State Representative Ryan Spaude posted photos from a hard-hat tour this month as crews work to move Green Bay’s downtown coal piles.
“Work is underway to move the coal piles out of downtown Green Bay,” the freshman Democrat from Ashwaubenon wrote on Facebook. He said he toured the old Pulliam Power Plant site, now being turned into a modern shipping port, and thanked the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association for organizing the trip with other area legislators.
The post put Rep. Spaude next to a project city leaders have chased for generations. The roll call on the money is less flattering.
This project is happening in large part because the Assembly passed 2025 Senate Bill 45, or the official state budget, which passed 59-39, with one member not voting.
Spaude voted no.
That budget included $20 million for the Port of Green Bay expansion tied to the coal pile relocation. That $20 million is a part of nearly $41 million in state support for the project over seven years.
The C. Reiss piles sit along the Fox River near W. Mason Street. The company has run a bulk commodities yard on that waterfront since 1900. Coal storage on the river dates to the late 1800s, when ships and rail cars moved fuel through an industrial river city.
For decades, residents complained that dust blew off the mounds into nearby neighborhoods. Officials came to see the black piles as more than a working terminal. They occupied about 35 acres of prime downtown riverfront as the rest of the waterfront started to change.
Green Bay mayors have pushed for a new site since at least the late 1950s. Mayor Eric Genrich has said city leaders have worked on the move for upwards of 75 years. The piles became a local landmark anyway. A decades-old “Ski Green Bay” photo of a skier charging down a coal slope still turns up in downtown art.
An Evers’ July 9 release called the piles a barrier to neighborhood revitalization and a hazard to the environment and public health. Relocating them, the governor’s office said, would improve air and water quality and open the Mason Street site to mixed-use development.
The mechanics are a swap. Brown County signed a 60-year lease with C. Reiss for the northern portion of the former Wisconsin Public Service Pulliam plant. C. Reiss will move salt from Fox River Terminals to Pulliam. New coal shipments will go to Fox River Terminals. The downtown piles will draw down over time.
Evers’ office listed a $500,000 Idle Sites grant in 2021, $15 million from the Neighborhood Investment Fund in 2022, $5.4 million in Harbor Assistance grants, and the $20 million in the 2025-27 budget as the make up of this investment.
Despite this, Rep. Spaude did not vote for that budget, but later toured the construction it helped pay for and posted the pictures.
Moving the piles clears a long-standing obstacle on Green Bay’s riverfront and expands the port at the mouth of the Fox River. Unfortunate to see the representative now showcasing the work he directly voted against, but portraying it as if he put that money in the state budget.
