(bells chiming)
(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 dig deep to root out toxic chemicals
in the Fox River.
Marvel at the Inspired Creations at the Dickeyville Grotto.
And take part in the annual Wild Rice Harvest
of the Sikagan Chippewa Tribe, a harvest that
could be threatened.
All that plus a flight of fancy with an endangered
species in Wisconsin.
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the
people of a liant energy who bring safe, reliable,
and environmentally friendly energy
to keep homes, neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin
running smoothly.
A liant energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
The University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center,
providing cancer research, education, and treatment.
UW Comprehensive Cancer Center, comprehensive as designated
by the National Cancer Institute,
information 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.
- About 50 years ago, paper mills along the Fox River
started using PCBs to make carbonless copy paper.
For many years, those companies, along with the companies
that recycled the paper, discharged PCB-laden
waste into the Fox River.
Over time, health studies linked PCBs to cancer
and other health problems.
By the 1980s, it was clear, fish in the Fox River
were unsafe to eat.
Four years ago, both the state and federal government
forced seven paper companies along the Fox
to clean up their mess.
Producer Art Hackett reports that after decades of talk,
there's finally action.
- The cleanup started in July of 2005
in Little Lake, butamore.
The waters between Nina and Tamanasha
contain one of the larger concentrations of PCBs
in the Fox River.
Bill Hartman is overseeing the cleanup
on behalf of two paper companies that are paying for the
first phase of the project.
- This project for OU-1, which is just the first segment
of the Fox River cleanup, is will be the largest
environmental-triaging project in North America
when it's completed.
- The Fox's PCB problem began as far back
as 1954.
Rebecca Cateres of the Clean Water Action Council
has been advocating for the cleanup since the mid-1980s.
- We know that the PCBs in the river
primarily came from the pulp and paper industry
in particular paper recyclers, who recycled
carbonless copy paper that was manufactured
just down river from here.
- The plan was to start near Nina
and work towards Green Bay.
- This deposit is, we call it Little Lake
Buddha Moura, or OU-1, is about five miles long.
It represents the top end of the 39 mile stretch
and it contains about 700,000 cubic yards of sediment.
- While the first phase of the dredging began,
the DNR started testing and design work
for cleaning up the rest of the river.
- We hope that the design will be done
by the end of 2006 and that dredging and
remediation activities can begin in 2007.
We expect that it'll be at least 10 years after that
before it's been completed.
- But that schedule is in flux because of a surprise
the DNR found just below the Depeer Dam.
- When the DNR took their samples
and the shallows over on the West Bank,
they found a large deposit with PCB concentrations
as high as 3,000 parts per million.
That is 60 times the level at which the sediment
becomes classified as toxic waste.
- And they found upwards of 3,000 parts per million
which was four to five times higher than
what was ever discovered before.
- Dennis Holton is on environmental consultant
to the paper industry.
The discovery at Depeer is just one more complication
in a project his clients want to put behind them.
- You know, the law is on the government side
and the decision has been made and I think the companies
are having to move forward and try to get this thing behind
them as quickly as possible so they can start making paper
and not do something like this that keeps them bogged down.
- The DNR is now trying to move the stretch of River
and near Depeer up on the schedule
to as soon as 2006.
Bruce Baker is the DNR's representative
in the negotiations with the paper mills.
- It's relatively close to the surface
which raises concerns about if we had a storm
or we had some high water that that stuff could be moved
and distributed downstream or into the green bay.
- The accelerated schedule may not be possible.
- At that level, it requires special removal,
special handling and special disposals.
- Even the current phase of the cleanup project
is neither simple nor quick.
The consent decree with the state and federal governments
which committed seven paper companies
to pay for the cleanup was signed in December of 2001.
- It feels pretty good to finally be underway
with the cleanup.
We're very glad to see a good demonstration
of this process working.
- It's about 20 years now that I've been involved in it.
- Greg Hill is overseeing the on-site work for the DNR.
Three Dredges, one of which was built specifically
for this project, are involved.
They use cutting heads about two feet across
that scrape away sediment from the river floor.
The sediment is then sucked up into pipe lines.
- Of the actual pounds of PCBs in the river,
what percentage of them are in this deposit?
- It's about 10%, 15% of the total mass of PCBs
that needs to be removed.
- Upon tuneboats, scurries between the Dredges
taking core samples.
The samples reveal the outline of the next deposit
of contaminated sediment, the Dredge will target.
That information is fed into a positioning system
which the Dredge operator uses to guide the cutter.
Dredging the sediment out of the river is just the first step.
The Dredges pump the toxic material
into a two-mile long pipeline, which snakes towards
the highway 441 bridge.
The pipeline is so long it requires a booster
pump along the way.
Just below the bridge, there are 20 or so
huge fabric bags each one, 200 feet by 80 feet.
The Dredged material is pumped into the bags,
slowly inflating them like balloons.
- Right prior to the material, the Dredge slurry
entering the bags, we had a polymer, a cationic,
floculant that helps the sediments stick together
and release the waters.
The PCBs are all tied up to the sediments
or a hydrophobic compound.
We analyze the free water as it comes out of the bags
and again, as it goes into the river,
after the water treatment process
and we've detected no PCBs.
The water runs off in sheets.
It's filtered to a treatment plant
and sent back into the river.
Men walk across the tops of the bags
with gasoline powered vibrators to keep the fabric
from clogging up.
By the fall of 2005, the first material
pumped into the bags had dried out.
One by one, they were ripped open,
the sediment was littered into trucks
and hauled to a landfill in Kalimet County.
It will take 2,500 truckloads to move the material
from the riverbank to the landfill.
And some of the Dredge spoil will be sent out of state.
Material with higher concentrations of PCBs
is too toxic for any Wisconsin landfill to handle.
The DNR's Greg Hill says negotiations are underway
to dispose of that sediment in adequately equipped plant
fills in Illinois or Michigan.
The Dredging of the first section of the river
will take five or six years.
The price tag for just that one segment is over $60 million.
And Greg Hill says the first stretch of the river
is actually the easy part.
- Well, it'll be harder downstream
because a lot of the deposits are deeper
than we find in the whole U-1.
We look at down there and there's sediment deposits
that are five to 10 feet thick as opposed to in U-1,
which is anywhere between a half a foot and two
and a half feet thick.
- It's going to be difficult to find a landfill big enough
for that much sediment.
Rebecca Cater's is concerned the paper mills
will push for an alternative solution.
One option would be to encapsulate the fluid sediment
with a layer of sand and gravel.
The PCBs would be buried where they now lay.
The process is called capping.
The final record of decision does include some option
for capping in certain places.
So we expect some kind of capping to be
proposed downstream.
We're not happy about it though.
- Early on, the companies were looking at capping
the entire river.
- DNR Project Director Bruce Baker says capping
will not be the primary method for cleaning the river,
but in some parts of the fox, it may be allowed
as an alternative.
- In some places, it would be very difficult to dredge.
You would take out a lot of clean stuff
and so you can probably do a better job with a capping.
We've learned that dredging cannot remove all the PCBs.
I mean, if you do a good dredging project,
you still leave some PCBs behind and you probably want to
do some type of capping.
- Whatever happens, these kids strolling past the dredging site
will be adults by the time the project is done.
- The process really entails remediating the river
and then monitoring it for a period of 40 years
after you get done so that the cost keeps on going
as much as 60 years from now.
- What is important, says the DNR's Greg Hill,
is that the work is finally in progress.
- I couldn't be happier to finally get the mud
moving out of the bottom of the server.
As Art reported, two of the paper companies
with mills on the Fox are paying for the work now underway.
But who pays the cost of the remainder of the cleanup
has yet to be determined?
Next week, Art reports on the debate
over whether the mills insurance companies
should pick up part of the tab and the impact that could have
on other types of insurance contracts.
(upbeat music)
- The Fox River cleanup project is taking hundreds of
people to plan and complete.
Our next story details a project conceived by one man,
a man with a spiritual vision that became
the Dickeyville Grotto.
Producer Kermineckas takes us on a tour.
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The Dickeyville Grotto was built by Father Matthias Winerius
in 1925 and was completed upon his death in 1931.
The good friend that he had done a favor for
gave him a statue of Jesus and Mary.
And he was wondering how to display it for the public
to see and being from Germany.
He decided to build a grotto to house the statue.
- The word grotto itself means a small cave-like structure.
Grotto's were very common in Europe
and it comes out of the natural experience
of some of the local geography of the German people.
And they used to build little shrines
who would put a statue with a saint
or they'd put a crucifix of Christ.
It was a way of invoking God's blessing on their work,
their labor, and their fields and their homes.
It was a time after World War I, a real time of fear and worry
about people who were German who were Catholic as well.
One of the concerns that people had was that it was a time
for them to say that we can truly be good Catholics
and we can be as well, good patriots of this country.
And so Father Winerius built that into
what the grotto was all about.
They really tried to stress their connection
with liberty and with unity and working together
with all people to build up this nation.
- He had a dream to build this.
It was his life's work.
And it sort of snowballed and he kept building and building.
- Father Winerius seemed to have this master plan
and that he held in his mind and in his heart.
And there would never seem to be any blueprints.
There didn't seem to be any drafts or drawings
of this particular grotto available anywhere.
He had this in mind and he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
Probably like many of the great artists.
- It was a community project.
People were anxious to helping.
They were there to help.
- We were in school and he would need help to wash rocks
or clean something and kids could come from school
over in the basement and help clean up all that stuff.
Which was a big deal for us kids to get out of school, you know.
We worked all winter in the basement of his house
or whatever, his living room was,
he had no living room.
It was just rocks and rocks and cement and some more.
And he put that all together and in the spring
he'd come out and put it up and it all set.
And sometimes he'd work till late at night
but he'd go right at the next day again.
And sometimes on a grotto and he put stuff up there
and if he didn't like it, he'd put somebody with a cold
chisel on him, chisel it off.
So he'd put up what he wanted.
- Father and Mary used everything and anything
that anyone gave him, donated, brought to him.
He used even broken dishes and jewelry
and things of a personal nature.
The balls are around your shift knob.
Apparently they didn't work for Henry Ford,
so he sent them to Father when he was there.
There are rocks from all 48 states that they were then
and glass from the kilns in Indiana.
There are things from all over the world,
not only the United States, plus things from Europe
and the catacombs.
(soft music)
He had plans to do more because when he was working
on paper out of shine, he told the boys, "Wait
till you see the next one.
It will be even better."
Father, when Mary's was out on a sick call
and it was cold weather and raining and sleeting
and he got very wet, he felt pneumonia.
He died quite suddenly, but the parish and the
community were just, you know, all very, very sad
by his death and felt they lost a good friend.
Each year we have about 60,000 plus visitors
and they come with families.
They are senior citizens, people from all over
the United States, people from Europe,
religious people, people who have no beliefs,
probably people looking for something a little more
in their life.
They are odd with the grotto, no matter where they come
from or what their reason is.
I think one of the real miracles of the places
that people do find a sense of peace and contentment
and many ways a real sense of meditation here.
It seems to be a real place.
The God is present in that nature
and people seem to unite in a real sense of harmony.
I love the grotto and I think I know a little of what,
Father, and Mary's felt because the pride is there.
Once you've worked for it, you're very proud of it.
You just have a sense of pride of where are you from?
Deciville. Oh, I'm in the
home of the grotto.
(gentle music)
We turn now to spiritual traditions of a different sort.
It was a long ago prophecy that brought the
Sikhaagan Chippewa tribe to Wisconsin.
They were told to look for the food that grew on water.
What they found was wild rice.
But over time, this food became scarce.
Independent producer Michelle Danforth finds out why.
(gentle music)
Chippewa oral tradition, dating back to the 1800s,
tells of a prophecy that the Chippewa people
were to travel west from the northeast
to where the food grew on the water.
The food was wild rice.
Eventually, many Chippewa tribes stayed in northern Wisconsin.
The Sikhaagan tribe settled near what is now called Rice Lake.
Native Americans regard wild rice or monomon
as the sacred gift of their chosen ground.
It said, "Wild rice has always been generous
to those who gather and use her in a respectful way."
Wild rice was and still is an important element
of the Sikhaagan Moleic Chippewa tribe.
Each summer, the rice chiefs check the condition
of the rice beds and then decide in August
which lakes to open for harvestings.
And then when we get them harvesting,
we take our wild rice in this year.
We take and we put it out to dry.
We dry it in the sun.
We usually leave it for a couple of two or three days.
And when it's one stride, then we fan it out
with the birch bark baskets.
We get them fanning it, then we patch it over the fire.
Stir it until it's starting to pop, a little bit like pop.
Then we'll take and fan it again.
Then we'll put it in a tub and we'll get it up,
get on it and we'll rub on it with our feet
to get the hulls off.
The rice lake harvest is a tradition
that goes back for generations, a tradition now in trouble.
It used to be the whole thing used to be
just full of rice by 60 tall all the way across.
According to the chiefs, in recent years,
the rice crop has diminished to only 30%
of what it once was.
The rice chiefs and the tribes environmental department
were looking for answers and turned to a biologist
to see if a solution could be found.
They were complaining that the rice lake
wasn't producing as much rice as it had in the past.
And specifically that we're losing rice to the lily pads.
I took and looked at a lot of historical aerial photographs
of this lake probably over the past 50, 60 years.
Couple of things started jumping out.
The size of where the lily pads were growing
was getting a lot bigger.
And the other thing was that the cad tail stand
where swamp creek enters the lake had expanded in size
and it looked to me that it was blocking that flow
and diverting it straight out the channels.
Swamp creek is a small stream that feeds into rice lake.
And mole lake tribal biologists Justin Paleteer
believed that the flow of water from the creek
was crucial to the lake's rice crop.
To prove the theory, biologists recreated a water study
from 1977.
Biodegradable fluorescent dye was poured into swamp creek
and Paleteer then took to the air to see how the dye
flowed into rice lake.
Water samples at locations around the lake
were taken throughout the week to see if the
dye would register.
There's a huge difference between the health
of the wild rice that had flow was a lot
healthier than the rice that showed no effects of
the flow from swamp creek.
Based on the results of the study, the tribe
set into motion a plan to restore the flow of water
from swamp creek into rice lake.
And we decided to cut that cad tail channel
through that cad tail stand and hopefully restore that flow
like it was in '77.
And hopefully we'll get the rice bed back
to historically high levels in the '50s
where this lake was probably 90 to 95% covered with wild rice.
The tribe also removed both beaver and concrete dams
from swamp creek and began the delicate process
of manually cutting lily pads, one by one,
and hauling them off the lake.
In June of 2004, the tribe repeated the water study.
This time, there was evidence that the dye was able to travel
through swamp creek and into rice lake.
Evidence that the flow from the creek to the lake
is on its way to being restored.
One thing about wild rice, it's a season by season.
It's a weather to cooperate with everything.
And should the rice really take hold?
And just like now today, is that I'm well satisfied
with what I'm seeing out here.
It's really for us elders to see something like this here
is that we will believe in something behind
once we leave the surf and hopefully that
we have people to carry on to responsibility.
Since that report first aired, rice lake has continued
to recover.
Rice chiefs for the Sikagan band, Pieden Roger Magishik,
say this year's harvest was very good.
The beds have come back to cover almost 50% of the lake.
After the September harvest, they receded
13 additional acres.
We leave you tonight with a look at an inspired effort
to bring back an endangered species by using an ultra light
plane. The animal is the
whooping crane.
Four years ago, young cranes at the Nacita National Wildlife
Refuge were taught to fly behind an ultra light.
It was a successful effort to teach whooping cranes
to migrate some 1,200 miles to their winter resting grounds
in Florida.
This year, the group of cranes was the largest ever.
20 juvenile cranes took flight on October 14th.
We had a chance to witness the ultra light effort a few years
ago and hope you enjoy the flight.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
See you next time.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people
of a Lyand Energy, who bring safe, reliable,
and environmentally friendly energy to keep
homes, neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin running smoothly,
a Lyand Energy, offering energy-saving ideas on the web.
The University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center,
providing cancer research, education, and treatment,
UW Comprehensive Cancer Center, comprehensive as designated by
the National Cancer Institute, information
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.
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