Wausau Paper

About Wausau Paper Brokaw MILL Brokaw Wisconsin

A Century of Industrial Operation in Central Wisconsin

The Brokaw Mill was established in the late nineteenth century along the Wisconsin River in the village of Brokaw, Marathon County. It became closely associated with Wausau Paper, one of Wisconsin’s most prominent paper manufacturers and a cornerstone employer of the state’s north-central industrial economy. For most of the twentieth century, the mill operated continuously as a major pulp and paper production facility, employing hundreds of workers from surrounding communities including Wausau, Mosinee, Rothschild, and Schofield.

The Brokaw Mill was part of a broader Wisconsin industrial landscape that included large manufacturing employers across the state — from the Milwaukee-area plants of Allen-Bradley, Allis-Chalmers in West Allis, Falk Corporation in Milwaukee, and A.O. Smith in Milwaukee, to the paper mills, foundries, and power generation facilities of central and northern Wisconsin. Like those facilities, the Brokaw Mill reportedly relied heavily on asbestos-containing materials during the peak decades of industrial asbestos use.

Wausau Paper closed the Brokaw Mill in 2012, ending over a century of paper production at the site. For former employees and their families, a separate and more immediate problem has since emerged: decades of alleged occupational asbestos exposure now manifesting as life-threatening disease. If you worked at this mill and have since received a diagnosis, Wisconsin’s three-year statute of limitations under Wis. Stat. § 893.54 means the clock is already ticking — and it will not stop.

Why Paper Mills Required Asbestos Insulation and Created Asbestos Exposure Risk

Paper mills are thermal processing facilities. Like every large-scale paper mill and industrial manufacturing facility of its era — including the heavy manufacturing plants throughout Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, and the Fox Valley — the Brokaw Mill required enormous quantities of steam energy to drive production:

• Pulp digesters cook wood chips under extreme heat and pressure to separate cellulose fibers
• Paper machines use steam-heated dryer sections to pull moisture from the paper web
• Boilers generate high-pressure steam distributed through miles of insulated pipe
• Recovery boilers burn spent pulping chemicals to recover energy

From the 1920s through the late 1970s, asbestos-containing materials were the industry standard for insulating these systems throughout Wisconsin industry. Manufacturers including, ceiling tile, and promoted asbestos as fireproof, durable, and cost-effective — while internal documents later revealed in litigation showed they knew of the health hazards decades before they placed warnings on products or disclosed the risks publicly. Wisconsin workers at facilities across the state — from the shipyards of Sturgeon Bay to the paper mills of the Wisconsin River Valley — were among those placed at risk by this concealment. The companies that profited from this concealment have since established asbestos bankruptcy trust funds containing billions of dollars — funds available to qualifying victims now through a Wisconsin mesothelioma lawyer, but shrinking with every passing month as claims are paid out.