Kimberly Schmalz of Menasha is the photographer behind a Facebook video that's getting a lot of attention.
"A lot of anger, a lot of anger where is this, you know we're going to go down to that building ourselves," said Schmalz.
Schmalz says she took two videos, one last week and one this past Friday. She claims to see Kaukauna Utilities workers dumping what she says is garbage into the Fox River.
"There was pieces of paper and plastic bottles and things like that, that were going into the water and I just kind of wait what are they doing," said Schmalz.
Kimberly tells NBC26 she was on the fourth floor of the apartment building next door to the utility plant when she took those videos of the workers.
Kaukauna Utilities general manager, Jeff Feldt says his employees are just doing their jobs.
"Basically in those videos you're seeing our employees are raking the trash racks that keep debris out of our hydro plants," said Feldt.
Feldt says that debris can range from plastic bags and bottles to paper and even organic material like seaweed, sea foam and dead fish.
"What happens is as these trash racks accumulate debris and some garbage, it shuts down and reduces our generation," said Feldt.
When we showed Feldt the video on Facebook he admitted at times things may be missed, but he says no one at the hydro-plant is intentionally dumping garbage into the river.
"Obviously sometimes you can get some pretty big piles and you may miss a can or a bottle here and there, but it does go back to the river and it floats out," said Feldt.
For Kimberly however she says missing things in her eyes is carelessness.
"I don't care what the explanation is, if you see garbage coming up out of there and you're pulling it up out of there, I mean what's it going to take, an extra five minutes to take all the garbage out from the front and the back," said Schmalz.
NBC26 did reach out to the Department of Natural Resources who released a statement saying they're looking into the claims made in the video.
