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Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people
of a lion's energy who bring 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.
Coming up in Wisconsin, a door county woman
provides safe haven for abandoned animals.
In La Crosse County, one man's garbage
is another man's treasure.
I look at garbage as being a renewable resource today.
And across the state, conservationists celebrate
a birthday milestone.
It's all ahead in Wisconsin.
Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Each week, we bring you stories from around the state,
the people, places, and issues that make up life in Wisconsin.
We begin tonight by asking you to think back
if you can to the late 1980s.
The US still remembered the energy shortages
of the late '70s.
And the story of a homeless barge of garbage
reminded us that landfill space was in short supply.
Some folks thought they had a single solution
for both problems, burn the garbage,
and use the heat to generate electricity.
That's what's been happening in La Crosse County for 15 years.
But as Art Hackett reports, turning waste to energy
continues to be both challenging and controversial.
Garbage collectors in La Crosse were busy on this day.
Crosse filled quickly.
In most Wisconsin cities, records will be hauled
to the local landfill.
But the operator of this tractor at the La
Crosse County landfill might be the
loneliest man in town.
And it's not because all the trash is being recycled,
although some is.
La Crosse County is different than most of Wisconsin.
Recycling is an option, not a mandate.
That's because trash from La Crosse County is hauled to
this plant on French Island, where it's burned and
turned into electricity.
The La Crosse waste to energy plant is owned and
operated by ex-cell energy, the local electric utility.
The plant opened in 1988 before Wisconsin
passed its recycling law.
A grandfather clause exempts La Crosse from most
recycling requirements.
Paper, plastic and cardboard which would be recycled in other
cities is burned in La Crosse.
The trash runs through a series of conveyors and is hammered
into a fluffy blend called Refuse-Strived Fuel.
If it does not go through that sizing screen, it stays in the
fuel loop and goes back around and is shredded up again
until it can drop into here.
It is fuel, it just has to be sized down to that size.
The fuel is blown into boiler fire boxes
along with wood chips.
Two generators pump out enough electricity to power about 20%
of La Crosse County's homes.
The only things hauled to the landfill are the
ashes and items that can't be properly shredded.
Some environmentalists like Guy Wolf of the Environmental
Group Clean Wisconsin look at the plastic and
paper heading into the fire and see a missed
opportunity for recovering and reusing a resource.
It certainly is embarrassing to university students
and people who come here from all over the state
and all over the Midwest and the country to live here and
they find out what slabs we are.
You go down the street and there's no
incentive for recycling.
They don't collect plastics.
But La Crosse County Solid Waste Director Brian
Tipets looks at garbage and sees something different.
And I look at garbage as being a renewable resource today.
We're coal and non-renewable in oil.
And so we're using a renewable resource to generate electricity
that arguably displaces things like coal which
are non-renewable.
Tipets argues plastic recycling has been oversold.
Plastic is expensive to collect and sort.
Only two types.
The number ones and number twos are commonly recycled.
The other five plastics aren't recycled.
There may be a few exceptions
but they're very very few.
And the best recycling programs are only collecting
about 50% of one and two.
So everybody in America is throwing away plastics
three through seven and half a one and two
where in our program most of those get made into energy.
So at the end of the day I would say this is a
better environmental measure than the other.
But burning the plastics comes with an environmental
price tag, air pollution.
The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency's 2001
toxic release inventory, the most recent one released,
lists the lacrosse plant number eight on Wisconsin's
top ten list of polluters.
Most of the other plants on the list are
foundries and steel mills.
The pollutants they release are heavy metals and acids.
At the lacrosse plant the pollutant that concerns
state health officials is dioxin from the burning plastic.
Geneva Larson lives about half a mile north of the plant.
We can't keep the house clean.
I can go over my windows.
There's some grit like.
There are hazardous materials bound
up in plastic, for instance.
Lots of these are petroleum products.
They're made of petroleum.
Hazardous materials.
You can put this in a landfill for
literally thousands of years.
We've been in the landfill.
There's scientists that go into the landfills every day.
They're hardly breaking down.
They break down literally over thousands of thousands of years.
If you burn this material and the toxins are released from
the material, which they are, they attach themselves to
fine particles of dust.
The plant was recently outvited with $11 million worth of
pollution control equipment.
It will filter most of the toxic compounds out
of the plant's exhaust.
This is a continuous emissions.
We have to report any time we'd be above them.
We have not had any exceedances on any of our
emissions since we put the new control equipment in.
The major pollutant that we reported on under the
toxic release inventory was hydrochloric acid,
hydrogen chloride.
And we emitted quite a bit of hydrogen chloride with the new
pollution control equipment on.
The emissions of hydrogen chloride have
dropped substantially.
I would say they're probably 10% of what they were.
And we've shown that our dioxin emissions have
decreased by 80 to 90%.
DNR supervised tests confirm what ball says.
In August of 2001, before new controls were installed,
total dioxide emissions averaged 3.44 nanograms per cubic meter.
The permitted limit is 1.
A year later, with the new controls in place, the
average dropped to 0.51.
Do you expect that's going to make your opponents happy?
I would think that it would.
I would hope that it would.
The direct-driven environmental law group, which has been
concerned about the plant says, not necessarily.
Melissa Scanlon refers to this June 2002 letter
from the State Department of Health, regarding the need to
address the results of past emissions from French Island.
And the Department of Health said that they were
very concerned about the possibility of high levels
of dioxin being in the soils in the local area from the
years of fallout of dioxin.
There should be a health study of the soils in that area
and the blood levels of dioxin and people who are living
on French Island to determine whether or not
there's a health threat.
Scanlon says that testing has yet to be ordered.
Environmentalists' other main concern is, even
though the French Island plant's been cleaned up,
it still discourages recycling.
People look in the cross-counting or not highly
encouraged to recycle paper because, frankly,
that's one of the biggest materials they need for
B2U's at the incinerator.
They need plastics and they need dry paper.
The Excel plant has also faced legal problems.
Excel agreed to pay a half million dollar fine to settle
a lawsuit filed by the EPA.
The company was fined because the pollution control equipment
wasn't installed by a federally imposed deadline.
Excel notes that was because the plant was
shifted by the EPA from one size category to another, one
with an earlier deadline.
By the time they found out, it was impossible to
meet the new timetable.
Literally, we had six weeks to install the
pollution control equipment that we needed to to meet
the new regulations, which was impossible.
Every other combustion in the
country, obviously, was given five years to do
the same.
Melissa Scanlon, who pressed the EPA to
change the incinerator's size classification, says the
fine is Excel's own fault.
They told the federal government and the state government that
they were a small incinerator.
If they had given them information that was accurate
about their capacity, then they would have been
put on that same timeline.
Melissa's Excel energy will pay the fine to the
EPA, but the cost of the added pollution control
equipment will be rolled into the cost of LaCrosse
County taxpayers' pay to get rid of their garbage.
Tip it says over time, that money will be well spent.
When you look at the total cost,
the liability, the use of our land resources, and
I think you look at it over a few generations,
I believe.
So does our county that waste energy
is a better fit for society than just storing it in
a landfill.
Waste energy plants showed great promise
30 years ago, but they didn't catch on in most
places. Pollution control costs were higher than expected, and
an expected shortage of land fill space never materialized.
Most cities today recycle what they can and bury what they can.
The only other waste to energy plant in Wisconsin
is a much smaller one.
That's in rice lake in Barron County.
The combination of a throw away society and the
reluctance of some people to spare or neuter their pets
leads to our next story.
It involves the problem of abandoned animals in
Wisconsin. There's a place in Door County where many of
these animals receive shelter, whether it's unwanted dogs
or cats or larger animals like horses.
There's a good chance refuge can
be found at the All Creatures home.
It's just another day for Rory Walter.
First, she fills her aging suburban with dogs.
Then she stops by the grocery store for their breakfast.
Then, after throwing the food on top of the van, she heads
home to feed her animals.
About 300 of them.
Of course, ponies, dockies,
mules, llamas, pigs, sheep goats, a cow, cats and dogs.
Unwanted and abandoned animals began to appear at Walter's
door about 20 years ago, when word got out that
she never turns one away.
The most common animal I get is say an eight-year-old dog or an
older cat.
They say things like, "We just don't have time."
Some of the animals had been mistreated.
One of the supernars was kept
in a basement in Chicago because the guy got a girlfriend
and the girlfriend didn't like the dogs.
We put the basement.
Others had simply been abandoned.
But that's the most common is older animals.
Ones that I've found the maestries or they've been
brought as trees and they might have a growth on them.
So people think, "Oh, that's money.
You know, it'll help the problem.
It'll help the decisions coming up."
Today, dogs outnumber the other animals in her clan of castoffs.
There are so many dogs it seems impossible to
keep an accurate count.
129.
I usually have I'm off, you know, but I deworm them every
six months and then when I go, "Oops, I got a few
more than I thought."
She named her place All Creatures Home because she
says it's like a retirement home for these animals.
Animals the humane society is unlikely to adopt out
the sick and the elderly.
Everybody's still welcome, you know, but it's like animals with
special needs that can make it happily if they get all
their health needs met.
But it's kind of nice because
people know that they're here to live their lives
out unless somebody who can continue the healing
process wants to adopt them.
The biggest challenge for Walter is money.
She relies on donations to cover all her costs.
She estimates that her food bill tops $65,000 a year.
And with elderly animals, the medical fees are staggering.
One dog had $2,500 for the first three months of
treatment for lung infection.
I've had three surgeries this winter that were
over 3,000 for dogs along one, there were two over
2,000 for cats.
She has such a way with that.
We think she's a modern doctor, do little.
Dr. Jennifer Jasper is one of Walter's many supporters.
She stopped by on her day off.
She's always amazed us.
She knows everything about every animal.
She has so many dogs and other
animals too.
She knows exactly what's going
on with every animal.
I know it seems to be kind of dividing.
There are those people who love her
and are very impressed with what she does.
We're included in that group.
And then there's another group that has a lot of
misperceptions about her.
They think maybe she's crazy to live up here with
all these animals away from the rest of the world.
And I think they don't understand
how much she cares for them.
By some people's measure, Rory Walter could be
counted among the crazy.
She lives in an insulated room in the barn, partly
to save money and partly to be close to the animals.
And because she's their sole caretaker, she never
leaves home without a van full of dogs.
Animals she feels are too new to the
home or too needy to be left behind.
People say, boy, you've given this up
and I can't think of what I've given up.
I really don't.
It's just wonderful.
I live in the barn with 300 animals.
I have to remember that that's not
your average American home.
But every day is just great.
Very few people would be willing to dedicate their
lives to animals.
But Walter says there's plenty of
payback. There's so many neat things that happen
here where you see them grow and get better and
heal and their coats come back and they start to
trust again.
Even you might have them for six months
and all of a sudden they're wonderful again.
You know, you see something that
you didn't think you'd see or miracles are just what
you don't expect.
You know, they happen all
the time and I started realizing that I was so
much more drawn to that than being drawn to something
out there in the world.
But it's the outside world Walter must turn to for help,
especially financial help.
Money comes in from a number of sources.
A few grocery stores collect food for the animals.
Some local businesses have donation jars.
A friend created a newsletter and last year her
veterinarian staff held a fundraiser.
Recently another friend created a line
of chocolates to benefit all creatures home.
It's really a small part, you
know, but if everyone did a little bit I think
you know we could raise a lot of money for it.
Sometimes when you think it's very desolate,
all these wonderful things happen, you know.
Was it mean street market a
couple days ago and some just gave them give me $50
and I said, "Are you sure?"
I was in and he said, "You bet I am.
You better believe and walk."
I didn't know.
It was just things like that happen.
It's really great.
Walter's upbeat attitude and faith in fellow humans is the
key to the survival of her ever increasing animal family.
Because no matter how tough times are, she's
dedicated to finding a way to feed and care for all of them
365 days a year.
For Walter, today is just another day.
I guess I keep getting really good feelings just from the
universe saying, you know, you'll find a way it
will happen absolutely.
The sheer number of animals that all creatures home
makes it clear that pet owners who love animals
should spare neuter their pets.
And because nationwide there are so many abandoned
or unwanted animals, there's a national debate about
how to care for them long term.
If you'd like to explore this controversy further,
log into our website at www.org/inwisconsin.
Rory Walter mainly provides shelter for domestic animals,
pets and farm animals.
Our next story brings you to some areas in the state where
wild creatures find refuge.
There are seven national wildlife refuges in
Wisconsin, covering more than 175,000 acres.
These are areas where animals, fish and native plants are
protected. And this year, the Wildlife Refuge System
marked a very special milestone.
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It's a birthday.
Cue the candles.
Make a little noise.
Send flowers.
The occasion for this celebration is actually a
centennial, a 100th birthday.
The 100th anniversary of a system.
A series of places.
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That belong to all of us.
The 100th anniversary of the National Wildlife Refuge System.
There's about 530 national wildlife refuges across America.
Every state has a refuge.
And Wisconsin has seven.
The seven total over 175,000 acres.
Molly Mel is a ranger in the Nassita National
Wildlife Refuge.
44,000 acres located in the great central Wisconsin swamp.
The largest wetland bog in the state.
We have a cousin to the National Park Service.
At the National Park, you're
much more likely to be catered to.
I'm here when you take a hike, you're really in a natural
environment, a wild place.
A wildlife refuge is a place where wildlife comes first.
It's a place where people are welcome to visit.
But we will always put the habitat in the wildlife
as the number one priority.
It's been that way since the beginning, in 1903.
The first National Wildlife Refuge was Pelican Island
off the coast in Florida.
It was started by Teddy Roosevelt because it was the
only place where the now common, but then fairly rare, brown
pelicans still existed.
And he recognized that if we didn't set aside some
land for this pelican, we're going to lose it.
It was the plight of the pelican that began the refuge
system, the brown pelican.
But this species, the white pelican, illustrates
the continuing importance of the refuge system.
White pelicans like these used to touch down in the
prairie potels of the Dakotas during their annual
migration, every fall, to the Gulf of Mexico.
But with declining habitat, there are now fewer places
for these birds to stop and refuel as they fly.
And now pelicans are growing in number as they seek sanctuary
in Wisconsin's refuges.
Pelicans and the Trempolo refuge along the Mississippi River.
The Mississippi is a critical flyway for migratory birds.
I like to think about it as an eight-leane interstate
for migrating birds.
Bob Driesley is one of four district managers of the
biggest refuge in the state, the Upper Mississippi National
Wildlife and Fish Refuge.
It's huge, yeah.
It covers 261 miles, four states.
It's a long, linear refuge.
In the lower 48, Upper Mississippi is one
of the bigger refuges.
One of the biggest and one of the most unusual.
The Upper Mississippi refuge is in the middle
of a navigable riverway, one of the largest in the world.
It's a refuge that includes power plants and
a lock-and-damp system and local communities and
still provides a place of protection for wildlife.
Protection. Horacan is home to the
largest freshwater cattail marsh in the country
and was critical as a rest stop and in the recovery of the now
quite plantable Canadian geese.
[Music]
They're hoping for a measure of that success in Nisida with
a now rare whooping crane.
They're teaching them how to fly and find their way.
How to migrate.
Nisida has moved from being just a migratory
bird refuge to being an endangered species refuge.
It's a measure of the work that takes place in the refuge system
and of the success they've had in the last hundred years.
When Aldo Leopold wrote his book of sand county Almanac,
he referred to cranes.
He wasn't talking about the whooping crane.
He thought they were goners for sure.
He was referring to the sand hill cranes.
He thought we were going to lose them completely.
Now we'll have 4,000 cranes come through very easily in a day.
Sand hill cranes are now quite common
but it's still rare to cite another Nisida resident.
We're looking at a wolf den.
It's a couple years old.
It wasn't used this past year but it was
used in previous years.
It probably had been a badger hole or some such
thing before and wolves came in and large did it.
Sometimes it's the habitat itself that needs saving.
We tend to think that prairie is the rarest
habitat but it's really not.
It's savanna.
Savanna is probably the rarest habitat left in North America.
It's an area where there are large trees where
the branches are just barely touching each other
and there's grasses underneath.
Savanna needs fire to go through it to clear out
the brushy species that grow underneath the trees.
It's really important that we get this burning
had done because there's some great seeds waiting
underneath the soil.
We didn't come back and if you
get a good fire over it the remnant seeds will come back.
There are wonderful treasures hidden away in the refuge system
and for a hundred years those in the national wildlife
refuge system have worked in all kinds of conditions
and all kinds of weather to keep these treasures safe.
We're a well kept secret.
A well kept secret.
It's well worth celebrating.
America has open wild places still.
A lot of the world doesn't have that.
We need to not take it for granted.
You can find out more information about the
Centennial Celebration for the National Wildlife
Refuge System by going to our website.
Again the address is www.org/inwisconsin.
That's our show for tonight.
Thanks for joining us.
We leave you with a look at Krex Meadow
State Natural Area in Burnett County at the height
of the fall season.
For Inwisconsin I'm Patty Lo.
Have a great night.
[Music]
Major funding for Inwisconsin 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.
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