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Coming up in Wisconsin, state corn farmers are growing a cash
crop that's fueling the future.
An art exhibit in Wasau leaves the imagination
soaring, and a former Olympic athlete inspires young
people to reach new heights.
That's coming up in Wisconsin.
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Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lowe.
Our first story tonight deals with a cash crop that
fuels more than the economy.
Wisconsin corn farmers may find a bigger market for their crop
if the Republican-backed energy bill passes in the US Senate.
The bill is scheduled for a January vote and contains
provisions that over the next eight years could
double the production of the gasoline additive ethanol.
Since most ethanol in the US is made from corn,
farmers have an optimistic eye on the bill's progress.
But not everyone is in favor of more ethanol
production, particularly if it's in their community.
In the first of a two-part series, producer Art Hackett
says the question of whether or not to roll out the
welcome mat for an ethanol plant has no easy answer.
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Ethanol typically is blended with gasoline in a 90-10 ratio,
90% gasoline, 10% ethanol.
Federal clean air laws mandate the use of ethanol
in some cities at certain times of the year, and
it's supposed to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
If you talk to someone promoting ethanol, you may
see a sticker like this one.
I was noticing the sign on the side of your hat there,
it says, "What ethanol, the tarot is big, what's
that supposed to mean?"
Well, we believe that the United States should become as
sufficient and fuel as possible.
We firmly believe that ethanol is a good way to do that.
Ethanol comes from corn, and corn farmers of which
there are many in Wisconsin are happy to have another
place to sell their crop.
Corn farmers are among the major investors in ethanol plants
such as this one now under construction in Columbia County.
Bill Herman is vice president of United Green producers.
We're hoping that it's going to increase the price the
farmers on the open market.
Typically, I think they say five to fifteen cents
of bushel is what you can expect corn prices to go up.
The plants owners also hope to make money from operating it.
In addition to the market value of their corn, they're going
to be able to get a dividend.
Just as if they decided they wanted to invest in general
motors or in some other corporation or mutual fund.
But in spite of ethanol's environmental purpose, citing
a plant is far from easy.
Our first site, we attempted to get the plant
located at Arlington, which is north of Madison.
And we ran into a fair amount of opposition there.
So the developers turned to the town of Randolph.
The town of Randolph offers a significant advantage
to someone who wants to build an ethanol plant.
That is that the town of Randolph is one of the few
townships in the state of Wisconsin, which has no zoning.
Being that zone, we don't have to rezone, we don't have to
go through a lot of meetings.
And it seems like a lot of these plants get
hung up in those areas.
In addition to being town chairman, David
Hughes is a corn farmer.
He's happy to see another market for his corn.
And his wife, we're both so impressed with the project's
potential, they bought shares in the corporation,
which is building it.
Hughes can see the plant's location in the distance
through his living room window, but he's not worried about
having it for a neighbor.
Is it going to be smelly?
I don't think it's going to be, I think it'll be less
smelly than when my neighbor here spreads manure right
across the road from me.
This is more concerned about if we were going to have
a lot of protesting groups that would make the board
in my life kind of not run as smooth as I'd like it to.
And we haven't had that.
Hughes knows all about protests.
From his back window, he can see the site that was proposed
for another ethanol plant, one that split a town apart.
In February 2003, the Dittian Company wanted to build an
ethanol plant adjacent to its grain mill in Cambria.
The idea was to take some of the byproducts of the milling
process and some additional corn and ferment it into ethanol.
The potential for jobs and higher corn prices should have
made an ethanol plant an easy sell in Cambria.
It was not.
There's a lot of potential problems that we have.
We're concerned about the air quality.
We're concerned about the water quality.
This site is in a wetland area and a branch of
the duck creek.
We're concerned about that.
We're concerned about the safety.
We're concerned about the truck traffic that this will bring.
The purpose of this meeting tonight is a public hearing.
At the February hearing, there were some
supporters of the plant.
I'm a fourth generation resident of Cambria.
And the reason that my family was able to live
here was because of a strong local economy.
If we don't grow, we're going to move backwards
and there's no in between.
Dittian Milling is willing to expand and invest
millions of dollars now.
But the crowd was overwhelmingly opposed.
It's far too close to the school and too close to the rest of
our village.
Our safety issues that need to be addressed.
I think the village board is taking this action by
movies so very quickly.
Following the public hearing, the village board put the
issue up to a referendum.
The ethanol plant was rejected, 236 to 163.
In that same election, the village president and a trustee
who supported the ethanol plant were thrown out of office.
But in Stanley, in Chippewa County, it
was a different story.
Stanley is the home of Ace Ethanol, Wisconsin's first
full-scale ethanol plant.
It opened in July of 2002.
Things are going actually pretty well.
We started up in July of last year and we got up to our
15 million's, our nameplate, which we tried to get up to.
That's 15 million gallons of ethanol.
Production is now up to 22 million gallons a year and
plans are in the works to expand the capacity even further.
Ethanol plants are sort of like packing plants where
people joke they sell everything but the hogs squeal.
At ethanol plants, even the carbon dioxide given off by
the process of fermentation is captured and sold.
And in the fields surrounding the Stanley plant, there are
other independently owned businesses going in, which will
make use of the byproducts, Ace Ethanol doesn't sell.
What across Roe is called Ace Biorefinite.
What Ace Biorefinite will do is take
some of the sugars out of the fermentation that we
don't ferment into alcohol.
They take some of those sugars and they break them down
into pharmaceutical sugars and into food for the food
industry and things like that.
Colesca says the ethanol plant and the other businesses that
feed off of it will eventually employ about 100 people.
And unlike the concerns raised by the people in
Cambria, there have been few complaints from neighbors
that the plant in Stanley.
But there is one problem.
The plant failed the Wisconsin
DNR's emissions tests.
DNR documents show the plants dryer emitted nearly twice
the amount of volatile organic compounds the permit allows.
In particular, emissions were also above the limit by about
40%. In May of 2003, Ace Ethanol was served with notice
that it was in violation of Wisconsin's clean air laws.
Whatever limits they set and whatever we have to meet
for our criteria, we will put in whatever we have
to to meet that standard.
Colesca says to settle the pending litigation, Ace will
install a piece of equipment called a thermal oxidizer
which will burn emissions before they go up the stack.
A state justice department official says some sort
of a fine is also likely.
The DNR's complaint against the plant in Stanley was just one
of the documents in the bundle passed out by Dunn County
Planning Director Jim Holbert at a board of adjustment meeting.
The board was being asked to grant a special exception
to allow construction of an ethanol plant in Boyceville,
which is north of Monomony.
This is a report from the Natural National Research
Council to the U.S.
Congress about the environmental
impacts of ethanol.
Opponents say it's not just an argument about the
environment, it's an argument about energy economics.
The production of ethanol takes as much or more energy to
produce than what it is worth.
That's why ethanol is more expensive than gasoline
produced from oil imported from the Middle East.
Thus the idea that burning ethanol will help to
reduce dependence on foreign oil is suspect.
And politicians from both parties are critical of
the tax subsidies given the ethanol industry.
An energy economist offered a reason why.
Why subsidize ethanol?
Well sometimes we make decisions
in society that the long term interest of developing
some product shouldn't have to wait around for all of the
market pressures to bring that product into the market.
Richard Chatton, who lectures on energy economics at the
University of Wisconsin, points out that the cost of
a gallon of gasoline doesn't include the full environmental
price tag of oil production.
Or the cost of the military force needed to preserve
stability in the Middle East.
As for the cost of the energy it takes to produce ethanol.
If they couldn't make money off of it, they wouldn't do
it. So that should give you some indication that there's
some positive flow going on.
So where is the positive flow?
If you only look at the energy content of the ethanol liquid
that comes out and compare that to all the energy inputs, it
looks like ethanol is a loser.
But ethanol isn't the only output product.
They take the entire stock, everything.
Corn leaves the stem, they kind of feed it through
one end of their machine.
And out the other end of the machine comes 11
products that they can sell into different markets.
And if you did an energy analysis, it would come
out as a positive flow.
The corn growers of Dunn County will get a chance to find out
if their investment in the plant is "Boon or Boon Doggle."
The board of adjustment approved
the exception needed to build the plant by a vote of 4 to 1.
The ethanol plants in Columbia and Dunn counties will be
built by the same company that already operates a
plant in the city of Monroe.
Next week, Art Hackett compares the relatively successful
Monroe plant with one built by a different company just
across the Illinois border.
The Illinois plant is drawing complaints from neighbors and a
lawsuit from the Illinois EPA.
You can also tune in later this week to "Here and Now"
for more on the ethanol debate in this state.
Here and now airs Friday nights at 7 and most of
the state Sunday mornings at 11 in Milwaukee.
The woman in our next story seems to have her own
endless reserve of energy.
Jean Driscoll is a former Olympic athlete and the
eight-time champion of the Women's Wheelchair Division
of the Boston Marathon.
This Milwaukee native is now fueled by a desire to
help young people reach their own success in life.
Milwaukee native Jean Driscoll has been a physical person
all her life.
How else do you get named number 25
on sports illustrated for women's list of the top 100
athletes of the 20th century?
Driscoll recently traveled to Wisconsin Dells to visit a
place that helped launch her on her path to the Olympics.
When I was here at Camp Wabick, it didn't matter that my
legs were not strong.
Here at Camp Wabick, I started
learning the lessons that I was talented in some ways
and I did have abilities and I could help other people.
Other people didn't just always have to help me.
I grew up in Milwaukee.
I'm one of five kids.
I was the only kid with a disability
at my grade school.
So I always felt like I was on
the bottom of the totem pole.
Driscoll, who was born with Spina Bifida, was a poster
child for the Milwaukee Easter Seal Society.
So I was always expected to go up and get hugged and
held by strangers and I was so shy I did not like that.
But I got out of school for some really fun activities.
When she was at school, her favorite activities were sports.
I think a lot of kids who grow up with disabilities
myself included.
You become accustomed to sitting on
the sidelines and watching everybody else in grade school.
I loved basketball and I got to be the manager and
I loved volleyball and I got to be the scorekeeper.
Despite her leg braces, she loved physical activity,
especially swimming and biking.
Ironically, it was a bike accident that led
to her athletic career.
And when the doctor told me that I was going to have
to start using a wheelchair, I thought it was terrible.
I thought my life was over.
I thought, "What can you do if you're in a wheelchair?"
At first I saw the chair as being something that was going
to make me dependent, but the reality was that something
that allowed me independence.
The wheelchair also freed Drisco from a lifetime of sitting on
the sidelines at sports events.
But she was reluctant when a classmate at Milwaukee's
Custer High School invited her to try wheelchair soccer.
And I thought, "No way, it's going to be stupid and hunky,
it's not legitimate sport, I'm not going to go do it."
Well, when I got to the soccer practice, chairs were
crashing and banging bodies were flying all over the place.
I thought, "Wow, this is sport."
It was so fun.
And then, after wheelchair soccer, I found out about
wheelchair football and wheelchair ice hockey,
and tennis, and basketball, and all these different sports.
And I started to realize, "I've got some talent, maybe I can
do something with these sports."
Drisco got her started wheelchair sports in
Wisconsin, but her ability to truly accept it.
Drisco got her started wheelchair sports in
Wisconsin, but her ability to truly accept it.
Drisco got her started wheelchair sports in Wisconsin,
but her ability to truly excel was realized at the
University of Illinois, a national leader in
wheelchair sports programs.
From there, she launched her wheelchair racing career,
eventually winning the Boston Marathon a record eight times.
Jean Drisco also won 12 medals at the Paralympics and two
silver medals at the Olympics.
A very important lesson that people with disabilities
can learn is that they have strength inside that can
enable them to do almost anything that they want.
Jean, you get your own right there?
Nice job.
Go make it!
Nice job, Megan.
People with disabilities are not necessarily frail and
they're not necessarily weak and they don't necessarily
need to be treated special.
Good job, sweetie.
I'm a real heart for encouraging people, I have a real heart for
encouraging kids, particularly kids with disabilities.
When I was thinking about the comments I wanted to make to
the kids here at Camp Wabik, I was thinking of ways to help
them put their disabilities in the background so to speak,
help them feel some of the same things that I felt when
I used to come here to camp.
Camp Wabik, the oldest Easterseals camp in the
nation, was founded near Wisconsin Dells in 1938.
I was remembering coming in that door and being
in one of these beds.
It's cool.
We probably were whispered after lights were out.
That's the same thing we do.
It is amazing to me the vision that Easterseals had in creating
this camp, the vision that they had to serve people who
have disabilities and help them be just like everybody else.
Is that sound like a good deal?
Give me five.
Good stuff.
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Guys!
[Cheering]
I think a lot of people overlook the importance of sport and
fitness for people who have disabilities, not just from
the health standpoint and the strength standpoint, but also
psychologically and emotionally.
You learn how to make decisions, you learn how
to be part of the team.
If you have a physical disability, oftentimes grown-ups
do not encourage their kids to get involved in sports
activities because they're afraid that they're going to
hurt themselves even more.
But what happens if somebody in a chair falls down?
Well, they get back up just like somebody
who doesn't use a chair.
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I think kids need to see that other people have
broken through some of those barriers and have gone beyond
some of those limitations.
They embrace that opportunity to show kids and say, look,
I was there too, and this is how I used to think.
But now I'm here and these are the things I've experienced.
And you can do this and you can do so much more.
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We move now to Wasa, where thousands of visitors
migrate each year to the Lee Yawke-Witzen Art Museums,
Birds in Art exhibit.
The Jury International Art Show brings the best
in Bird Art to Wisconsin.
This event began 28 years ago and has grown into
a yearly phenomenon.
The exhibit closed in November, but for bird and
art lovers around the state who didn't have an opportunity
to get to Wasa, we bring you this flight of fancy.
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It's fall, migration time, the annual event
of Birds on the Wing.
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There are birds on the wing of a different sort at the Lee
Yawke-Witzen Art Museum in Wasa.
It's the Museum's annual Birds in Art Show, a Jury
International Art exhibition that brings the best in Birds
to Wisconsin.
Birds of every stride and every hue, museum
curator Andy McGiven.
In this exhibition we have 124 works and we have 112
artists within the exhibition.
112 artists from around the world, Ireland.
South Africa.
France. Artists from around the world,
birds from around the world.
Costa Rica.
England. Endpoint South.
It is as though a global artistic aviary landed on
the walls here in Wasa.
So how did it end up here?
This international show that is
unlike any other in the world.
It began really on a lark.
The founders of the museum, John and Alice Forrester,
decided to open the museum to house the collection, a glass
and porcelain collection.
And they thought they'd throw in a temporary exhibition and
they thought, well what's good?
We're going to open in the fall.
What's a good exhibition?
Well I got all this migration.
Why don't we do birds?
They did birds and it was a brilliant success.
The exhibition was initially going to be a one time
exhibition to open the museum.
And it was so popular that we decided we'd turn
it into an annual event.
So every year, for 28 years, a flock of art birds
congregates at Lea Yauke.
There is something about birds as subject matter.
Well if you think about birds, they're elusive and
yet everybody sees them.
You never get close enough to really touch them.
A lot of times you need binoculars to study them.
And here we can walk right up to them and study
detail, postures, things that you may never notice.
An artist has been studying for years.
Through the artist's eye, three different takes on feathers.
A black-billed magpie in Rocky Mountain National Park.
A snowy owl in mid-flight.
A tail feather from a ring-necked pheasant
painted on basswood.
Birds in all their detail.
Birds in their landscape.
Appeals Paragrin Falcon in pursuit of horned puffins
in the illusion islands.
Woodstorks shadowed by an elephant in Africa.
Rock dogs making the scene at a movie marquee in Oklahoma.
Some of the artists are painters and they'll paint a bird once.
While those artists will get into the exhibition,
others are bird fanatics.
And they live birds.
They eat and breathe birds.
And they know everything there is to know about them within
their corner of the world.
Of course it is how they express their world that makes the art.
Compare artist Robert Flynn's untitled peep series.
With the Trump Law, fool the eye style, featured in Harle
Masses, the Taste of Grapes.
There is a taste of something special here in Warsaw.
The exhibit and the museum I think is a real
plus for the community.
In terms of museums or cities this size, 35,000, 40,000,
we've got a really nice museum.
And you don't see this very often in many
communities this size.
Warsaw's International Migration of Art Birds.
An annual flocking of a very wonderful kind.
Thanks for joining us tonight.
Next week we'll be off for Christmas.
But just for a day, we'll be back on the air and
most of the state, Friday, December 26th at 7pm.
It's a special episode of In Wisconsin featuring here and
now commentator Michael Perry.
We leave you now to enjoy a win-tree walk through
Frog Lake in Iron County.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
Good night.
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