Wisconsin Public Television

Transcript: In Wisconsin

Original Air Date: July 2006

Patty Loew:

Welcome to our summer season of "In Wisconsin." This week, we're at Peninsula State Park in Door County. Hello, everyone. I'm Patty Loew. You know, this is the number one camping destination for Wisconsin. We're going to show you more from Peninsula State Park a little later in the program. But first, find out why some Green Bay suburbs chose to pass up a nearby drinking water supply for one more than 35 miles away.

Man:

I don't think that was ever a real issue as to a mayor or village president saying, damn it, we're going to do whatever it takes to avoid Green Bay.

Loew:

This mother's child has autism. Find out what the girl's therapist is doing that's music to her mom's ears.

Woman:

There is a song that came into her life, and she has become a different child.

Loew:

And do you remember learning in history class about the Great Butter Battle? Well, maybe not, so we'll take you back in time to the state skirmish over toast spread.

Woman:

There's no crime to bringing old yellow oleo to the state. (Woman eats something) That's the crime.

Loew:

All that coming up, "In Wisconsin."

Loew:

Peninsula State Park features beautiful views of Lake Michigan. It's a body of water that's not only popular as a vacation spot, but also as a source of drinking water. Lake Michigan is figuring prominently in an argument Green Bay and its suburbs are having over the best way to replace radium-contaminated well water.

Man:

I don't mind drinking this water, I do drink this water all the time. Pretty tasty, too. I don't mind drinking it.

Art Hackett:

Bob and Katie Van den Heuvel were among the first people to move into their subdivision in the rapidly growing Green Bay suburb of Bellevue.

Katie Van den Heuvel:

When we built our home almost 20 years ago, this was all field, all field.

Hackett:

Water for the Van den Heuvel's home and all the new ones in Bellevue is pumped from wells, but Bob Van den Heuvel, a realtor who also serves on Bellevue's planning commission, says that's no longer a viable option.

Bob Van den Heuvel:

The hardness is there, and also the EPA has indicated that we have too much radium in our water.

Hackett:

Radium is an element frequently found in hard water. It's linked to immune problems, anemia, and some forms of cancer.

Katie Van den Heuvel:

I'm not that particularly fussy about the taste. My contention is you don't know what the long-term ramifications are, so --

Hackett:

Of the radium.

Katie Van den Heuvel:

Right.

Bob Van den Heuvel:

Bellevue probably has the most severe case of water problems, but so the surrounding communities have the same problem.

Hackett:

This is the solution to those problems. A pipeline which will run southeast all the way to Manitowoc. That city draws its water directly from Lake Michigan.

This is the pipe. Each section is four feet around and 50 feet long. Each one costs between $6,000 and $7,000. The section of the pipeline that's this big around is about 35 miles long.

With installation, debt service, and other costs, it works out to about $110 million dollars, plus another $$25 million to expand Manitowoc's water treatment plant. It should be complete and in service by the end of 2006. What may be debated beyond that point whether this represents the best in cooperation between local governments, or the worst of in-fighting among them.

John Brogan:

In my opinion it's a combination of urban/suburban fear.

Hackett:

John Brogan is a paper industry executive who served more than 25 years on the Green Bay Water Commission. That city is divided by a river and is on a bay. But the local surface water is not fit to drink. When the city of Green Bay and the suburbs built water systems, they relied on wells until the mid 1950's.

Brogan:

Green Bay and the few suburbs were drawing 13 million gallons a day off the aquifer, and it was dropping like a rock.

Hackett:

The solution then, as now, was a pipeline. In 1957, Brogan's father helped build a link to the clean Lake Michigan water off Kewaunee. Brogan said when Green Bay stopped pumping water, the suburb's wells started to recover.

Brogan:

And bingo, they're flowing wells all over. Then it started to drop in the 1960's, and drop in the 1980's, and then they had this water quality problem. As it dropped, it got more and more heavy metals in it.

Ron Umentum:

Some of the local communities found out their water levels were dropping and we were basically mining water. We were chasing water. As you go down in the well, if the water quality isn't as good as it is when it's on the top. So you're drawing off like the bottom of the barrel.

Hackett:

Bellevue public works director Ron Umentum is the president of the Central Brown County Water Authority. It's an association of six suburbs which banded together to build the pipeline. But before they decided to do that, the suburbs first approached the city of Green Bay about a combined water system.

Paul Jadin:

Central Brown County water authority brought us proposals that would have had us serving them in a conventional way. In other words, using our pipe.

Hackett:

After all, Green Bay already had invested in the pipeline to Kewaunee and a treatment plant to process lake water.

Brogan:

Some of the biggest suburbs are adjacent to Green Bay's water.

Hackett:

But it turned out Green Bay wasn't alone in wanting to sell lake Michigan water.

Nilaksh Kothari:

Essentially I had picked up the phone and called them and said, look, if you are looking at different options, you might want to consider Manitowoc as one of your options.

Hackett:

Nilaksh Kothari says Manitowoc had just update t its water treatment plant in the late 1990's. To avoid a repeat of Milwaukee's crypto-sporidium problem, they employed microfiltration.

Kothari:

We had a provision for additional capacity to be added without adding new buildings. And at the same time when we build a microfiltration plant, we had also retired the other plant. And there was also a lot of additional radium level in the filtration facility as part of that project.

Kevin Crawford:

And we created the plant to be a regional water supplier. We didn't know who our customers would be, but we wanted to have a very easily expandable plant and decided on this technology.

Hackett:

Mayor Crawford predicts we are entering an era where there will be lots of cities looking to import lake water. If you live in one of those cities, he said it would be worthwhile to look at the struggles between Green Bay and its suburbs. Crawford said people are used to the problems with water based on local water supplying local users.

Crawford:

The Green Bay operation wanted the people in the suburbs to pay for their deteriorating underground infrastructure. We didn't have any such needs. First of all, our infrastructure is in great shape comparatively speaking. But more importantly, we were just in the process and had the desire to sell water. We didn't have any of the relationships that had been done over the years.

Hackett:

Green Bay, in turn, had to be fair to the existing customers, which included the area's paper mills.

Brogan:

What the suburbs wanted was for us to sell them wholesale water at 43% below the cost that we were selling it to the mills at.

Umentum:

I think it was July of 2004 we opened up those bids, and it came out that Manitowoc could offer us a better up-front rate. Unfortunately, we still had to build this pipeline.

Hackett:

Brogan, meanwhile, says the economics of the deal will shift against the suburbs as the pipeline to Manitowoc ages and needs maintenance.

Brogan:

And when asked at some meetings about how they intend to provide for that, their answer was, we're not going to provide for it. Whenever anything wears out, we'll borrow more money.

Hackett:

As the pipeline crews worked their way towards the lake, the trench is open for less than a couple of hours. The pipeline crews quickly bury the pipe and grade the surface smooth. The local officials are now trying to bury the dispute.

Jadin:

I don't think that was ever a real issue as to a mayor or a village president saying, damn it, you know, we're going to do whatever it takes to avoid Green Bay.

Umentum:

Well, I always hate to say the it was the result of a feud. I guess it was the result of a break in the negotiations, because I always think that maybe not today, but in the future, we have two pipelines, two systems that we can still probably enhance each system by an interconnect.

Hackett:

Who knows? Maybe someday the city and the suburbs that once turned their backs on each other may be able to back each other up.

Bob Van den Heuvel:

You know, we all want water. We all want good water, so I think the cost factor wasn't much of an issue.

Hackett:

And Bob Van den Heuvel says politicians might not realize people worry about other things besides cost when thinking about water, a safe and secure supply, and that all-important matter of taste.

Bob Van den Heuvel:

Sometimes if I drink Green Bay water it's got more of a taste to it than this. This tastes pretty good.

Loew:

An official with the DNR says there are 42 other municipal water systems in the state under orders to reduce the radium levels in their water. It's uncertain how many of them can or will use Great Lakes water as an alternative.

Loew:

Many of us find peace of mind in nature, even when it gets a little drizzly. You're about to meet a mother who is desperately searching for peace of mind for her autistic daughter. She found it in an unlikely source, a hip-hop song.

Frederica Freyberg:

Eleven-year-old Annie O'Brien hops on the morning school bus without a second to spare, but cutting it close like this is considered a wild success.

Becky O'Brien:

She would go to school late most days.

Freyberg:

Becky O'Brien said it used to take hours to get Annie ready an off to school.

O'Brien:

Once she woke up, she didn't know what to do next.

Freyberg:

Didn't know what to do next because nothing comes easy for Annie. Her mom says Annie struggles with multiple cognitive disorders, including autism. Her mom says even slight changes that can come with getting ready, like new socks or shoes, can set her off.

O'Brien:

She immediately falls apart and will become violent and hysterical, and it can lead to hours and hours of chaos. I used to be covered in bruises. She would kick me. I'd try to dress her physically, and she would just be pounding on me.

Freyberg:

That's what getting ready for school used to be like, until this man entered the picture. In-home therapist Greg Marshall. He was part of a team to help Annie and her family design a workable morning plan. Marshall says he got to know Annie by asking some simple questions.

Greg Marshall:

What's your routine look like? And she said, well, my mom wakes me up. She says good morning, sunshine. Then she opens the blinds.

Freyberg:

Armed with Annie's input and his own musical inclinations, Marshall set the child's get ready for school routine to song, and the light bulb went on.

Marshall:

This song is dedicated to Annie O'Brien.

Music: Good morning Annie - - how are you doing girl...

Freyberg:

From the day Annie's song first played on her bedside CD player about two days ago, Annie O'Brien hasn't been the same.

O'Brien:

Oh, my God! I mean, our life is entirely different. I mean, the man changed our lives.

Freyberg:

Now as Annie's song blasts its hip-hop beat each morning, Annie follows its tune. It now takes Annie 25 minutes to get up and get ready for school. No tears, no hysteria, and no violence, and her mom is calm and better able to direct the routine.

O'Brien:

I can help you get it on. You have two minutes left.

Freyberg:

Annie, I want to ask you, what has "Annie's song" meant to your mornings?

Annie O'Brien:

It has helped me so I get on time for the bus.

Freyberg:

But it's more than that.

O'Brien:

It's something for here her. I mean, it's called "Annie's song." She feels really good about it. Kids at school, this whole song has made her somewhat of a little celebrity. And because of her disabilities she wasn't a real popular kid with a lot of friends, but all of a sudden kids were like, oh, Annie, I'm so jealous of you. You are so lucky. And this is a kid who nobody had ever wanted to be with before.

Marhsall:

You see that song create bridges to her and her teachers and to her and her classmates. It's amazing.

Freyberg:

When staffers and the boss at the in-home autism treatment agency where Marshall worked heard the song, they knew their hip-hop therapist and fellow band members who produced Annie's song were on to something.

Dr. Andrew Paulson:

And it wasn't just the song. It was also the relationship-building elements of the music that was really intriguing to me. You know, I saw a little girl that was sort of on the fringes of her peer group, and wasn't really connecting in ways that we had hoped, and all of a sudden she gained in great popularity when she had a song, "Annie's song."

Freyberg:

And what so what did the boss, Dr. Andy Paulson, do about it?

Paulson:

What I did is hired them all and gave them jobs to create this music.

Freyberg:

And create they did, producing a hip-hop CD that they viewed this winter. Greg Marshall's group, the Figureheads, packed the Orpheum Theatre in Madison to kick off the new CD. The group's songs include titles like "Manners" and "Bedtime," working on daily living skills just as Annie's song does. The music also speaks to what's called regulation. That's what allows children to maintain a calm mood and recover from upset, so they can connect and communicate with the people around them. All the songs are designed to promote learning, and build relationships.

Paulson:

What I think is really cool is it wasn't written for therapeutic intent. It was written for fun, to give voice to children and families.

Marshall:

It just gets to know them really simply. It's profound, but it's simple, and that's why it can be done in music.

Freyberg:

And the group's music and message is spreading, mostly through word of mouth, they've sold more than a thousand CDs and performed at schools.

Paulson:

We actually got an email from a college student whose younger brother has autism, and she said for the first time I know there's people out there who really get at my brother.

Freyberg:

It all started with a girl named Annie and her trouble getting out of the school in the morning.

O'Brien:

Good job on time this morning. You have one minute to spare. The last two years her life has done nothing but improve. The only thing I can say concretely is there's a song that came into her life, and she has become a different child. Big kiss. I love you. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. Great job.

Loew:

Easter Seals Wisconsin is offering a new camp for autistic kids. It takes place in mid-August in Wisconsin dells. You can find more details on our Web site at wpt.org/inwisconsin.

Loew:

We found a picnic spot here at Peninsula State Park, which brings us to this week's Wisconsin's Retro Report, first produced in 1988. It takes us back in time to one of the most bitter fights in our state's history, the battle between butter and Oleo margarine.

Dave Iverson:

1967 was a tumultuous year in central Wisconsin, civil rights demonstrations, anti-war protests, and the Oleo wars.

Reporter:

Today we're in front of a Wisconsin supermarket asking people's reactions to the new legislative bill that has passed both the assembly and the senate which will make colored Oleo margarine legal in Wisconsin.

Have you ever used margarine before?

Woman:

Yes, we have.

Reporter:

Are you in favor of making it colored in Wisconsin?

Woman:

Yes, I certainly am.

Reporter:

Have you ever gone below the border and brought margarine in?

Woman:

Uh-huh.

Iverson:

Once upon a time, the only margarine we could legally put on our tables was uncolored. And we paid a task for the privilege. It's a dubious distinction, but in 1967 Wisconsin was the only state in the Union that still wouldn't permit the sale of colored oleo margarine. The Barbara Hackton, editor of the Wisconsin State Journal at the time of the appeal remembers uncolored margarine as being unattractive, a very, very dead white with a gray undertone.

Barbara Hackton:

Before the law was repealed you could buy margarine here, but it was uncolored, and it came in a pliable plastic, or some kind of a plastic packaging with a little capsule in the top, underneath the packaging, and what you would do is let it get to room temperature and break the capsule, and then you'd have to knead it. It really wasn't easy to get the color all the way through. It would streak. And when it first broke, it was really a hideous orange color.

Iverson:

Oleo regulations had been on the books since the late 1800s, not only to ensure some level of quality, but largely to protect a dairy industry threatened by a less expensive product that masqueraded as butter. Uncolored margarine had been taxed since 1931, but neither the lack of coloring, nor the tax deterred housewives from using the lower-priced spread. It simply drove many of them to a life of crime.

Woman:

This was brought to me by a neighbor that lives next door. I have to hold it? It was brought to me by a neighbor. She was not a criminal when she brought it, because there's no crime to bringing red and yellow Oleo into the state. That's the crime.

Hackton:

If anyone was going to Illinois or to Minnesota or Iowa, wherever, one would usually tell their friends that they were about to make the trip, and did you want me to bring you anything back, i.e., being margarine?

Reporter:

Have you ever used Oleo margarine?

Woman:

Yes, I have.

Reporter:

Where have you gotten it before the bill was passed?

Woman:

I probably shouldn't say.

Reporter:

You can say.

Woman:

Various states around Wisconsin.

Woman:

I would say this, you're considering higher taxes today, any tax that you would put on this spread is not going to stop the crime of smuggling and bootlegging.

Iverson:

By the mid 1960s, the national battle over the sale of colored Oleo had been won by the consumer, except in Wisconsin where skirmishes erupted annually in the legislature.

Man:

I think, gentlemen, that this is probably the most important hearing that you're going to have in this year's legislature. This is an emotional issue. This is an issue that is surrounded by old cliches and taboos. But I think that you've got to once and for all strip this of everything and just decide this, what is best for Wisconsin and its people?

Iverson:

Although repeal of the ban was all but inevitable, some were slow to give up the fight. The state senator of Darlington represented a large constituency of dairy farmers, and he was out to prove that butter was indeed better.

Man:

Senator, in your opinion what are the advantages of butter over Oleo margarine as a spread?

Senator:

Well, I think it's much more nourishing. I think it builds youth body-wise. I think it has a great deal of more energy into it, and it has really, honestly, it has a much better taste.

Hackton:

In the later stages of the fight in the legislature here, the senator from Darlington was loudly proclaiming that he could tell the difference between butter and Oleo. And of course, by then it was virtually impossible to tell. And there was staged, I've forgotten who did it, a very well-publicized test.

Iverson:

The taste test was staged by then state Senator Martin Schreiber. He was out to win a major battle that pitted his youth against his urban colleagues, his urban constituency against their rural ones, his confidence against theirs.

Martin Schreiber:

As I recall we had butter and we taste tested Oleo, as well as another dairy spread, which was a combination of Oleo and butter. So everything was going along swell from the standpoint of the taste test until the senator walked in and said, I know the difference between Oleo and butter. He says, I can tell the difference. And I said, may I give you a test? Sure, he said. I said, would you close your eyes? Better than that, he said I'll do it blindfolded. Who has a blind fold? So a blind fold was produced, and we, in turn, blindfolded the senator, and I gave him the taste test, and he promptly proudly identified the Oleo as butter, and from there on in I knew I had the battle won.

Man:

Ladies and gentlemen, in signing this bill it marks quite a milestone in the Wisconsin history.

Iverson:

The infamous taste test sounded the death for the Oleo ban. And in May of 1967 Governor Knowles signed a new bill into law. Colored margarine would now be sold in Wisconsin, but it would be taxed until 1972, the revenue going to dairy research.

Man:

And so now the deed has been done. On July 1, the citizens of Wisconsin will have the right to purchase yellow Oleo.

Woman:

I don't care about margarine very much, but I think it is a long talk about nothing, really. I don't think it's such an important thing at all.

Loew:

In 2004, the latest available figures U.S. residents consumed more margarine than butter, almost a pound more per capita. But butter advocates take heart. Since 1970, the amount of butter consumed has remained pretty steady through the years fluctuating between four and a half and five pounds per capita. Meanwhile, during those same 35 years, the amount of margarine consumed has declined by half, from 10.8 to 5.3 pounds per capita.

That's our program from peninsula state park in Door County. For "In Wisconsin," I'm Patty Loew. Thanks for joining us.

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