MILWAUKEE - A You Paid For It follow-up: the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewer District takes major steps to keep dangerous PCBs from contaminating its cash cow -- again.

Last summer, MMSD found high levels of PCBs in the fertilizer it makes. It took more than a year to track down where they came from. Since then, the district has found two other PCB hot spots --big ones-- right in the middle of town.

When a load of dangerous, PCB-tainted Milorganite wound up on city school ball fields, the sewer district had to act fast.

"PCBs are persistent, they're toxic," said MMSD lawyer Tom Crawford.

Between the cleanup and lost Milorganite sales, the whole mess cost MMSD more than $4.5 million.

"They are absolutely taxpayer dollars and user charges that get collected from everybody else who uses the system," explained Crawford.

District officials say crews cleaning a north side sewer line likely kicked up embedded PCBs, which then washed downstream into the Milorganite plant. Now, MMSD requires testing before any sewer cleaning. So far, the new precautions exposed two other hot spots.

The first is centered around 35th St. and Lincoln Ave. on Milwaukee's south side, where PCBs from industrial plants and holding tanks built up in hardened sewer-line sludge for decades. When the testers got in there, red flags went right up.

"It was the nature of the material," said Peter Topczewski, MMSD Water Quality Protection Manager. "It was very oily, almost a tar-like substance."

The PCBs in that tar aren't leaking, yet, but Topczewski said cleaning crews can just wash it downstream.

On the north side, MMSD is keeping a close eye on another hot spot near 31st St. and Cameron Ave., another long-time industrial, PCB-rich area. The level of PCBs testers found encased in the crud on area sewer walls is well over what the Feds consider toxic.

The City of Milwaukee, not the sewer district, owns that line. Still, the MMSD folks are watching it, because the sewer feeds their system.

"Eventually, we are going to have to go out and clean this up," Topczewski said.

But MMSD already knows cleaning up PCBs isn't easy or cheap.

"The important thing is that a plan is put in place, first of all, so that we do this right," said Topczewski.

Milwaukee's Department of Public Works is responsible for submitting that plan to the sewer district and the EPA before cleaning can start. A DPW spokesperson said the department hopes to have it drawn up in about a month.