[Music]
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of
a Lyon energy who bring safe, reliable, and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes,
neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin
running smoothly, a Lyon energy, offering energy-saving ideas
on the web.
[Music]
Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Each week we bring you stories about the people,
places, and issues that are part of life in our state.
Tonight, Art Hackett reports on groundwater contamination in
Kewati County.
Some say the pollution can be traced to
large dairy farms, but operators of those farms say they're
abiding by their state-issued permits.
We'll also show you how some young Madison residents are
reaching out to those in need.
In the last half of the world away.
But first, Wisconsin is taking part
in what's being called the next revolution in the
care of stroke victims.
UW doctors are testing a promising new drug
in a nationwide study.
And reporter Frederica Freiberg says the
concept for the treatment was inspired by
a strange source.
This is potentially huge.
I mean, just absolutely potentially a huge breakthrough.
It's the biggest breakthrough ever in stroke treatment.
And it's helping patients at the University of
Wisconsin Hospital.
One of 17 US hospitals taking part in a study of
a new drug derived from an unusual source.
I guess I have a new appreciation for bats.
The new blood clot busting drug is derived from
the spit of vampire bats.
It's actually a genetically engineered version of a
clot dissolving protein in the wild.
When the vampire bats bites its prey,
it secretes the protein so blood will keep flowing,
allowing the bat to feed.
In the hospital, the man-made version of the
bats alive a protein called "Dismota Place" appears
to be working miracles.
I'm willing to take any miracle I can get.
I don't care where it came from.
Diana Randolph can't be sure her husband George was given
"Dismota Place" because the drug trial he was part of
is called "Double Blind."
Even doctors don't know whether he was given a
placebo or the real thing.
But given the results, the Randolph's are sure he got it.
The way the doctors say I would make it through the night
they had to give it to me.
That's my belief.
Randolph's suffered a stroke in September.
A med flight helicopter rushed him from Baloid to
the UW Hospital in Madison.
But by the time he arrived it had been nearly nine hours
since his first stroke symptoms.
The standard cloth-busting drug currently used must be
given within three hours.
Doctors say they had few good options.
Unless Randolph could take part in the new drug study.
By any standards, the stroke that he appeared
to be having was going to be a very large stroke.
Could it have killed him?
It could have.
After brain scans confirmed he was a candidate for the trial,
George Randolph was given something, intervenously.
UW Neurologist Dr.
George Newman is a primary
investigator on the drug study.
If the artery had not opened, and all of the parts of
his brain at risk for stroke had had stroke,
we would have expected him to be basically bedridden.
But the artery did open.
In the hospital records Randolph's own doctor notes
the recovery as "Amazing, Dramatic, Spectacular."
When Diana Randolph left her husband in the hands
of the so-called "stroke team" at the UW Hospital,
he was in terrible shape.
The next morning he was back in action.
I truly did not expect to walk in there and carry on
a conversation with George.
I was so amazed.
I was so grateful.
Yeah. George Randolph is the father
of five, grandfather to seven.
Except for a little numbness in his left hand, he says he's
back to playing with the kids, taking walks and looking
forward to going fishing.
He's one of six stroke patients enrolled so far in the Desmota
Place trial at UW Hospital.
Based on their recoveries, it's believed four of the
six trial participants have gotten the new drug.
Lana Johnson is one of those patients.
How do you feel?
Well, I feel real lucky.
Dr. Newman shows Lana Johnson's brain scans before.
All right, you see this blood vessel over here?
It's missing on this side.
There's a blockage in this blood vessel.
And after.
After the medication, the artery that was
missing is now back again.
So the blockage has been completely removed so
the clot has disappeared.
This lady was completely paralyzed and unable
to, she was confused.
She was unable to understand what we were saying.
She was unable to cooperate.
She was unable to say anything useful to us at all.
So this is again, this is a potentially devastating stroke.
This is the type of stroke which have completed, really
practically has no rehab.
I'm happy and I will be happier if I am home soon.
Dr. Say Lana Johnson will go home soon, rehabilitated
after what could have been a permanently
debilitating stroke.
We have seen numerous patients now with problems related
to stroke that have been present for seven, eight
hours, do exceptionally well.
In some cases, just simply walk out of the hospital, literally
walk out of the hospital.
Newman says only 4% of patients get to the hospital
within the first three hours after their stroke.
After that, the currently available clot-busting
drug cannot be used.
But he says nearly 50% or half of all stroke victims make it
to the ER within nine hours.
The drug does motor plays now under study at the UW and
elsewhere, can be given up to nine hours after a stroke.
That's a lot more people who could potentially
reap what appear to be its extraordinary benefits.
So to be able to expand the window from three
hours to nine hours is huge, is absolutely huge.
That nine hour window certainly expanded the
Randolph's hope for the future.
Thanks for the drug.
Doctors involved in the trial believe the drug will
be approved, but that's one to two years off,
making patients like George Randolph all the more
grateful he was able to get in on an experiment he's
convinced saved his life.
Thank you.
Strokes are the third leading cause of death
and disability in the US.
Doctors say the most important thing in treatment is to
get to the hospital quickly.
Warning signs of stroke include sudden onset of numbness or
weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side.
Confusion, trouble speaking, sudden trouble
walking or dizziness or sudden severe headache.
With the onset of any of these symptoms, even if they seem
minor, the motto is don't stall, make the call to 911.
Our next story takes us to Kiwani County where at
least five families have had wells contaminated with
coliform bacteria this year.
County Land Conservation officials say it's a common
problem in a county known for shallow soils with fractured
rock underneath and lots of cows living on the surface.
Several of the incidents are near large dairy farms that
have a thousand or more cows.
These large farms are subject to special regulations on manure
handling and need a permit from the Department of Natural
Resources in order to operate.
But who can get a permit?
An investigation by reporter Art Hackett found even
farmers with a history of problems may be eligible.
Rose and Wallace Andre aren't strangers to rural Wisconsin.
They've lived on the border between door and Kiwani counties
for 70 years.
But this year they're dealing with something
new. Contaminated well water.
It was very discolored and stinky.
It smelled just like manure.
It looked like dark, but pure, I said.
The Andre's suspect but cannot prove their well
has been contaminated by manure spread on the field
next door in late winter.
It never spread manure all winter because it was too
tough move and you know, for always freezing up on all
the pile and spring we'd all add on to the corn field.
In the manure, Wallace Andre saw being spread the
day before his well went bad was in liquid form.
Soil is a tremendous thing.
It can attenuate a lot of pollutants in manure.
However, when you have liquid manure,
it tends to flow through those soil profiles faster.
County conservationist Andy Wollander says late winter
weather has made applying the norm safely difficult.
You have freezing and thawing cracks forming in the soil
surface. It's not the best time to be spreading manure.
The field the Andre's point to is on one of three farms
operated by John Pagel.
Pagel calls the well problems tragic
but says the contamination could have come from any one
of a number of farms or even from the Andre's own livestock.
Pagel says the manure was spread according to a plan
that's part of the state permit required to operate a farm
with over a thousand cows.
We use a rule of thumb and we use an acre per cow.
The DNR's rules require farms to
demonstrate they can safely store and handle manure
and have access to enough appropriate land to safely
disperse the animal waste.
Even if they follow the rules, Pagel says large
farms are attempting target.
I think that comes from the large farms not being in
our area for very long that it throws up a red flag or
it creates an image that we need to somehow satisfy the
people that that's not true.
That the large farms are doing a good job or do we have
the management capabilities of doing a good job.
What makes you think it's the manure over there rather
than something closer?
We never had trouble with ours.
We always had cows before when we were milking
and our kids never got sick.
20 miles away in Luxembourg, Scott and Judy Tremel and
their children did get sick.
The Tremels now get water from a huge tank truck
parked in the driveway.
Another home just up the road needed a new well.
The Tremels are waiting to figure out what's wrong
before they dig a new well.
It was Sunday, February 29th.
Their neighbor came to us with a jar of her water
that was just horrible.
It was green, it smelled like manure and she came
over and was wondering if we had the problem.
And then that afternoon, this same thing
happened to our water.
Less than a month before, tests showed the Tremels
well to be free of bacteria.
But on February 24th, Scott Tremel saw a farmer
spreading liquid manure on land across the road.
He shot this home video showing the resulting runoff
flowing into school creek.
The creek flows next to the other home with a
contaminated well that then runs behind the Tremels home.
Tremel then filed a complaint with the DNR.
The farm field across from the Tremel home is rented by Glenn
Stahl, who operates this farm about a mile from the Tremels.
A DNR case history obtained by Wisconsin Public Television
shows that two days before Scott Tremel filed his complaint,
Department of Fishals contacted Stahl about another
manure runoff problem.
It also involved runoff into school creek.
DNR runoff management specialist Dave Vooji inspected the
field Tremel complained about and said everything was done
according to the farm's permit.
I did not see an application in an area where it was
not allowed or where it was an excessive application.
The water sample, the Tremels, took from their well,
February 29th, tested unsafe.
The Tremels test by the DNR March 5th also said the Tremels
well was grossly contaminated.
That was one day after the Tremels started getting sick.
The baby got sick on Thursday, which was then
the start of Thursday night.
I had her into the doctor on Friday.
We were in the doctor the afternoon.
I'm getting a stool sand, you know, cultures
and things from her.
I got sick, started Friday night, through the weekend,
the baby and I, for in the hospital on Saturday
night, in the Sunday morning.
And Caitlin, our eight year old, got sick Saturday night,
and Emily got sick on Sunday night, and then Scott got
sick two days after that.
The tests could not positively link the Tremels illness
to the contaminated water.
These manure runoff complaints involving Glen Stahl's
farm are not the first.
The DNR case summary shows a similar series of
complaints involving manure handling going back to 1982.
It shows other discharges to school Creek in January,
April and June of 2003.
In July of 2003, the DNR issued stall a permit allowing
him to expand his herd.
How did somebody like this get a permit?
I cannot answer that on the air because this is the
strategy, which we are utilizing to deal with the situation.
Wow. If this went from 1982 and
it's 2004, how could it continue for that long?
And then the key vision he had permits to get even larger
when he's not in compliance?
Stahl's attorney says the farmer is concerned about
his neighbor's safety and his cooperating with the DNR.
The attorney says other farms or the Tremels own
well may be responsible for the contamination.
County conservationist Andy Wollender says the
past problems may not have played a part in approval
of the expansion permit.
Right now, I don't know if they have the mechanism
to deny somebody a permit.
That has fulfilled all the requirements of the application.
The DNR has argued that a large farm at least has to have
a plan to deal with manure.
Small farms, even ones that have problems, don't
have to have any plan.
County conservationist Andy Wollender says the
problem doesn't just involve who gets a permit.
The problem often is the result of allowing liquid manure
to be spread in the winter when the ground is frozen.
We need to key in on the areas where we let farmers
spread manure in the winter.
I think that that will go a long way towards solving all
our growing water problems.
Under the current state rules, winter land spreading
of any type of manure is allowed, provided they follow
conditions of their permit.
But the DNR's Dave Buji says the rules are being rewritten.
And one of the things that is under discussion is
the spreading of liquid manure in the winter time.
And on the books and in discussion is the potential
banning of liquid spreading in the winter time, except
in the case of an emergency.
That rule change would likely draw objections from farmers.
It would be a problem.
It really would.
We would have to put up some type of additional storage of
the manure that we needed as per which is about 10 days or
two weeks out of the winter.
Both families we spoke to who have contaminated
wells expressed frustration about manure spreading
in the winter time.
The colony shows that that field on the colony maps
is a manure hazard zone.
It is very clear that almost the entire field in the
colony's eye should not have manure spread on it.
In winter.
But the county's maps only amount to recommendations.
The DNR uses different standards intended to
be applicable statewide.
Wallender says they don't take into account conditions
unique to one county.
We need to get state standards that take into account the
local geologic formations that are found throughout the state.
Right now I don't believe they address those well enough.
[Music]
Our next story extends the Wisconsin connection almost
2,000 miles across the globe.
Last June a high school aged youth group from
Crossroads Church and Madison traveled to Southern Belize.
The purpose wasn't a vacation but to understand a different
culture and to extend a helping hand to impoverished people in
that Central American country.
The story of the youth group's journey is told by
some of the young people on that humanitarian trip.
[Music]
Me and 35 other people from Crossroads Church went on a
youth group mission trip to Belize Central America and did
vacation by old school and built pews in a church in the
Southern District of Belize.
[Music]
Belize is located on the Caribbean coast of Central
America right next to Mexico and Guatemala.
And they speak English because it's a British Commonwealth.
It was once a British colony but
in 1981 the British left leaving their English language there.
[Music]
We met here at Crossroads Church at 2 in the morning.
There were 36 people that went along, 26 teams and 10 adults.
And we all piled in the bands of all the people signed in
at the airport and got on our plane and we had to fly down
the Charlotte North Carolina.
And we took another plane down the Belize city.
We got off the plane and it was
just like a heat wave hit us.
And then you have to go through customs and you're thinking,
"What am I doing here?"
Because it's nothing like America.
There's the customs you have to wait
in line and there's three tables to get through.
And after that we had a six hour bus ride down to the place
that we were staying, which is in the Southern Belize,
over pretty rough roads.
[Music]
Probably an hour and a half into it.
It started to rain so we had to close up all the windows.
And that got really hot.
So it was pretty much just sleeping and
it was quite packed.
[Music]
When we got there, you know, we have to go get our beds
ready and we have to sleep in the mosquito netting.
[Music]
The next day we got out to the villages and you saw the
people in that screwfuts and these little 20 by 10 huts
and they had almost nothing.
And it just made you open your eyes.
I think the thing that surprised me the most
when we got here was the people's living conditions.
I knew that it wasn't going to be anything like in the US.
But especially when we got here just to see how little they
had but yet how happy they were.
Well the thing that surprised me the most when we got there
was how nice the people were.
We really didn't expect to be welcomed that warmly.
They screw it here and they screw it there.
We were building pews for two churches which that
changed the three churches.
But we had gotten all the lumber and Jeff and Con
were our builders and then we started building the
pews for these churches and some of the kids helped.
[Music]
And the wood we would get with, I went to school bus that we had
and we'd stack it in the school bus and have to unload it.
It was a lot of work.
Well the main thing that really surprised me when we got to
the least was all the bugs and all the moss crawling all over
in our beds and the bathrooms.
They were crawling with things that we didn't even know and
the sandmanders and the translas and really really gross stuff.
Well probably halfway through the week I really started
craving some fast foods because all we had was a kitchen and
just food down there which wasn't high quality or anything.
So we had oatmeal for breakfast and peanut butter and dough
and sandwiches for lunch.
[Music]
Every day we had drive-out to the villages and get
the kids to come which the first day we had to go door
to door and get the kids.
But as the week progressed we had, they saw our van coming
and they, because there's not much traffic they knew
it was us and they came running down to the church.
Then every day we would have a story and a craft for them
and we would be the story and they'd all be sitting on
these little benches probably five or six with 50 kids.
And we would hand out a craft and they'd all be
crowding around you trying to get part of the craft and
you could tell that they appreciated what we were doing.
[Music]
Every day we did singing too before we did the stories and
we'd have two or three people lead it and like a tar usually
and all the kids we would try to figure out songs that they
knew and then all the little kids would sing along with it.
[Music]
I think almost everything we did in the villages
was an accomplishment just in the way we did it.
I mean the generator that we used to help build a church
wasn't working when we got there and Jeff, our builder,
worked on it for two days and finally got it running.
So without that we would not have been able to build a
church and without doing BDS we wouldn't have found out that
the church needed to be built.
So I mean it all came together very well.
We worked so hard and sweated so much and the people
that I work with I'll always remember working with them.
[Music]
We had dentists come down and they set up a little dentist
station in a little hut behind the place we stayed
and they had a dentist chair and a light and that was it.
So they had to bring down their own tools and everything and it
was like bare bones dentistry.
[Music]
On the road to one of the villages there was a waterfall
that we could go swimming at and most of the days that
we had time we would stop at the waterfall and pool our.
[Music]
Kids of Belize taught me humbleness because you know
you step out of the bus and they have just a bunch of
huts and they're their homes and their homes are the size
of maybe a bedroom and they have almost 10 people staying
in one of those little huts.
And I mean it just teaches you that you should be
grateful for what you have.
[Music]
That's our program for this week.
Thanks for joining us.
If you'd like to learn more about the topics of tonight's
reports, check out our website at wpt.org/inwisconsin.
Once there you'll also find transcripts from
previous programs and video links to past reports.
Tune in next week when we'll introduce you to a
Muscaday man who bends metal to his artistic will.
Until then we leave you with a springtime walk through the
Rush Creek area in Crawford County.
For in Wisconsin I'm Patty Low.
Good night.
[Music]
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, a lion to energy, offering
energy saving ideas on the web.
[Music]