costs. Negotiations between the paper makers and insurance industries have stalled over liability issues. According to Cowles, the paper companies have $2.5 billion in paid-up liability insurance policies.

“The estimated cost of this whole [cleanup] is around $600 million,” Cowles said.

The financial stress of paying for the entire cleanup could be detrimental to the paper industry in the area, both Cowles and Kaufert said, adding responsibility of the insurance companies therefore must be clarified.

Cowles also said a previous court decision establishing insurance companies’ obligation to pay for environmental cleanup has set the precedent for insurance money to be used for similar actions.

However, insurance companies believe the bill is unfair and the court system, instead of the state legislature, should settle the dispute.

“Calling it a ‘Fair Claims Act’ doesn’t make it one,” said Eric Englund, president of the Wisconsin Insurance Alliance. “In fact it’s one of the most ludicrous and silly bills I’ve ever seen introduced before the Wisconsin legislature.”

Englund said the paper companies are trying to convince legislators to change their insurance contracts so the companies will not have to pay for the rest of the cleanup.

If the bill passes, insurance companies will negotiate among themselves what they each owe for liability payments.

“To the people who live along the river, the beginning of this cleanup process is viewed as long-overdue progress on an environmental and public health problem that has eluded a solution for 30 years,” Kaufert said.

Cowles and Kaufert will look for authors for the bill over the next few weeks to attempt to pass it in the State Senate and the State Assembly.