Wisconsin Public Television

Transcript: "In Wisconsin"

Original Air Date: August 17th, 2006

Patty Loew:

Hello everyone welcome to our summer season of "In Wisconsin." I'm Patty Loew. We're here on High Cliff State Park on the shores of Lake Winnebago in Calumet County. We'll show you more of the park in just a little bit. First, discover why some of the most popular Lake Michigan beaches are often closed to swimming and what can be done about it.

Woman:

We have over 300 miles of shore front, so those beaches are very important, not just to the business community, but to the residents and to the quality of life in Door County.

Woman:

What's in there?

Loew:

Grab a paddle and join this man on the Grant River for his ambitious watery mission.

Man:

It's kind of fun to just know that you've sampled about inch of moving water in the state.

Man:

This is where you see if you've got the guts to play or not.

Loew:

Find out how these adults get their kicks from a childhood game. All this, plus we'll cast a line with some folks enjoying one of summer's favorite pasttimes, "In Wisconsin."

Every summer in Wisconsin, we hear about beach closings. This year there have been numerous closures and advisories for public beaches along the Great Lakes. In Door County, where tourism is big business, even occasional poor water quality is a big problem. That's why county officials are mounting an agressive campaign to find solutions.

Narrator:

Colleen McDermott drives an hour-and-a-half every Tuesday all summer to get to work.

Colleen McDermott:

There are a lot worse jobs than having to go to door county once a week and collect water.

Narrator:

She is a professor of microbiology at UW-Oshkosh. She drives to door county every week in part to check on her students. Her students monitor water quality at public beaches in Door County.

McDermott:

What we want to know is, has fecal material entered the water, because fecal material can contain a lot of bacteria, viruses, protozoa, all sorts of things that can make you sick.

Narrator:

Students bring their samples to a lab in Sturgeon Bay. They go through an exacting process to count E Coli in each water sample. They post a warning if the E Coli count is too high. On a Web site, colored dots indicate whether beaches are open or closed. At the beach, they post signs, yellow for caution, red for closed. A year before students began counting E Coli, Door County water made headline news. Sixty-nine people got sick after swimming at Nicollet Beach.

Karen Raymore:

We are known for our shore front. We have over 300 miles of beach front. Those beaches are very important to the businesses and the quality of life in Door County.

Narrator:

The Door County Public Health Department decided to monitor water quality at 28 public beaches. But the county didn't have enough money or a large enough staff to get the work done. Then, help arrived. In 2003, the Wisconsin beach program received money as a result of the Federal Beach Act. The money pays for monitoring at public beaches along the Great Lakes. Door county used the money to hire McDermott and her students, but McDermott wanted to do more than monitor the water.

McDermott:

We go through a process to determine what bacterial pathogens, those that can make you sick, are found in the water. Specifically we're looking for salmonella or shigella and for a bacterium called camphylobacter that people are less familiar with, but still caused GI tract problems.

Narrator:

McDermott also wanted to know the source of the pathogens, human or animal.

McDermott:

Humans are going to carry pathogens that make humans sick. If you are exposed to human feces that's the worst.

Narrator:

Tracking the source starts with collecting specimens for comparison.

McDermott:

So, a very glamorous part of the job is collecting avian waste. Gull, goose and duck are our primary species in Door County. Human influent, what comes into the water treatment plant, all of the potential sources that we can think of that could contaminate the water from people, from cattle, from dogs.

Narrator:

Back at the Halsey Science Center in Oshkosh, students work with the waste samples, weighing, mixing with a sterile solution, filtering and incubating. The goal is to grow colonies of E Coli. The next step is called DNA fingerprinting.

Todd Sandrin:

Much like we can discriminate between people with fingerprints from their actual fingers, DNA allow us to do something similar with micro-organisms.

Narrator:

The laboratory process starts with extracting DNA from the E Coli. It ends with researchers comparing the DNA fingerprints of a known source, like avian waste, to the fingerprint of beach water.

Sandrin:

This column of bands on the left represents a DNA fingerprint from E Coli from one potential source, perhaps avian waste, while the second column of bands represents a DNA fingerprint from E Coli, perhaps isolated from water. If this was the case and as you can see, these are very different banding patterns, this would suggest that the avian waste is not the source of the contamination at this particular beach.

Narrator:

McDermott's research shows that at city beaches have the worst water quality. That's because a stew of human and animal waste can mix into storm water that drains onto the beach. That's the case at Sturgeon Bay's Otumba Beach.

McDermott:

At Otumba we found everything. We found dog E Coli that comes from dog's fecal material. We found a little bit of E Coli that comes from human fecal material and the gull, primarily. Again, it's that mixed population of organisms. Unfortunately a solution then becomes tougher, how do you deal with this mixed population?

Anthony Depies:

At Sturgeon Bay, we have upped our street sweeping program to try and clean our streets as good as possible. We have not found other good solutions to that problem. The beaches are the public access to the water. And the storm sewer has to discharge to a public waterway.

Narrator:

McDermott's research shows that E Coli levels are high right after it rains. So Sturgeon Bay closes city beaches for 12 hours every time it rains more than three-tenth-of-an-inch.

Depies:

That first flush seems to be the big source of E Coli, because after a while, even if it continues to rain, our beaches clean up or have less of an E Coli that could be found in the water near them.

Narrator:

After we spoke to Depies, Sturgeon Bay passed a storm water runoff ordinance. The ordinance requires that commercial property owners reduce runoff and clean up the water that does leave their property. For the remaining runoff that reaches city beaches, McDermott suggests a solution.

McDermott:

Taking that storm water and extending pipes further out into the lake would help beach health, if we could bring it out further and dilute out the storm water instead of dropping it right on the sand at your beach where it's going to be a contaminating source for anybody that's swimming, particularly children.

Narrator:

McDermott also wants to find out if storm water runoff is the only source of pollution. Aging sewage pipes could be leaking. If that's the case, solutions be costly.

Raymore:

There is a cost associated when you are making major infrastructure changes to accommodate storm water runoff. But to look at it strictly as a cost, and not look at the economic impact of the travel and hospitality industry in Door County is really short-sighted. That being the primary industry in Door County, we're talking about the economic health of the entire county.

McDermott:

When I first started this work, I thought maybe we'd have problems that the people who are interested in tourism and commerce would not be receptive to some of the things we wanted to do. For the tracking and the monitoring and the fact that we could close beaches. But we've had very little problems. People are supportive and they want to know. They want to do the best they can for the community and for the people that come to Door County.

Loew:

Colleen McDermott tells us that she's spending the summer collecting as many rain samples as possible to finish her pathogen study.

Graphic:

In 2002, the National Resource Defense Council gave Door County the "Beach Bum" award...given to areas that "lack regular monitoring and proper public notification."

Source: National Resources Defense Council

Loew:

The man in our next story is also obsessed with water, but Rick Kark's interest is a more solitary one. It basically includes Cark, his canoe and some of Wisconsin's finest scenery.

Rick Kark:

We all collect something. I collect Wisconsin Rivers.

Joanne Garrett:

Fifty-eight-year-old Rick Kark is a man whose life has been defined by this notion. Kark is a retired doctor who spent the bulk of his working life in Eau Claire, and the bulk of his free time on water. Including high risk white water in the Appalachians, wilderness trips through the Canadian tundra to the Arctic Ocean, and a sense of a Grand Canyon in an open canoe. With Kark, knows water. He's determined to know Wisconsin's waters. Kark has a quest, to paddle 300 different Wisconsin rivers, an unofficial first.

Kark:

I am up to 255, I got to 100 and thought well maybe 200 would be fun, then I got to 200, now seems like 300 would be fun.

Garrett:

You don't do this kind of thing in Nevada. It's only possible in a state that's awash in water resources. That's us. Wisconsin has over 30,000 miles of rivers and streams. We joined Kark on an old favorite, the Grant River in the southwest corner of Wisconsin.

Kark:

It's a drift less area stream, meaning it's very old, not disturbed by glaciation. So it tends to be very slow and meandering, because it's had time to erode down and slow down. I think the nicest feature is these wonderful bluffs. I like the intimate small size.

Garrett:

But then Kark likes most rivers. His quest is driven by that deep passion.

Kark:

I just love the look of rivers, the look and feel of rivers and I love variety, I guess. I just love the new rivers, always new delights. Look at the blue heron. Paddling to me is just the perfect activity. Combination of how my body feels as the paddle goes through the water, the motion of the body, adventure of what's around every bend, the different things you see. It's perfect activity, I think. Moving water also has just a beauty of its own. Swirls, eddies, the back waters, the changing lighting and the shimmering of the water, reflections of the sky, are magnified by moving water. Incredibly beautiful places. Highways through beautiful places.

Garrett:

Kark admits he likes the challenge, the push of trying to hit 300. But the number is really just a means to an end.

Kark:

It's kind of fun to just know that you sampled about every inch of moving water in this state, it's such a beautiful state. The quest is not the most important thing. The most important thing is just being in beautiful places and doing something I really enjoy. Journey is done.

Garrett:

This day's journey is done. But for Kark, ever the hard core, the quest keeps going.

Kark:

If the daylight doesn't disappear, I might paddle the Platte River, not too far from here.

Garrett:

Yep, one more river.

Kark:

Little Platte is a new river, it would be 255.

Loew:

Rick Kark has now canoed more than 280 rivers. His recent favorites include the Onion and Pigeon Rivers near Sheboygan. While Kark's hobby is quiet and reflective, the pasttime enjoyed by the people in our next report is anything but.

Man:

Let's get going. Come on, Michelle. Let's give it a ride.

Woman:

What? Kickball? Like with the big red ball?

Man:

You mean kickball, when you're on recess with the big red rubber ball.

Woman:

I can't believe at your age you're playing kickball.

Joe Szatmary:

It is kind of put on a shelf, and you know, just left as a childhood thing, and then people dust it off and they see that it's so fun.

I'm the founder and commissioner of American Unconventional Sports Association. We're located in Milwaukee, St. Paul, Minneapolis area, Green Bay, Madison, and Port Washington.

Man:

It's a kids' game. It's something that kind of reminds you of how you were when you were a kid.

Chris Camilotto:

You know, you don't have to have a whole lot of talent to play. That shows sometimes I guess, but--

Szatmary:

It's all good natured fun, and you know, everyone is really into playing that.

Courtney Nelson:

It's nice to get together and see each other every week. You keep in touch that way, and it's a lot of my family, step brothers, step sisters.

Dan Adelman:

It's just usually like a-- it's almost like a big party. They're out here. They're drinking the whole time basically.

Man:

Top of the ninth, you're down 3-2, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? This is what kickball comes down to. This is where you see if you've got the guts to play or not. Ain't no pressure. You guys are down by one. Ain't never won a game before.

Man:

Never won yet.

Man:

This is the last game potentially.

Nancy Laning:

Oh, we've been waiting for this for a long time, and we needed this wind to keep our momentum going.

Greg Kirschling:

It feels like we won the Super Bowl.

Graphic:

Indulge in another summertime treat on August 19th...it's National Ice Cream Day! Do you know where the first ice cream sundae was created? Ed Berner's Ice Cream Parlor in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Source: whatscookingamerica.net

Loew:

Time for this week's Wisconsin Retro report. Fishing is a passion shared by many in Wisconsin. In this report from 1999, we meet two women who are making the most out of a lazy day of casting for the big one.

Woman:

Oh that's right, that helps. I forgot about that.

Woman:

If we get lucky, an overcast day is better for fishing, but if it's sunny today, the grasshoppers, ants and beetles might be good for fishing.

Narrator:

Fishing can sometimes involve a fair amount of fusssing. Fly fishing in particular.

Woman:

Which direction do I put this?

Woman:

You're going to want to reel with your left hand.

Narrator:

The two women here getting their gear together consist of an old pro and an eager novice.

Woman:

I think you reel with your left hand.

Woman:

I can't remember it's been awhile.

Narrator:

Sarah Johnson and Stephanie Limboff, both will tell you that you don't need a wad of cash to hit Wisconsin's creeks and streams.

Woman:

My first pair of waders I got for $19 at K-mart with an old pair of tennis shoes and a borrowed rod. So you don't have to have a bunch of stuff.

Narrator:

What is necessary is a great enthusiasm for learning.

Woman:

We'll get right down in here, the fish right up around the corner to right up in there. We took some fish out of there the other day.

Woman:

What were you taking out, browns?

Woman:

Yup.

Narrator:

And learning.

Woman:

What would you like to put on.

Narrator:

Lot's of learning.

Woman:

It might work. It's hard to tell, though, what worked a couple weeks ago with a change in temperature in the air.

Woman:

Yeah, it's really cooled down in the last couple weeks.

Woman:

Come on little guys.

Woman:

What we're trying to imitate is something falling out of the vegetation.

Woman:

Whoop.

Woman:

Move quickly. There you go. With the current, the boulders, it requires tremendous balance, timing, hand-eye coordination. It goes way beyond that. You have to get a knowledge of the insects and the fish and where they're going to feed at different times of the day, if the sun's high or low. You have to learn to read water. I was introduced to Wisconsin really by learning its streams.

Narrator:

Johnson used to work in Washington, D.C., a place not really known for fishing. In fact, Johnson knew very little fishing in her past.

Woman:

So I grew up in the city. My dad didn't take me fishing. Typically hunting and fishing are passed down father to son. And you're more likely to fish if you grew up in a rural area versus an urban area.

Narrator:

So, how to start. Ten years ago, Johnson and a friend tried their hand at fishing. There was a problem.

Woman:

I didn't know what to do when we caught the fish. I didn't feel comfortable with just letting it suffocate or die. So we ended up not fishing that day, but she spread the word around that I was looking for someone to teach me how to fish. So I got a call from a friend of ours, who said, "Would you like to come over and see some fly fishing video tapes." I didn't realize it at the time, but it turned out to be a date.

Woman:

What a line.

Narrator:

The romance began and Johnson was hooked instantly.

Woman:

The first time I caught a fish, it was on Black Earth Creek right outside of Madison and I just totally unexpectedly cried. And that was it for me. It was-- that was it.

Narrator:

To be outdoors in this corner of Wisconsin.

Woman:

What better way to spend an afternoon than out at a place like this.

Narrator:

An afternoon in pursuit of a particular experience.

Woman:

I feel like this is going to be a very successful day.

Woman:

I would be telling a story if I didn't tell you that when there's a fish on, when that fish strikes, there's something that happens inside that is very exciting. There's a rush of adrenaline and you remember that. It feels good and so you want to do it again.

Woman:

There he is.

Woman:

Got one.

Loew:

Fly fishing has been around for about 2,000 years. In Egypt there's evidence they tied flies on bone hooks as early has 1400 B.C. That's our program for this week, join us next time, when we'll introduce you to a couple that's trying to measure a wildlife success story one loon at a time.

Woman:

I think they're probably the symbol of the wilderness.

Loew:

That's next time. For now, we leave you with more from High Cliff State Park in Calumet County. For "In Wisconsin," I'm Patty Loew. See you next time.