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Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the
people of a lion to energy who bring safe, reliable
and environmentally friendly energy to keep homes,
neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliant Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
Coming up in Wisconsin, it's a tale of two cities
and the different reactions to local ethanol plants.
A new Auburn author examines life north of Highway 64, and
a Madison woman finds relief from a rare disability through
a high tech device that's being developed here in Wisconsin.
Happy Holidays and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lo.
We're joining forces tonight with our colleagues from
here and now to bring you a special combination
edition of our programs.
Not only do we have the stories about the people, places,
and issues in our state, we'll also hear from new
Auburn based author Michael Perry throughout the program.
But first, we begin with an issue that has some communities
divided. The production of the gas additive, ethanol.
The Federal Energy Bill scheduled for vote next month
in the U.S.
Senate could double the country's ethanol
production in eight years.
Corn is the main ingredient for most ethanol produced
in the U.S.
so more ethanol production would appear to be
a boon to state corn farmers.
But ethanol plants also have a reputation for causing
environmental problems.
In part two of his series, reporter Art Hackett asks
the question, can an ethanol plant be a good neighbor?
Badger state ethanol in Monroe began operation in the fall of
2002. It's the show place for Wisconsin's ethanol industry.
The same day we were there, a group of FFA students
was there for a tour.
This is the ethanol loadout area right here and this
is where the semis come in.
The plant takes in about 15 million bushels of corn
each year.
It permits the corn to produce about 40
million gallons of ethanol.
When we get done with the second column, we've basically got
190 proof alcohol.
That would be similar to ever clear for it.
Ethanol is added to gasoline.
Environmental regulations require it in some cities
that sometimes of the year in order to reduce air pollution.
Ethanol is also touted as a domestic alternative
to imported oil.
Ethanol plants also market the byproducts of
distillation, the mesh.
We're selling this to local dairy producers because
of its high energy value.
Pound for pound, this has more energy in it than a pound of
corn on a dry matter basis.
The mesh has a smell similar to that emanating from another
plant, which has been fermenting grain in Monroe since 1845.
Ethanol is, after all, green alcohol.
The mesh can only be marketed within a limited radius of
the plant because it was spoiled during transportation.
Badger runs the mesh, they can't sell wet through these
dryers. What comes out is called dried distillers grain.
It can be shipped anywhere.
This is the product that's left over and basically this has
all the protein, the fat and the fiber, the minerals and the
vitamins that would normally be contained in the corn.
The creamer says the drying process has its own aroma.
It's what people are talking about when they complain about
the way Ethanol plants smell.
It's a very strong, pungent, burnt grain smell.
When the wind is just right and we do get that no smoke
coming over our plant, there is a very slight odor.
It's not objectionable.
Well, it doesn't cause your nose to
tingle or anything like that.
Monroe Mayor Bill Ross works at a factory that's frequently
downwind from the Ethanol plant.
There have been only a handful of complaints about Badger State
Ethanol. Badger State passed the DNR's emissions tests.
Badger State's president Gary Kramer says the reason
his plant doesn't stink is a piece of equipment
called a thermal oxidizer.
It's like an afterburner attached to the dryers and
other parts of the plant which give off emissions.
All of your volatile organic chemicals, your particulate
matter, for maldehyde, acetic acid, carbon monoxide,
doing extent, all of those things are destroyed.
If you ran without this, how would things smell
different? There would be a tremendous odor.
Yeah, there's no doubt about it.
So far, city officials are happy with the results of the plant.
I think the community recognized that there would be a positive
economic value to having an ethanol plant here as relates
to jobs and other things.
But 15 miles south of Monroe across the Illinois
border, local officials are less than happy with
the smell from the ethanol plant in their community.
How would you describe it?
Offensive. Ryan Stockton is the former village board
member in Lena, Illinois.
I can't really quite relate it to anything.
I know several months ago, probably
three to four months ago.
It actually had a rotten eggs smell to it.
The Lena plant is operated by Edkins energy.
It began operation about the same
time as the plant in Monroe.
But documents obtained from the Illinois Environmental
Protection Agency charge Edkins with improperly operating and
testing the plant, creating air pollution, and failing to have
necessary construction permits.
In March of 2003, the Illinois EPA served, notice it would
pursue legal action against Edkins.
Negotiations are now underway to settle a matter
through a consent decree.
There was a change in the way that the emissions
were calculated that swept across the industry.
Scott Trenum is chairman of the board of Edkins Energy.
He says the company was hit by tougher
regulations and mechanical problems with a drying unit.
The dry are called on fire several times.
Certainly during those times there
would have been a burnt smell of caramelization.
It's apparent that some of the parts of the dry times weren't
working as originally intended.
The complaints against Edkins led to a local citizens group,
neighbors for good neighbors, filing a civil suit against
the company in federal court.
Close to the plant, it's that yeasty smell, that
the fermenting smell from the fermenters that is
like a brewery type smell.
But if you get further out, that's when you get the burning
smell that burns your eyes and your nose and things.
Denny Drake operates a campground just
west of the plant.
I describe it as burnt nuts only with a very
heavy sweet overlay.
Shortly after we recorded that interview in March of 2003,
Edkins shut down the dryer.
As a result, the company has been losing money because it
can't produce dry grain for sale outside the local area.
Since the dryer has been shut down in March, I
have not noticed any smell at all where I live.
One month later, the Illinois EPA held a public hearing on
a permit, which would allow Edkins to install a new
dryer and a thermal oxidizer similar to the one at Monroe.
Plans for getting its dryer up and running again will
include installing the best emission control technology
available to the industry today.
Now that's what they told me and I trust them, I believe them.
Some people would ask, why didn't you install
this in the first place?
When the Edkins concept originated back in '95, this
problem simply didn't seem to exist in the industry.
Most of the plants were smaller at the time.
I'm not aware of a plant that was using this type of
device back in those years.
Some leaner residents at the hearing weren't
bothered by the odors.
Frankly, we're getting fed up with a few people most who
have moved here in recent years who come here and try
to make over this rural area to their own satisfaction.
I own the businesses that are probably the closest that are
approximately a third of a mile away from the property.
Probably served about 100,000 people a year.
I have to state that I have never had anybody enter my
restaurant that has ever had a problem with the odor.
We want our fresh air and we are entitled to it.
Is that possible?
I simply don't know.
The plants that I've been familiar with in the past
have certainly had the fermentation yeasty bakery
odor that one gentleman in the crowd referred to tonight.
What the range of it will be when all the equipment
is in place.
I simply don't know it at this time.
It will take the Illinois EPA about two months to make a
decision on Edkins permits.
If the permits are approved, it will then take four to
six months to put the new equipment into operation.
You can find more information on ethanol production by checking
out our website.
The address is www.org-slash-in-wisconsin.
If you missed part one of our Hackets Ethanol
series, you can also view that story on our website.
Now on a much lighter note, the first of three
musings by here and now commentator Michael Perry.
There's always a lot of dispute over where to find the dividing
line between the southern part of the state and up north.
New Auburn based author Mike Perry casts his vote for
Highway 64, which runs roughly from O'Clayer to Marinette.
He says that for folks who live up north, it's
easy to tell when someone isn't from around there.
How you doing?
We're in the midst of kind of a back to the land moving up
here in north of 64 and this time it's not just hippies.
Well, we do get some hippies here on their second goal
around. This time they've got retirement plans.
If you come up here to live or even just to visit,
at some point somebody's going to look you over and
then they're going to say, "You're not from
around here, are you?"
Did you ever wonder how we know?
Perhaps you used your turn signal on Main Street.
No need.
Could be you keep calling the town hall to see how long it'll
be before the snowplow comes by.
Or maybe somebody asked you how Boober Olsen's corn
was doing and you said, "Yeah, I haven't noticed."
You don't know Susie Johnson.
You want to run off with the pastor?
You can't back up your boat trickle.
You passed a low to hay on a double yellow.
Slow down.
That's why you moved up here.
The number one dead giveaway that you're not from
around here, you have to keep moving at the cows.
Please, don't move at the cows.
I don't know why they moved the cows.
They don't bark at the dogs.
They don't squeak at the mosh grats.
They don't uftah at the Norwegians.
[Music]
We'll hear more from Michael Perry later in the program.
But now, imagine feeling as though the floor was constantly
shifting under your feet.
That's what life is like for a woman
who is a self-described bobbler.
Cheryl Schultz's sense of balance was destroyed
more than five years ago after taking an antibiotic.
But as Jerry Huffman reports, the rare condition hasn't
heard her sense of humor, especially now that a team of
Middleton scientists has come up with an invention that takes
the wobbly out of her world.
Life isn't easy for Cheryl Schultz.
Cheryl's so-called normal world
is a constant struggle.
One marked by how difficult even everyday tasks
like walking can be.
Floating, tumbling, spinning around.
But it's not a spinning, like I feel like
I'm going there's times like I get out of a vehicle.
I swear that that vehicle is moving and it's not.
And I'm not moving.
It's almost like just being sucked out
into outer space.
That's what it feels like all the time.
Hey! Good.
Did you hear about the sport group we're starting?
Cheryl Schultz's difficulty started five years ago.
She was given an antibiotic for
a post-operative infection.
That drug destroyed the microscopic cells in her inner
ear that made it possible to keep her balance.
Now, normal for this former
sales rep means a constant battle to stay upright.
It's as long as I stay still, I'm fine.
But if I go like this, then you go like this.
What happens if I go like this?
If you do that, then it makes me feel, then you
start blurring and it makes me feel out of balance
and I'm going to hold on.
Schultz's visual world is constantly shifting, exacerbated
by everything from floor patterns to light reflections.
As a self-professed wobbler, Schultz navigates the hallways
of a local technical school, armed with a king and a
self-deprecating sense of humor.
The hecky-ming is a real hoot.
Doing laundry, anything, anything that you do in a
normal life, taking a shower.
In my garage, many times I feel like I'm just going to fall
right out and I have fallen.
I'm wobbly.
I'm a wobbler.
Exactly. That's an affectionate name
that we have within our support group that I'm
involved in.
That's what it's called as wobbler synonymous
because we do wobble.
And then one day Schultz's life took a turn from one
of constant frustration to one that offered a
tantalizing glimpse of freedom.
To me, it looks like the yellow brick road.
Schultz's yellow brick road is a hard
hat with a miniature sensor, an electrode strip that
goes into her mouth and a computer.
The computer, through the electrode,
sends tiny electrical impulses to her tongue when she wobbles.
Think of those impulses as messages, messages that used
to come from her inner ear.
Now it's her tongue telling Schurl's brain
when she's in balance.
When she's got the red box in the middle of that gray box, her
posture is perfectly upright.
She's in her normal position.
And she feels normal.
That's what she says.
And also the system is giving her that feedback.
She feels that on her tongue.
"Sharif, can you hear me?
Give me a thumbs up on how you're feeling."
I'm astonished.
At a startup company called Wicab, Cheryl, and a
handful of other wobblers, spend anywhere from a
few seconds to several minutes using the TDU,
or Tongue Display Unit.
A prototype developed by Tyler and a group of
researchers. Yuri Danilowf is a neuroscientist on the project.
"It looks now that we awaken some hidden mechanisms
that we didn't expect to exist in the human body.
Because how she, I don't know, really.
I was a skeptical person, but I have
to use the word "wonder".
Yes. "wonder, I hate this word, but I have to use it.
We don't know what's happening."
Remember this image of Cheryl.
This footage was shot just before a
recent test with the TDU.
Now watch what happens after only 20 minutes with the TDU.
"You can do it as a few seconds."
Cheryl's world is normal again.
No more wobbles, no more feeling of floating in space.
The woman who just 20 minutes ago needed help
standing is now jumping rope.
And if that doesn't make you feel like dancing, nothing will.
Tyler and Danilowf had hoped Cheryl and the others would
get some relief from the constant feeling of tumbling.
But what stunned them was the fact that all of the
test subjects, Cheryl's results being the best so far,
have gone from a world of near total dependence
back to independence.
No big deal, right?
I feel like a little kid that's just discovered
Christmas for the first time.
It's just the best ever.
It's the best thing that could ever ever happen.
It's just light and happy and bright
and free of constant struggle.
"I'm like being able to say hello to myself again."
Because now walking through a store is fun again.
And riding an escalator would have been disorienting,
but not after using the TDU.
"Amazing, I cannot believe this.
If she's always had a belly hab around
looking out at the ground.
I can't believe it.
I am in absolute awe.
I cannot believe this."
The best thing is I can walk and I can turn my head from
side to side without feeling that I'm going to fall over.
"So colors are more vibrant.
People passing doesn't bother you."
"No, it's amazing.
It is just amazing.
That would have made me shift and
want to fall to the floor."
For about two hours, Cheryl lives almost symptom-free.
But then it happens.
Whatever pathways are opened by
the electrical impulses start to close again.
The researchers aren't sure what hidden resources are awakened
when Cheryl uses the TDU.
And an even bigger mystery is why the pathways
always close down again.
I can tell it.
And that just...
No. It's just...
It's chasing me big time.
It's right behind me.
I can feel it quite intensely.
I can tell just like the background noise here.
It's really difficult for me to carry on our conversation.
Wow. Yeah, I can feel it coming back.
Tyler Mandantiloff has already come further than they expected
by creating a system that gives shilts and countless
others even a temporary glimpse of their old life.
But the final steps may be the toughest.
Shrinking a desktop TDU to the size of a
dental retainer is feasible but financially challenging.
And then there will be even more government testing.
A final act in one woman's struggle to make her
world a little less wobbly.
Oh, God.
That's so wonderful.
WeCob, the Middleton High Tech Company, received
funding a few months ago from the National Institutes of
Health to continue research and development on the TDU.
Company researchers are currently working on the
dental retainer-sized version of the device.
We head north to New Auburn again now to the
home of here and now commentator Michael Perry.
As anyone who follows football knows, sometimes in the end it
all comes down to a fuel goal.
In this visit with Perry, he extolls the art of kicking
one through the uprights.
How you doing?
Well, it's another beautiful summer
morning up here in North of '64 and I'm headed down to
the local football field to kick a few field goals.
I got started kicking field goals because I was sitting
around the house one night thinking, you know, what
if I am the Michael Jordan of field goal kickers and
I just never realized it?
And there's really only one way to find out so I got my ball
and my tee and I headed down to the New Auburn football field.
I started taking field goal practice.
I'll tell you what drives me nuts.
It's one of them rich little NFL kickers got a
20-yard ship shot to win the game and he shanks at
wide-right. How hard can it be?
Come on!
So it's all in knowing how is it?
Well, watch this.
Yeah, something's wrong, all right.
Well, eventually it became evident that I was perhaps
not an undiscovered phenom just undiscovered.
So I turned to this book written by this man, the young
Stenarude, the Hall of Fame NFL kicker.
He's called the art of soccer style kicking.
This is Jan, this is the master, the Norwegian master,
and he wants you to be able to kick like he can kick.
Jan says that stretching exercises are important and he's
provided some diagrams to guide you through your stretching.
I'm going to be trying the laying thigh stretch.
Yeah, I think that's just about enough stretching for today.
You know, if the NFL ever does call, and they might,
because I've been out here practicing and of course I've
got the book, I'm ready to go.
But I'm not going to be one of those kickers that wears the
little girly one bar face mask.
I want a big honking face mask like the one I wore when I
played center for the new Auburn Trojans on this very field.
I anchored the line at 165 pounds and I struck fear into
the heart of the water boy.
Man, just once I'd like to hear somebody say,
"Perry split the uprights!"
"Stand a better chance of splitting my pants"
the lay him going.
I need some new cleats.
Story pair of cleats may make a big difference.
Okay, so football season also signals the start of winter.
Not everyone dislikes the icy conditions.
But if you do, Perry says it's important to properly
complain about the bad weather.
From a Chippewa County highway, here's Mike Perry explaining
the difference between winter time, whining and grousing.
How you doing?
Oh, it's been cold up here in Arthur 64.
It's cold and brown.
Cold and brown is a whole different deal than cold
and white.
Cold and brown makes a guy want a grouse.
Grouse seems like it's like whining only with
coffee and donuts.
You can hang out and grouse.
The hand is cold.
It's a cold by you.
Caution. The expert grouse never plays the first card.
It's a high stakes game and he who goes first gets trumped.
So is it cold by you?
Oh yeah, it's 22 degrees below.
We out was 24 below up by us.
Of course that was on the milk cost reminder.
Not always reads about 3 degrees high.
Yeah, frozen winter spreader up, broke the worm gear.
And what you figure a little chunk of steel
like that had run you.
The tangible evidence of tragedy.
127 bucks.
Ooh, out groused.
Well, that's farming.
Outmardered. Grousing martyrdom.
A favorite Wisconsin winter pastime.
Playin' now at a cafe near you.
These boots are too big.
Way too big.
And what I was thinkin' there in a farm fleet.
That's our show for tonight.
Here and now we'll be back at this time next week.
And we'll see you again in our regular time
slot Thursdays at 7.
Thanks to here and now for letting us borrow, commentator
Michael Perry for a night.
And thanks to you for joining us.
We'll see you in the new year.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
Happy holidays and good night.
[Music]
Major funding for in Wisconsin is provided by
the people of Alliant Energy who bring safe, reliable and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods,
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliant Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
[Music]