(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Each week we bring you stories about the people and issues
in our state.
This week, black gold refined right here in Wisconsin.
Find out how this refinery and superior
is picking up some of the slack for the golf coast oil industry.
Climb aboard for a trip down the Grant River
for an ambitious watery mission.
And align this device with the skies
to join a high tech treasure hunt.
- You can go that way.
All that plus we'll tell you how grease
left over from last Friday's fish fry
could help you beat the prices at the pump in Wisconsin.
(upbeat music)
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided
by the people of Alliance Energy,
who bring safe, reliable, and environmentally friendly energy
to keep homes, neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin
running smoothly.
Alliance Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
UW Health, providing specialty in primary care
for all ages throughout Wisconsin.
Information on UW Health Physicians and Clinics
and on University of Wisconsin Hospital
is available on the web.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, providing local education
for the crucial occupations essential to our communities.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, Communities First.
(upbeat music)
About 20 years ago, Northwestern Wisconsin was a buzz
with rumors that oil might be struck there.
Wells were drilled and they struck nothing.
But Superior does have a connection to the oil business.
It's home to Wisconsin's only oil refinery.
Reporter Art Hackett found it has a curious history
and thrives making a product you use every day
but probably have never directly purchased.
As gas prices have soared, we've always
we knew someone in the oil business.
But in Wisconsin, the closest you're likely to come to that
is the cashier at the Quikkey Mart,
unless you live in Superior.
Superior is home to the Murphy Oil Refinery.
It's owned by a company based in El Dorado, Arkansas.
The only times the refineries had made news
outside of Superior have been when it's run
a file of environmental laws.
The DNR gives it a clean bill of health today.
Few people beyond Douglas County realize it exists
or know why there's a refinery in a place
where there is no oil.
I remember coming through Superior to vacation
on the way to the boundary waters and
getting what was here.
Today, Dave Podratz is the refineries manager.
It's not the first place you think of
when you think of the oil industry, you think Houston,
for example.
But if you were in Superior on December 5th, 1950,
you probably remember it as the day
of the Superior Evening Telegram carried a black gold headline.
This wasn't long after oil was discovered
in the Canadian province of Alberta.
When oil was developed and located in Western Canada,
they ran a pipeline from Edmonton, Alberta
and it terminated in Superior.
Joe Longco, who retired as the refineries manager in 1984,
was working on an Army Corps of Engineers Dredge at the time.
He says the pipeline company's plan at first was to do
with the oil, what they did with grain, iron ore,
and everything else that comes into Superior.
Loaded on a boat and ship it somewhere else.
During the summer months, there was a fleet of tankers
that they used to come in and they used a load-out crude oil.
And it was hauled east.
The oil was stored in tanks when the harbor iced over,
but a group of local businessmen had a different idea.
That was the idea of building the refinery in the Superior.
Longco started out as a pipe fitter
with what was then the Lake Superior refining company,
reassembling a slightly used plant from Cutbank Montana.
It had been painstakingly dismantled,
the pieces were all color-coded.
Diagram showed exactly where each vessel would be placed
at the new location.
And all these pieces and all this stuff
was loaded into big long gondola real cars.
Imagine that as this pipe was dumped in there
and rattled and everything, but by the time it got here,
the majority of it was bent turned out to be a
construction nightmare.
It's come winter and instead of fit and pipe,
we were all equipped with shovels and sprooms
and everything to dig and sweep to find this piece of pipe
we were looking for.
And it turned out to be an atmosphere
like a virtual hunt, you know, boy, hooray,
I found it, you know.
Only a few parts from Cutbank remain.
This steel vessel has been adapted to a different use,
only this boiler house dates back to 1951.
The equipment inside has all been replaced.
When the refinery began operations half a century ago,
it was tiny, processing only two or three hundred barrels
of oil a day.
Today it's bigger, but still small by industry standards.
If you look at some of the bigger refineries
in the country, we're probably a tenth the size
of some of those biggest refineries.
Refineries in Chicago, you know, 150, 200,000 barrels a day.
We're 35,000 barrels a day.
It kind of puts it into perspective.
Luntos says the refinery was profitable at first,
but lacked the capital to stay current.
It was the last two years that that friend re-operated
as the Lake Superior Refine Company, it did make money.
But they had it look for a cell, the cell at, and in 1958,
that's when Murphy Oil bought it.
Luntos's Murphy immediately invested over $5 million
in the plant.
It's still expanding.
Recent improvements involve equipment to produce gasoline
formulated to reduce air emissions.
The refinery survives in a shrinking industry.
You're going back to 1980 when I got out of college,
there were about 350 refineries operated.
We're down under 150 today.
So what's kept Superior's refinery going?
It has to do with the Canadian crude coming
out of the pipeline.
Some of that crude oil is fairly cheap crude oil.
Nasty, heavy, got a lot of sulfur in it.
It's very hard to make gasoline, not a good one.
Understand that what a refinery does is take crude oil
and use chemical catalysts to break it up into a bunch
of different products.
Copane, butane, gasoline, caracene, heating
oil, diesel fuel.
But in the case of the Canadian crude,
the barrel of that crude oil makes almost half asphalt.
Asphalt, road oil, tar.
The asphalt was a very big part of the business,
a very, very big part of the business.
In fact, looking back at it, I don't think
that we could have survived without the asphalt.
We're set up to produce that asphalt, store it, market it.
And that's been one of the reasons that we've
been able to survive and thrive here in Superior.
The Superior Refinery, notable as Wisconsin's only oil
refinery, notable not so much for producing
what you put in your car as for what you put your car on.
Because of gas shortages caused by Hurricane Katrina,
the manager of the Superior Refinery
tells us that they shifted the type of crude oil they process.
Right now, they're running more light crude
in order to step up production of gasoline.
The refinery will need to shift back
again to running more heavy crude next month
to meet its asphalt contract commitments.
The continuing shortage of gasoline
really bumped up the cost of a summer road trip.
Even before Katrina, the pain at the pump
has been with us for months.
It's encouraging many people to turn to new and in some cases,
unlikely fuel sources.
Reporter Frederica Freiber gets under the hood
of some emerging ideas and meets a man who
fuels his car with deep fat fryer grease.
Filling up isn't what it used to be.
Even for mid-sized cars, it can be painful at the pump.
It's probably like $30.
It's a $35 if it's empty.
At least $30.
That's ridiculous.
And it definitely takes a toll on a fixed income.
Vern Huff is from Chicago, but says he likes to fill his tank
in Wisconsin, or gas is cheaper.
But still, he says it's not cheap enough.
Well, everybody thought about driving
one of those electric cars or doing something else?
It would be better than this.
That must be what a lot of people are thinking,
because electric or part electric cars
are all the rage.
Hybrid cars, as they're known, are selling faster
than car makers can produce them.
It has a gas engine in it like every car,
and that's coupled with an electric motor.
Sales of the Toyota Prius have more than doubled in a year.
And as at other dealerships, the waiting list for the Prius
at this Madison area Toyota shop is months long.
Is this the way the industry is going?
Absolutely. And that's what Toyota
believes sincerely.
I mean, they are going to create a hybrid version
of their whole lineup.
Gas mileage does look attractive.
60 miles to the gallon in the city.
It doesn't need the gas engine to be on,
so it's very efficient.
And here's a really stupid question.
You don't have to plug these things in, do you?
Never. It's all regulated through
the computers in the car, and it charges itself
every time you break.
OK, nearly sold.
But who could afford a electric car?
The sticker price of hybrids can be
two to $3,000 higher than all petrol models.
That's where an even newer breed of gas visors comes in.
What folks like Mike Clark burn in their cars is free.
Yep, you can fry your lunch in it,
just as they're doing at the Busy Avenue bar, just down
from the state capital where the specialty is fish fry.
And the avenue does a mean business,
packing them in for lunch and dinner, weekends and weekdays.
The deep fat fryer gets a workout in this kitchen,
turning out golden fries and fish fillets,
the stuff that made the avenue famous.
The restaurant goes through about 50 gallons
of vegetable oil a week in its fryer, and then its dump.
So called Mike Clark, a dumpster diver,
for his version of fuel.
Hand-cranked pump in hand.
Clark skims off the avenue bar's old fryer oil.
He'll use it to power his old car.
Yep, I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
It's pretty gross.
When he approached you and said he wanted to do this,
did you think it was weird?
I did until he showed me the car and everything
and showed me how he does it.
It was kind of interesting.
In fact, the avenue's kitchen manager, Cory Campion,
was only too happy to part with some of the restaurants
sold oil.
It costs him money to haul it away.
Do people think you're kind of cookie?
I don't think so.
And the reason I say that is because people like Cory here
and everybody else I've ever met, you're
telling what you're doing, and they're interested,
and they're excited.
So what exactly is he doing?
This is what they call a sock filter,
so you can see how simple this can be.
In the back of his old wagon, he's
got a homemade way low-tech kit that converts his car
from gas to grease.
So I just pour the dirty grease into there,
and that filters out the food particles, fries, and fish,
and everything else.
And in the bucket there is the fuel.
Clark then fills his tank, which he says is safe enough
to sit up on the front passenger floor with the restaurant
veggie oil.
And then I just sit the starter button.
The two things that are important
is to filter the particles out so that
it's as clean as anything that you-- any fuel that you
put into your car normally.
And the other thing is that the vegetable oil needs to be hot,
so that the viscosity is as low as possible.
Clark heats the engine and the veggie oil
by starting up the car using biodiesel made of soybeans.
Once things are toasty under the hood,
he flips the switch to burn the restaurant oil.
No, Clark's car doesn't per like the new hybrids,
but it's a beater to begin with.
He says he drove all the way to Boston
back, bumming, fryer grease, the whole trip.
What's more, he says not only do other drivers not dismiss
his fryer fuel gelopy, they seem to embrace it.
Yeah, people hot, wave their fists,
as if it were a fryer or something.
It's great.
Mike Clark says with a conversion kit
brought over the internet and a couple of people,
it would take a weekend to convert a car to run on grease.
He's not alone in this idea.
Wisconsin restaurant giant Culverse
is now working with a state grant
to turn its deep fat fryer grease into fuel.
Wisconsin Department of Administration officials say
when vegetable oil is filtered and processed into a biofuel,
it produces zero net greenhouse gas emissions,
zero sulfur emissions, and less soot than gasoline or diesel.
(upbeat music)
Just as people like Mike Clark are fueled by a love
for cheaper, cleaner running fuel,
the folks in our next story are inspired
by another relatively new technology.
Reporter Andy Suth discovered that people across Wisconsin
and the nation are latching onto a locating device
that turns them into high-tech treasure hunters.
It's a summer day in downtown Green Bay,
but it's clear these are no ordinary pedestrians.
For one thing, they're taking an unusual interest
in trash cans and dumpsters.
They're among 150 participants in a city-wide,
geocaching event.
This has all your coordinates and what you need
to do for each cash.
It's a kind of high-tech scavenger hunt
with caches hidden all over Green Bay.
Geocaching is possible due to the popularity
of products like this, a handheld GPS device capable
of receiving signals from multiple global
positioning satellites.
The GPS device triangulates signals from the satellites
and can give you your exact location on Earth.
Or it can help you find something hidden
by another GPS user.
A geocache.
Enter the coordinates of a geocache into a GPS
and it can tell you how close you are to it.
Once you've found the cache, you can take a souvenir
and exchange for something you leave.
There's a logbook to sign and geocache activity is
also logged on the web.
That's where you can learn the coordinates
of caches hidden near you.
There are also virtual caches where the assignment
is to take a picture.
The hobby has developed its own culture
with team names, nicknames, and special events
like the Green Bay Challenge.
For many, it's become a fun pastime.
This is a decoding key.
For others, it's treated more like an addiction.
All right, we were just in Ohio last weekend.
We're the weekend before, so we do.
Meet the Jensen, Mullen family.
Better known among geocaches as Earth Angel.
Do a list, Princess, and the Professor.
Together, they are the eco-rangers.
Yep, that's us.
And only a short time, they've logged over 4,000
total geocache finds more than anyone else in Wisconsin.
And they're ranked 18th in the world.
It'll be two years in October, so we're at a rate of
finding 6.5 caches a day since today we started.
I spent the day following the eco-rangers
and their friends on the Green Bay Challenge,
and it was clear they were on a mission.
(upbeat music)
There's one up here, so if we had Norse,
then with the round.
Yay, honey.
So it's only the end what you're involved for today, is...
To get them all.
Let's get them all.
Diane Sexton is also known as Bushwacking Queen.
Getting them all today will add 58 to her goal
of 2001 year.
So you wanna take a look and see where it was?
(upbeat music)
Run, Jake!
Jake! Run here!
That's 2,000 times feeling like this.
I'm so sorry about how that felt.
I found one.
Thank you, dad.
I know these people wonder what we're doing.
It's the thrill of the hunt.
You're hunting a tough one and you'll find it.
And it's like, woo!
You know, a lot of times people will do a little happy dance
when they find it.
It's so good that we can't explain it.
(laughing)
It's trying to go on.
Earth Angel of the Eco-Rangers says Geocaching has provided
the satisfaction she used to get from doing triathlons.
I was swimming laps at the Y every day,
going for a 15, 20 mile bike ride by myself every day,
going on a 3-to-6 mile jog every day,
and I didn't like being away from my family.
And then when my husband came across Geocaching,
it's just like, wow, this is so cool to do.
Where I can be with my family, we can get our exercise
and you can be competitive and go hiking
and see the wonders of Wisconsin.
Whether those wonders are Lambo Field
or this original 1959 McDonald's sign,
Geocaching is one high-tech hobby
that at the very least gets people off the couch.
You can do it at your own pace, you can do it at your own level,
but it gets people out there doing something
and that's a big part of it.
Geocaching gets people out there.
(upbeat music)
The man in our next story is also on a quest,
but Rick Carc's mission is a more solitary one.
Producer Joanne Garrett found it basically includes
Carc, a canoe, and some of Wisconsin's best scenery.
(water splashing)
I guess we all collect something by collect Wisconsin rivers.
58-year-old Rick Carc is a man whose life has been defined
by this motion.
(water splashing)
Carc is a retired doctor who spent the bulk
of his working life in Eau Claire
and the bulk of his free time on water,
including high-risk white water in the Appalachians,
wilderness trips through the Canadian tundra
to the Arctic Ocean, and a sense of the Grand
Canyon in an open canoe.
Rick Carc knows water, and he's determined to
know Wisconsin's waters.
Carc has a quest to paddle 300 different Wisconsin rivers,
an unofficial first.
I'm up to 255.
I got to 100 and I thought, well, maybe 200 would be fun,
and then I got to 200, and now it seems like
300 would be fun.
You don't do this kind of thing in Nevada.
It's only possible in a state that's a wash
in water resources.
That's us.
Wisconsin has over 30,000 miles of rivers and streams.
We join Carc on an old favorite, the Grand River, in the
southwest corner of Wisconsin.
It's a driftless area stream, meaning it's very old,
it hasn't been disturbed by glaciation.
So it tends to be fairly slow in the entering
because through time it's had time to sort of erode down
and slow down.
I think a nicest feature is these wonderful dolomite bluffs,
they're like its intimate small size.
But then Carc likes most rivers.
His quest is driven by that deep passion.
I just love the look of rivers, the look and feel of rivers,
and I love variety, I guess.
I just love new rivers, the look of new rivers,
because there's always new delights.
(birds chirping)
Well, look at the blue heron.
Palling to me is just the perfect activity.
It's just a combination of things.
It's how my body feels as the palli goes through the water.
The motion of the body, the adventure of what's
around every bend, and the incredible
things you see.
It's the perfect silence sports activity, I think.
Moving water also has just a beauty of its own.
The swirls, the eddies, the backwaters,
the changing lighting and the shimmering of the water
and the reflections from the sky are kind of magnified
by moving water.
They're incredibly beautiful places.
They're highways through beautiful places.
Carc admits that he likes the challenge,
the push of trying to hit 300.
But the number is really just a means to an end.
It's just kind of fun to just know that you've sampled
about every inch of moving water in this state,
which is such a beautiful state.
The quest is not the most important thing.
The most important thing is just being in beautiful places
and doing something I really enjoy.
Journey is done.
This stays journey is done.
But for Carc, ever the hardcore, the quest keeps going.
If the daylight doesn't disappear,
I might paddle the little plat river, which
isn't too far from here.
Yep. One more river.
But the little plat would be a new river,
which would be 255.
We'll keep you updated and let you know when
Rick Carc reaches the 300 rivers mark.
A quick programming note in Wisconsin will
not be on next week, due to a special week long
celebration of the 60s on Wisconsin Public Television.
We'll be back with an all-new episode on
Thursday, October 6th.
In the meantime, we leave you with a trip to one of the
premier wildlife viewing areas in the Midwest.
CREX Meadows Wildlife Refuge.
It's located in the northwestern part of our state.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
See you in October.
[Music]
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of
a lion's energy, who brings safe, reliable,
and environmentally friendly energy to keep
homes, neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin
running smoothly.
A lion's energy offering
energy-saving ideas on the web.
UW Health, providing specialty in primary
care for all ages throughout Wisconsin.
Information on UW Health physicians and
clinics and on University of Wisconsin Hospital
is available on the web.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges,
providing the people of Wisconsin with the knowledge
and skills they'll need for the economy of tomorrow.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, Communities First.
[Music]