(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to Ann Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lo.
Each week we bring you stories about the people and issues
in our state.
This week, find out why some Lakefront homeowners
think the DNR's new shoreland development rules are all wet.
Join a class that's giving high school students
the tools to build a better post graduation future.
And roll up your sleeves for a visit
to an Italian bakery in Milwaukee.
It's the latest chapter of our video poetry series,
"Hot Out of the Oven."
We'll have all that plus we'll take you
to the nesting grounds of an endangered bird
found in Wisconsin.
- 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.
- Now that spring is finally here,
the construction boom is underway again
throughout Wisconsin, including along Lake shores.
However, some of the rules for shoreline development
have changed since the last building season.
The state natural resources board gave final approval
to a package of regulations last year.
They were enacted as a result of the state's
Jobs Creation Act.
Producer Art Hackett says the rules have become a symbol
of the many conflicts waterfront landowners
and public officials from Northern Wisconsin
have with the DNR.
(water flowing)
- If you own Lakefront property, 75 is a magic number.
You're not allowed to build the residence
within 75 feet of the water's edge.
And until recently, if you wanted to build a pier
or a flood wall, plant trees or grade the land
in that 75-foot zone, you had to get a permit
from the Department of Natural Resources.
It was the law.
- It gave us the power to look at projects more,
closely and the impacts to the public waterway.
And we could evaluate what types of impacts
it would have to the habitat and fisheries
and water quality.
- The DNR has a constitutional responsibility
to protect the waters of the state.
That responsibility to protect the water
extends to water foul like the loon.
DNR Wildlife Biologist Mike Myers says there's a connection
between the degree of development and the well-being
of the bird which provides Northern Wisconsin's
summer soundtrack.
- There is a relationship between presence,
absence of balloons on lakes in the level
of shoreline development.
We see that, we've documented that.
The more development on a lake, the fewer,
less likely to find a loom pair on the lake.
That we know.
- Enter the Job Creation Act.
Under that law passed in 2003, routine projects,
other than structures were, for the most part,
exempted from the DNR's permitting process
as long as the work was done to standards
prescribed in state rules.
But along the way to enacting those new rules,
people in Northern Wisconsin claim the standard
of where that 75-foot setback begins has become murky.
- You can tell the edge of the, what they're called,
edge of the lake is basically the edge of this wetland
pocket in here that goes around through here
and goes back all the way back.
Some, I want to say, for 500 feet.
- Surveyor Jim Ryan is referring to a property
unlike Tomahawk near Managua.
He was hired to survey the lot, prior to construction
of a second home.
Ryan says, "O-Nighted County's wetland map
"show the area next to the lake as a wetland."
The lake edge, known as the ordinary high watermarked,
was thought to be where winter ice sheets
had pushed up a ridge of soil.
But five years ago when the land owner
wanted to build another house on the property,
the DNR surveyed the site.
It decided the ridge had broken, the wetland was flooded and
was actually part of the lake.
- Terminant lines.
- This meant the new house had to
be moved further back.
But as for the existing house.
- His house that he had got to permit for
15 or 12 years earlier was now non-conforming.
His house only sits 20 feet from what they call lake.
75 feet from the open water out here,
but 20 feet from this wetland.
- Because the house is non-conforming,
the owner faces restrictions on remodeling in the future.
This dispute began before the Job Creation Act was passed.
But Vialis County Supervisor J.
Verholtz says as the new rules
have taken effect, the department has
become stricter about deciding where the
ordinary high watermark is.
- What has happened is now the DNR
has reinterpreted that under the Chapter 30 rules,
which is what the Job Creation Act is for,
and said no, we make the determination, the DNR,
make the determination on the ordinary high watermark.
- The DNR's position is that the definition
of the high watermark dates back to 1980.
The new rules will be consistent with that older definition,
and it's those rules and not the county wetland maps,
which are the final authority.
- And DNR Water Management Specialist, Jane Wade,
says because the Job Creation Act
eliminates most reviews for work on land along the shoreline,
the official definition of where the lake begins
is even more important.
- We'd still have jurisdiction, but we wouldn't have the
ability to look at it as closely as we did
before in the past.
So there might be more impacts to the waterway,
and the habitat in the water quality.
- As department officials in Madison
debated the rules with lobbyists for developers,
researchers like Heather O'Brien continued studying
the life of the moon on damn lake near Saint Germain.
O'Brien, who's a graduate student at UW-Milwaukee,
said she had to look for the birds in unexpected places.
- It's kind of strange this whole chain of lakes
that we're on right now.
- There's four very suitable lakes for nesting,
but three of the four pairs on the lakes
went and nested way back in these channels
where you normally wouldn't expect to see birds.
They don't like being shut in.
- O'Brien wonders whether the new houses going
up along the shore are altering the birds'
nesting patterns, loons normally avoid
narrow shallow waters.
- They usually feel really uncomfortable
in a situation like that, but three of the
four nests out here are back in these channels
where there's no human development at all.
- Deonr, wildlife biologist Mike Meyers
says the effects of development are already evident
on the chain of large lakes near Managua.
- Whereas that two lakes you saw only two,
and they're rarely successful at hatching chicks
on Lake Managua, pretty successful on Caligua saga.
So we're seeing the shift of birds away from
these highly developed lakes.
- Deonr biologist Meyers says the problem isn't just houses.
It's the manicured loons, which generate
fertilizer runoff.
It's the rock placed along the shore to reduce erosion
from waves and wakes, but also impede the
movement of wildlife.
The rules and the Job Creation Act
encourage a different type of erosion control.
- This is typically a thoroughfare for all the boats,
and so this is where we had the worst problem.
The work was done by landscape architect Dunn Benjamin.
He showed us this example on an island in Lake Managua.
Benjamin has replaced rock ripwrap and stone walls
with products like biologue, a barrier made of coconut holes.
- You can see that it gives you a very natural look,
and then the plants, as you can see,
are starting to adapt into growing into that log.
There's about 350 feet of the log there,
and also plants will actually be planted into that,
and so it'll break that wave action
so that we can actually get the plants established and growing.
And once that happens and the biologue will decompose,
then we're going to have plants in their place.
And so the plants then will make a very, very natural shoreline.
- The problem, says Benjamin, is that most of his customers
went along that looks like a golf course,
and local officials argue they've already been working
to keep the lakes clean.
The town of Managua was the first town in northern Wisconsin
that worked in conjunction with the Department
of Natural Resources on the Priority Lakes
project for Lake Managua, Pagasaga, and parts
of Lake Tomahawk.
- The DNR counters that protecting the lakes
is harder than it used to be.
- What we're seeing now is that lakes that were
in private ownership, perhaps one, two, three
landowners controlled the entire shoreline
through ownership, they're subdividing these lakes now.
- The Job Creation Act was supposed to be an accommodation
between people who think the more and bigger the houses,
the better, and regulators as he lawns, pears,
and rock walls as threats to a water resource,
the state is constitutionally obligated to protect.
- How the properties managed is going to have an implication
on what kind of wildlife features, fish features,
will retain on these lakes.
- The way it was intended, fine, but the intent has changed.
- At this point, do you almost wish they had never passed
the Job Creation Bill?
- The way it is now, yes.
- Despite some last minute snags,
the shoreland permit rules gained the required
legislative committee approval in late March.
They take effect Sunday May 1st.
The rules for pears were removed from the draft approved
by the legislature due to vigorous opposition
from property owners.
The peer rules go up for approval again
by the natural resources board this summer.
New rules for county shoreland zoning,
things like setbacks and buffers,
will also be up for public hearings over this summer.
We move now to a story about a very different
sort of shoreline construction.
The city of Superior and the town of Ashland
are the only two sites where an endangered bird
has built with man's help.
It's only nesting colonies in the entire Lake Superior basin.
The bird is called the Common Turn,
but wildlife experts believe it to be anything but.
(upbeat music)
- What I have like about the bird, the color,
the gracefulness, the agility,
the tenacity when they have eggs and they have youngs, they
are extremely tenacious and protective when we're
out there monitoring them.
- 26, there's two.
- We wear hard hats because they pick you on the head
and if you don't have a hard hat,
they pick you hard enough to bleed.
- Number 22 with three.
- The bird is the Common Turn.
- Number 10 has one egg.
- The focus of wildlife manager Fred Strand
and avianicologist Sumner Madison,
both of the Wisconsin DNR.
- In Wisconsin we classify them as an endangered species
and in the Lake Superior Basel, the entire basin
including all of Canada.
There are only two nesting colonies of Common Turn.
- In the largest lake in the world, Common Turns
are anything but common.
- They like coastal areas, beaches are peninsula's
and we humans also like that for industry,
for recreation and for housing.
- We've pushed them out of their natural home
but in an interesting turn of events,
we've also provided the two nesting sites
that they now have, unlike Superior.
- This is called Interstate Island up here.
- In the middle of the harbor of the city of Superior
surrounded by enormous freighters,
gigantic grain elevators and looming or dogs,
is Interstate Island.
- But this is the largest Common Turn colony
along the Wisconsin shore of Lake Superior.
- An island by default, it's a dredge spoil,
created when they carved out a navigable channel.
There are common turns here, about 200 nesting pairs.
You can't see them because they are obscured
by about 10,000 nesting pairs of ring-bill gals.
Common turns rule the roofs, however,
they are the only bird at the second site in Shwamakin Bay.
- The nesting site here in Ashland is at the end
of an old ordock.
- The turns were fond of the old ordock,
but it was rotting away.
So wildlife officials built them a new nesting site
in the old place.
- We got a grant from EPA to rebuild this island,
and this is what you see here as a new,
the old piling from the former site
and then the new island itself right up ahead here.
- A new island, a nesting site, safe from people and predators.
(crickets chirping)
As of this year's count, there are about 600 common
turns, unlike Superior.
- This is it.
Literally we have all our eggs and two baskets.
This basket of Ascentur Island and the other basket
is Interstate Island.
- All our eggs.
The common turn, so uncommon in Wisconsin,
survives in only two sites total in all of Lake Superior.
Two sites, man-made, provide the toe hole
for the common turn.
This uncommonly glorious bird.
(upbeat music)
- This week in Madison, there's an event
showcasing skills that could make young people
job ready immediately after graduation.
Wisconsin's career skills Expo promotes technical education
classes in high school.
One school that already has a very successful tech ed program
is Hartford Union High School in Washington County.
Producer Lori Gorman found that Hartford's tech ed students
have a very clear vision of their professional future.
(cars thudding)
Welcome to the Career Skills Expo
and Skills USA Conference, an annual opportunity
to showcase the state of technology
education in Wisconsin.
The event at Madison's Alliance Energy Center
brings together students, teachers,
Department of Public Instruction Administrators
and representatives of local business.
Deborah Luke's is Employment Manager
for Madison Gas and Electric.
- My job for Madison Gas and Electric is talent finder
and there's a lot of talent, future talent in this room.
And I'm here to be a part of them today.
Utilities for sure and many technical industries
are gonna be losing between 30 and 40%
of their future workers.
And in this state, that will cripple many of our industries.
- So we need all the support we can for technical programs
in the high schools and at the secondary post level
because we are not going to be able to run this state
if we don't.
- Tech ed at the high school level is not a new idea.
A generation ago was called shop class.
And nearly every home with a high schooler
had a bird house to show for it.
But according to Tim Lawrence, executive director
for a national technical education organization,
tech ed has changed with the time.
It's no longer the wood shop, it's no longer
the student building the bird house.
Students now in construction trades,
it's not only this competition, but in classes across
Wisconsin are building homes.
They're learning every aspect of putting a home together
from design to construction to sales.
So technical education in Wisconsin and across America
has changed with the times.
This is an economic development issue.
Absolutely positively.
American business and industry and the economy in this country
depends on people entering the pipeline
with these kinds of skills.
- Entering the pipeline with technical education skills.
A commitment to the future of Wisconsin's workforce
can be seen in Hartford.
Tech ed classes at Hartford Union High
are so popular, a 15,000 square foot addition
was completed in 2001, just for technology education.
- A few years ago we had more students
than what we could handle facility-wise.
And so they put a $2.9 million referendum
out to the community, it passed, and so then we're
able to add on, add more equipment,
more facility, and the students are
keeping the classes full.
So our local industry is looking for workers,
and hopefully we are at least pointing in the right direction
to let them know if that's something
that they want to do after they get out of high school.
- One program generating a lot of interest
beyond the classroom is the Vision Project,
a student designed and constructed single family home.
There are other house building projects
in high schools across the state,
but few are as all encompassing as the Hartford Project.
Beyond the construction itself, there are students
participating through classes and architecture,
cabinet making, interior design, - In the square and
in the hallways.
- Landscaping.
- That might be enough for them.
- And marketing.
- Give some background of the crews,
terms of the carpenters that were involved.
- Vital to the success of the Vision Project
is the involvement of the Hartford Rotary.
They finance the project.
And so the economic times sometimes don't
allow high schools to take a gamble like this,
to put out money to build a house.
Right now the market's good and we're selling the homes,
but there have been bad times where the houses haven't sold,
and the rotary is willing to take that chance,
put up a house, and if they generate a profit,
that's great for them, but if they have
to absorb a loss, then they will absorb the loss,
and there's no risk on the high schools part.
Of course the school and local business
aren't the only ones benefiting from this project.
Student Cody Lumis sums up what he'll take away from it.
- An experience of a lot of time and a bunch of new friends,
and just like more knowledge.
It's improvement knowledge in the industry a lot.
- I always like doing construction stuff
and actually get a chance to build a whole house
from start to finish.
I don't know where else you could get an experience
like that at school.
And you get credit for it too, so that's nice.
- I'm a believer that employability skills
is something that every teacher should be teaching.
Not every one of my students is gonna go
into the construction business, but yet I think they all
need to learn the value of putting in hours,
time for hours pay.
And I hope that just by having the kids be responsible
for their actions, even though I'm out here talking to you
right now, I have no doubt that they're working inside
and trying to do the job that needs to be done.
- You can go anywhere to any construction company
and they tell them that you've been in this program
and you can pretty much guarantee the job.
- This is the 13th year of Hartford Union High School's
Vision House program.
The house featured in Laurie's story has been sold
and it was the first house in the program
to be certified by the local utility
as an energy star home.
The newest Vision House is nearing completion
and there's an open house scheduled for June 4th
and 5th in Hartford.
(upbeat music)
We move now to our final chapter in the Poems About Places
video poetry series.
Each week in April, National Poetry Month,
we featured the work of different Wisconsin poets.
Producer Joanne Garrett took these poets
and one of our videographers to various locations
around the state, the assignment to create a visual poem
based on the experience.
This week's Poems About Places takes us to Peter Shartino's
an Italian family run bakery in Milwaukee
and it features the work of poet Bianca Spriggs
and videographer Wendy Woodard.
(upbeat music)
- At Peter Shartino's bakery, I can smell them baking
beyond the mosaic of wheat that tiles the outside
of the building.
Beyond the seafoam interior and the strings of lights
and vines that illuminate Maria Del Lume
and Porticello.
The votive candle that burns, lures into maps of home
and the beaming faces of original owners,
their faith is fragrant.
Has kept the Shartino name outside for almost 60 years.
Has kept the display cases with their sliding doors
so a customer may gait at the sweet sins
and indulgences alike, cream puffs,
amaretti, cheesecake, pinwheels, strudal batons, casadas,
croissant, macarons, muffins, made to order
freshly filled canole and hundreds more, Lume and
svelter beneath a patron's gaze.
But I can smell them baking beyond all of this
in the metal, hum and heat of the kitchen.
(knocking)
They rise before the bread to mix and roll and march,
legions of vanilla biscotti onto metal sheets
to join the baking rolls with the precision
of a percussion ensemble.
(knocking)
Scraping and slicing and stacking,
they paste from the ovens to the work tables
over hardwood floors.
(knocking)
Their four arms are the size of loaves
and a glint of gold glimmers from their third left fingers
beneath the flower and dope.
They remain a family recipe of prosperity.
I can smell them baking from the street,
the warm blast of yeast and sweet,
the scent of home and time that dawns the walls.
Here at Peter Sharpeno's bakery, I can smell more, so much
more rising than the bread.
(knocking)
(singing in foreign language)
You can read Bianca Sprigs poem by logging onto our website
at www.wpt.org/inwisconsin.
Once at the site, you can also read the other offerings
from our poems about places, series,
and find out more about all of the poets involved.
And that's our program for this week.
Thanks for joining us.
We leave you with a video postcard brought to us
from one of our viewers, Harv Nelson of Washburn.
Mr. Nelson had his camera in hand when steel head trout
were migrating up the Sue River in Bayfield County last April.
Mr. Nelson tells us the trout started migrating again
about a week and a half ago, but then it got cold and
they were scared away.
He's hoping that it'll warm up soon,
so the fish will start moving again.
Enjoy and for In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Loat.
See you next time.
(water flowing)
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 and energy saving.