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- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lo.
Each week we bring you stories about the people,
places and issues in our state.
This week in an age of urban sprawl
and rampant development, enjoy the natural beauty
of the Bruehl River along private land
in Douglas County.
Land that's guaranteed to remain undeveloped forever.
Discover why mutant yeast may make for more ethanol
in your gas tank.
And meet an art teacher who takes her students
to new heights at Berlin High School.
We'll also take a look at a hidden glen 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.
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)
- Here's a trivia question for you.
What year did the first commercial test marketing
of a fuel that was once called Gasahall take place?
It happened in Holdridge, Nebraska,
where farmers fermented corn to create
what's now called ethanol.
The year was 1975, and this guy was present that day
as a young radio reporter.
You know him as in Wisconsin producer, Art Hackett.
30 years later, art still on the ethanol beat.
Last week, he brought you a report on fuel blends
containing from 10 to 85% ethanol.
Today's report has a new twist.
- The ethanol fuel industry and corn growers
are joined at the hip.
The letters on the side of his ethanol tank
in the Columbia County Community of Friesland stand
for United Wisconsin green producers.
Bill Herman of Columbus raises over 1,000 acres of corn.
He's also vice president of the corporation,
which owns the ethanol plant.
- It's been working out real good,
both for me as an investor, I think,
and also as a corn farmer for delivering corn up there.
- The Friesland ethanol plant buys 15 million
bushels of corn a year.
Some of it arrives in tractor-drawn wagons,
combined minutes before in a field of mile and a half away.
- Right now, the month of November,
we've got probably 80% of our corn coming
from within 10 to 15 miles.
- Well, the ethanol plant buys from both farmers and elevators.
And I think everybody in the area, farmers
and elevators alike are thankful that
that plant is there.
We're gonna use 15 million bushels of corn.
That means 15 million bushels of corn
would have to be hauled out of state.
So that's a big savings.
- Most people are realizing at least a 10-cent increase
in their prices.
A bushel, per bushel.
- Four ethanol plants are already operating in Wisconsin.
Two more are under construction.
A seventh plant and a former multi-operation
in Jefferson is in the planning stages.
It would be three times as big as any of the
existing facilities.
Demand for ethanol from these plants
would increase if a bill pending before the state
legislates your passes.
The bill would mandate all gasoline
sold in the state, be an ethanol blend.
The Department of Natural Resources estimates
that currently only about a third of the gas sold
contains ethanol.
- Even though most ethanol produced today comes from corn,
it doesn't have to.
In fact, while reporting this story,
I learned something about that ethanol.
I saw it being pumped into cars in Nebraska 30 years ago
that I never knew.
It didn't come from corn, it came from paper mill sludge.
In fact, if you talk to a researcher here in Madison,
he'll tell you the future of ethanol is not in the fields,
it's in the forests.
- Yeah, because if this runs too long
without having any nutrient in it, the cells get sick.
They'll just die, they'll starve.
- Dr.
Tom Jeffries is talking about yeast cells.
The yeast feed on glucose, the same type of sugar
found in cornstarch.
At ethanol plants, yeast turns glucose
from cornstarch into ethanol.
But the yeast in Jeffries lab are not ordinary yeast cells.
They have names.
She 21 and she 38.
- But what we've done is we've knocked out
one of the respiratory enzymes, and you see how
they're genetically engineered mutant yeast
designed to crank out more ethanol.
- What that does is that by knocking out the capacity
for respiration, we force these cells
to become far more fermentative.
They have to grow.
In order to grow, they have to use fermentation.
- And the mutant yeast are special in another way.
They don't just ferment glucose.
- When they ferment xylos, they ferment xylos to ethanol.
- Xylos is a different kind of sugar.
It's not only found in the corn kernels
that are fed into ethanol plants,
xylos is also found in cornstover.
The stalks, husks, and cobs spewed out the
back of the combine and left a compost
on the ground.
- And xylos is the second most abundant carbohydrate in nature.
It's found just about everywhere you look.
You go for a walk in the woods and xylos makes up
about 20 or 25% of everything you see.
And if you look out on a corn field,
xylos makes up about 25% of all the cornstover.
And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to develop
technologies that will enable us to convert the xylos
that's in cornstover and wheat straws and soy residues
and in hardwood residues into ethanol.
- Tom Jeffries is looking for uses
for waste from the forest products industry.
After all, he works for the US Department of Agriculture's
forest products laboratory.
It could be trees too small to turn into lumber
or paper mill sludge.
The brown broth in this beaker is from the wastewater
of a fiber board plant.
Jeffries is fermenting wood residues currently going unused
to see if they can be sources of ethanol
for your fuel tank.
- In many parts of this country, we have such abundant
wood residues that we don't know
what to do with them.
This is a big problem.
This is one of the reasons this research is being conducted
here at the Forest Products Lab.
It's because every year, every summer,
our country is ravaged with forest fires
because of overstock stands, because of small diameter timber
that in fact is so abundant that there is not enough water
to sustain its growth.
And so what we would like to be able to do
is to use some of those small diameter trees,
trees that are currently overstocked in regions
where it is very arid and use those for renewable fuels
and our technology will contribute to that.
- Well, today's ethanol economy can function
on corn grains.
The future may be an ethanol from other sources.
The ethanol industry is ramping up the marketing
of an almost pure ethanol fuel, E85.
E85% ethanol, only 15% gasoline.
Jeffries says its production will bump up against
the supply of corn.
- Can we run the United States on E85 only using--
- No, no way.
No, the demand is far too great.
- Jeffries and his colleagues recently licensed the use
of the mutant estes to accompany with two ethanol plants
in Iowa.
Within three years, they could be making ethanol,
not just with corn kernels, but corn stover as well.
- Eventually, they want to use this organism
or another organism that we are working on now
to produce ethanol commercially from corn stover.
- Assuming corn farmers want to part with the residue,
Bill Herman in Columbia County says he wouldn't be interested.
- Much of our land is a clay land that's a
low and organic matter.
So the corn stocks you see out here add to the organic matter
of the soil so I would not be interested
in selling corn stocks unless they were off
of some really low, higher organic land.
Else we'd be depleting our soil and have to buy
commercial fertilizer to increase the
nutrients in the soil.
- Farmers elsewhere with better soils
might feel differently.
And there's always all of that wood waste.
- It's abundant every year.
We make many, many, many times more biomass
than we use in all your entire energy economy.
But we can't begin to tap into that for fuels
until we solve the problem of Zylos fermentation
because it's so abundant, we can't afford to throw it away,
we have to use it.
- Ethanol fuel isn't without controversy.
While proponents touted as a renewable fuel,
there's debate about air pollution levels
from both the manufacture and use of ethanol.
Still, the state legislature is considering mandating
that at least 10% ethanol be included
in all regular grade gasoline sold in Wisconsin.
Also, Chevron and General Motors have announced a joint effort
to create a network of fueling stations in California
that sell an 85% ethanol fuel blend called E85.
Ethanol producers are considering opening
more E85 stations here in Wisconsin.
(upbeat music)
We often invite viewers to tell us about interesting people
or stories happening in the state.
Tonight, we're bringing you a story
that took shape from one of those tips.
Kathy Dickerson from Sun Prairie emailed us
about a children's art exhibit at the International Crane
Foundation in Baraboo.
Kathy said that of the hundreds of pictures in the exhibit,
the crane images created by students at Berlin High School
stood out.
This concept caught reporter Frederica Freiberg's eye.
She went to Berlin to find out what made this
artwork so special.
(crying)
The Hooping Crane, a majestic animal,
the tallest flying bird in North America.
Pollution and development nearly wiped the Hooping Crane
out of existence by the 1950s, but they are slowly coming back.
They now number about 400 worldwide.
That's thanks to efforts like those
of the International Crane Foundation near Baraboo.
I want these students to become passionate.
It's also thanks to a different kind of effort
on the part of high school art teacher, Paula Hansen.
I want them to know that they are the messenger,
that they are the ones who are sending a
message out to the world that we need to
protect our environment so that we can
protect the species.
Busy hallways at Berlin High don't seem to lend themselves
to the serious business of artistic expression
with an ecological bend, but enter Mrs.
Hansen's room.
She's talking about extinction and preservation.
What we're going to start with is our timelines
of the Hooping Crane versus a Sand Hill Crane.
Paula Hansen is licensed to teach art.
So that you create form, you create depth,
you create the illusion of the texture
that you're trying to see.
But while teaching art, Paula Hansen also teaches science.
Make sure that you create a habitat
that makes ecological, biological sense
to that bird that you're working on.
Mrs. Hansen is an awesome teacher.
Carly Horvath is one of the students
inspired to do her best work in Mrs.
Hansen's class.
Work like this piece titled "Some Set Crane."
It's among the works that are part of an international
traveling exhibit, an art exchange program
through the International Crane Foundation.
When we have people going to China or Russia,
India, Cuba, those countries are where we're going to be sending
those pieces of artwork to when they can go.
Carly says she has never left the Midwest,
but her artwork will.
And just thinking that other people in like Japan,
wherever they go, "Well, see it, it's just amazing."
So you're actually creating the illusion of these moving wings.
And that's why it looks kind of blurry.
This is Hansen once the artwork of cranes sketched on paper
to look scientifically realistic.
The message is not abstract, but believable in its beauty.
I use chalk pasta.
I really like it because they're really bold colors.
And if you make a mistake, it's pretty easy to fix it.
So when I make a mistake, so.
You'd never know it from Juan de Hoyos' finished project
in the art exchange exhibit.
He's back in Mrs.
Hansen's class for the second year,
working on another crane for the next exhibit.
It just kind of looks free and at peace and a wilderness.
Erica Grota says she's happy her artwork will make a world tour.
But she's also pleased people closer to home got to look.
It's just really neat to know that people actually notice.
But the integration of art and science doesn't explain
the whole reason Mrs.
Hansen's students create works that
stand out as exceptional.
I just feel that kids don't always know what
they're capable of.
They don't know sometimes what their potential is.
And as a teacher, you have to push them to their limit
and what truly throws me is when I see a student that
looks at their finished work and goes, "Wow, I did that."
Paula Hansen says her students are helping tell
the world about this beautiful, incredible bird,
showing the world what would be lost without them.
But she's not just focused on the world audience.
She's looking to impassion her students.
One canvas at a time.
These students now are talking about Mrs.
Hansen. I saw a sandhill crane in
the field and they had two little ones running around.
And now every time I see a crane, I think about
what we did in our class.
And I'm thinking, "Wonderful, it's working."
The International Crane Foundation tells us any school
or child can participate in its art exchange program.
For more information, check out the link on our website
at www.org/inwisconsin.
Helping to educate people about endangered species like the
Woothing Crane can pay off with very tangible rewards.
Working to help preserve animal habitat is also
rewarding, especially for people who own land.
In our next story, we meet one of those property owners.
Bill Rogers inherited wild and scenic land on the Bruell
River, land he fell in love with while visiting as a child.
Rogers had no choice but to keep the land exactly
as he inherited it, and that's fine with him.
Producer Joanne Garrett finds out why in our ongoing
series, "Unland Trusts."
My grandmother bought our place in 1949.
I spent every summer of my life up here growing up.
It was here from the first week of June until Labor Day weekend.
It's so much a part of me.
My blood flows like the river does.
The river is the Wabrull in Douglas County,
commonly called the Bruell.
It starts near Solon Springs and flows north into Lake Superior.
The canoeist and landowner is Bill Rogers of Superior,
a third-generation Bruell River fan, who summers
here as much as he can.
It's just a real treasure.
The beauty and the bounty of the Bruell has drawn
people in for over a century.
We've had five presidents that have been on the river.
The most notable one was Calvin Coolidge in 1928.
They could go anywhere in the world.
Why did they end up here on the Bruell River?
There was something about this river and the feeling that
brought these people here.
I don't know if there are many rivers that you can say that
five presidents have spent time on it.
It's pretty special.
It's special in large measure because of what
surrounds it.
The river is a rarity in the state.
This particular stretch of the river, because it
was privately owned at the turn of the century, was
spared the Lager's axe.
Everything else surrounding this section of the river
was cut.
When they cut everything, they cut up millions
of bored feud of lumber.
Then they left.
Unfortunately, this section was spared.
These beautiful old white pines and
norways are the last remnants.
Tourists came and stayed and built beautiful
lodges and boat houses.
It hasn't changed.
The windows are still the same.
The masonry fireplace, the screen
porch, the log exterior, they haven't changed at all.
This particular lodge we're going by right now
must be in the fourth generation, fifth generation.
That lodge hasn't changed.
Flowers change every year.
The lodge has not changed.
It's an unparalleled view of natural beauty and
historic charm.
In the 80s, it was a view in peril.
Development threatened.
In response, a group of brewery
river landowners, including Rogers' mother, worked
with their local land trust, the Nature Conservancy.
Together, the landowners each got a conservation easement on
their brewery river property.
What's a conservation easement?
Vicki Elkann, the director of Gathering Waters,
a statewide consortium of land trusts, explains.
A conservation easement is a legal agreement.
It's a binding legal agreement that
a landowner enters into voluntarily with a land trust
or can be a government agency.
Then it runs with the land.
It's attached to the deed.
All future landowners know that
this conservation easement is attached to the land.
The goal is to protect the land.
But the exact terms of the easement can vary widely.
In the case of the brewery river property owners, for example,
some easements allow for the taking of firewood, some don't.
The one that Bill Rogers' mom signed was fairly conservative.
She signed a contract that stated that she had to
maintain the property as it is, that she could not
add anything she couldn't put any more structures up.
She couldn't take any wood off.
She had to preserve this property just the way
it was the day she signed it.
The overarching goal of the easements was to protect
this view up and down the river, the view of
the river from the river.
It's protects the view from the sense that I can't
open up the property to give myself a better view.
I'm restricted.
I can't do anything about it.
The dead trees fall into the river.
We're supposed to leave them there because it provides
habitat for the trout.
I'm restricted as to what I can do and can't do.
I think that's great.
If you go to any of the lakes in the area and you see where
people from an urban area come up and bought some property,
and they'll make a lawn right down to the water
frontage. I mean, they'll turn it into this manicured
lawn which does nothing for any kind of wildlife.
This protects it.
This tries to keep the setting the way it
was and the way it'll always be.
The result?
You're looking at it.
Nearly 90% of the privately held property on
the upper brule, nearly 5,000 acres, is protected
by conservation easements.
The rest is in state forest.
The result is available to anyone with a canoe.
Views like this, most people don't get a chance to
experience. They're seeing something that hasn't changed
since the turn of the century.
I mean, these trees, these beautiful trees, where can you
go to see this?
Even though this is private property, we're
sharing it with them because they have access to the river
and they have a right to it.
So it's a wonderful experience for them to see what an easement
can do and what the property owners are trying to do.
Hello. What an easement can do.
Easements vary.
In some cases, a landowner can receive
payment for their conservation easement from a land trust
or a government agency.
In the case of the bro river property owners, they
donated their easements.
Most landowners are motivated by love for their land.
That's why they do these deals.
They also receive tax benefits if they donate this
conservation easement.
So they receive income tax deductions.
The value of the easement is taken off their state.
So their state taxes will go down for their children.
And then also they receive some property tax relief
for doing the easement.
But perhaps the most important relief that easements offer
is of a different kind.
It's a nice fish.
It's the future generations.
And as a family gets bigger, you'll
have some siblings that maybe don't have the same
relationship with the river.
Maybe they're in a dash for cash, they need some money.
So then you start selling off pieces or you start adding more
houses to it and it changes.
[Music]
You can go to bed at night and know that the next generation is
going to get up in the morning and see the same thing you do.
You see the light coming through, they're going to
hear the wind.
You're going to see the herons out here.
And it's not going to get bigger, busier.
It's just a time that we'll never change.
[Music]
Next week we'll continue our Land Trust series with a look
at how a landowner can allow for a combination of everything
from commercial development to natural preservation
on the same tract of land.
That's our program for this week.
Join us on Monday at 7 p.m.
for Wisconsin Public Television's
coverage of the Martin Luther King Day celebration
at the State Capitol.
Then on Tuesday we'll bring you live coverage of the
governor's State of the State address.
That's also at 7 p.m.
We say goodbye tonight after a winter walk at Parfrees Glen in
Sock County.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
See you next time.
[Music]
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 and
Wisconsin running smoothly.
A lion's energy offering energy saving ideas on the web.
UW Health providing specialty
and 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.
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