Wisconsin Public Television

Transcript: In Wisconsin

Original Air Date: November 16, 2006

Patty Loew:

Hello, and welcome to "In Wisconsin." I'm Patty Loew. This week follow these teens as they find out if they have what it takes to turn their lives around.

Reporter:

What was going through your head when you laid it on your pillow that first night?

Recruit:

How am I going to pass that? It was rough, ma'am.

Recruit:

When we first came here we had 22 girls, and now we only have 13.

Loew:

Discover why a city once known for its bountiful natural springs is now parched for water and eyeing up lake Michigan.

Man:

I actually find it ironic. Here we are looking for water in this area.

Loew:

And take flight with this endangered bird, and find out how a recent event gave wing to new hope for a new species. We'll also take you to a natural area that was shaped by the last glacier, "In Wisconsin."

Loew:

Last week, we introduced you to five teenage cadets we're following through the Wisconsin National Guard Challenge Academy. Soon after enrolling, the teens were reeling with the reality of the full five months ahead of them at the life-changing school. One of them was asked to leave the program early on for having a bad attitude. That's the tough love of the military-style academy at Fort McCoy. The program tries to teach high school dropouts a new way of life through hard work, discipline, and commitment to change. This week, Frederica Freyberg checks in on the cadets about two months into their program.

Frederica Freyberg:

By now the Challenge Academy cadets have been at the school for nearly two months.

Cadets:

Discipline. Integrity. Courage. Honor.

Freyberg:

They're learning all the right moves and manners.

Cadet:

It's kind of weird. Like I call everybody ma'am and sir. Even when I pray at night I call God sir. It's kind of weird.

Freyberg:

But by all accounts the first two weeks were the hardest. Going cold turkey on bad habits. Many of the kids throw up the first few nights, whether from detoxing from drugs or alcohol, or nerves. They are told to drink water.

Cadet:

Drink water and drive on. That's what they tell us.

Cadet:

It's depressing. Everybody is constantly crying. So many people want to go home. So many people did go home. We had a lot of runaways.

Cadet:

Some of them ran away. Some of them ran all the way to Tomah.

Freyberg:

Because this is tough stuff. Stripped down barracks, in your face discipline, full-out physical fitness.

Cadet:

I lost so much weight since I've been here. I used to be 150 pounds. I'm down to 125.

Freyberg:

Not that cadets skimp on food. They're served 6,000 calories a day.

Cadet:

Lots of fruits and vegetables. Salads twice a day. Lots of apples and bananas.

Freyberg:

In nearly every way, a very big switch from home.

What was going through your head when you laid it on your pillow that first night?

Cadet:

How am I going to pass this? It was rough, ma'am.

Cadet:

When we first came here we had 22 girls, and now we only have 13.

Freyberg:

For the ones who stick it out it doesn't get easier, but it does get more predictable. Cadets learn the ropes.

Cadet:

You have no rules at home. When you come here, it's one rule after another. I think I've already learned 200 rules.

Freyberg:

And breaking the rules results in sure and immediate consequences, like asking to use the bathroom during class means drop and do 20 before returning to your desk. But for teenagers like Joey Smith, the routine and rules are respite from a shaky home life. He says in many ways he's come to love it here.

Are you happy?

Joey Smith:

Yes, ma'am. I think this is a great opportunity for me. I'm going to try and stick it out until the end.

Peter Blum:

Right now it feels safe, first of all. I think it would be the first time in a while he feels just, as I said, safe. He feels that no harm can come to him. He's in an environment where people truly care about him. He feels himself changing.

Freyberg:

Joey Smith and his sister, Danielle, came to Challenge Academy together. They say at home they felt like they were on their own. Now they are surrounded by dependable adults.

Danielle Smith:

I talked to these people so much the other day I accidentally called her mom. She thought that was pretty funny. They give you nicknames and everything here.

Instructor:

Having the integrity to do the right thing in spite of personal sacrifice.

Freyberg:

This class in character development is part of a full academic schedule at Challenge Academy.

Instructor:

Rule number four, use a comma to separate an introductory phrase from the rest of the sentence.

Freyberg:

Cadets also take English, science, history, math, civics, and health. Despite many coming to the program way behind their grade level, nearly all graduate with a high school equivalency degree.

Nancy Wednick:

Structure and routine, and coming to school every day and doing their homework does a lot for them.

Cadet:

Like right now, if I was home, I would just be sitting on the couch going, I'm not going to school today. What do I do? Watching TV, you know, and eat and eat and eat.

Freyberg:

Randi Wetzel was expelled from her hometown school for partying. Now if she makes it through the five months of Challenge Academy, she expects to graduate a year early and get a job and college. Despite their own mistakes, cadets like Randi Wetzel are becoming role models for other kids. As part of the program, Challenge Academy students tutor local grade schoolers twice a week.

Lesley Jacobs:

What we focus on is the fact that they are making good choices now, and that everybody makes mistakes, and at one point or another we're all going to do something wrong, but we need to change that, recognize it, and move on. And that's what these cadets have done, is made good choices now, and they try very hard to be good role models to our students.

Freyberg:

The community service component of the Challenge Academy extends even further, spanning the generations.

Man:

We all hated every minute of it, but we're proud we did it.

Cadet:

Yes, sir.

Freyberg:

Cadets also visit the veterans home in Tomah. The vets love their military manner, their manners period.

Cadet:

Yes, sir. What were you in, sir? The infantry in Vietnam, sir?

Freyberg:

The vets also love telling war stories, and the cadets love hearing them. Many expect to follow Challenge Academy by joining the military.

Man:

We were ambushed several times.

Cadet:

Yeah, I suppose, Vietnam.

Freyberg:

DeShawn Jackson is one of them. Before he came to Challenge Academy he was living on his own in Kenosha and not going to school. He's hanging in there, but staff say over the weeks Jackson has wavered in his commitment to changing his ways. He says he misses his old life.

DeShawn Jackson:

There's no talking to girls here. It's rough, because they walk right past you, and then you can't look. You can't say anything. You've just got to keep on marching.

Freyberg:

Just keep on marching, whatever the obstacles. That is one of the life lessons learned at Challenge Academy. But the lessons of discipline, commitment, and courage are hard won here. If they don't get asked to leave for too many rule violations, most cadets admit to wanting to quit before it's all over anyway. One cadet, though, knew a certain camera crew would be tracking the progress.

Danielle Smith:

I was going to leave and I was like, no, I had to stay here. I'm like, those people are going to come back and they're probably hoping that I stay here.

Freyberg:

Those words spoken just shy of halfway through, and the bar for these kids just keeps being raised. The challenge of Challenge Academy is not over.

Loew:

Next week, join us as some of the cadets we're following face a serious setback. That's next week. You can go to our Web site at wpt.org/inwisconsin for more on our Challenge Academy series.

Loew:

We turn now from troubled teens to troubled waters. As areas around the country become increasingly water poor, eyes are turning to the immense fresh water supply that is the Great Lakes. But as reporter Art Hackett found, the city that seems to be most aggressively sizing up that water supply isn't across the country, but rather right here in Wisconsin, and just a stone's throw from the lake.

Art Hackett:

Twenty percent of all the fresh water on the planet is in the Great Lakes. Six quadrillion gallons, enough to cover the lower 48 states nearly 10 feet deep. For decades those who live near the Great Lakes have feared some of those lower 48 states really do want to submerge themselves with some of those six quadrillion gallons. In 1985, Great Lakes governors and premieres gathered in Milwaukee to sign a compact giving all states and provinces touching the lakes veto power over any diversion of Great Lakes water.

Governor Anthony Earl, 1985 file tape:

Southwest and the great plains are very water poor, and there's going to be as anxious as they can to find water what whatever source they can at whatever cost they have.

Hackett:

Former Wisconsin Governor Anthony easterly said that when he signed the first version of the compact. Two decades later an updated compact, different governors, the same fear.

Governor Jim Doyle, 1995:

Just yesterday or the day before I heard that Las Vegas is about to reach its allotted water from the Colorado river.

Hackett:

But the battle line over diversion of Great Lakes water isn't the Nevada border. You've crossed the low ridge along the highway as you enter Milwaukee county. It's called the sub-continental surface divide. Under the compact, water falling on the eastern slope belongs to those who live east of the slope. Just west of the sub-continental divide lies Waukesha. Waukesha is the spring city. Historically known for free-flowing water, downtown Waukesha has a parkway of riverside fountains, yet it is Waukesha, not Phoenix, not Las Vegas, that wants lake Michigan's water.

Dan Duchniak:

I actually find it ironic. You know, there's books out there that talk about all the springs and all the water, the water-rich Waukesha area, and now here we are looking for water in this area.

Hackett:

Waukesha draws its water from deep sandstone wells.

Randy Dehn:

This one here is pumping at about 800 gallons a minute, and we produce about a million gallons a day of compliant water out of this well right here.

Hackett:

When Randy Dehn talks about compliant water, he means water that meets the environment protection agency's standards, because Waukesha has been pumping so much water from its wells, the water table is dropping.

Duchniak:

As you draw down the aquifer further and further, the water quality degrades.

Hackett:

Radium levels in Waukesha's water exceed E.P.A. standards. The city faces a December 2006 deadline to meet the standard. The city is installing filters to remove the cancer-causing chemical, tanks to blend high radium water with low radium water from new less productive shallow wells which are radium free. But those are stopgap measures.

Duchniak:

Either way, there is going to be challenges and hurdles to overcome along the way. Which one of these options is most attractive to us I believe is the Great Lakes option.

Hackett:

One way Waukesha could access lake Michigan water would be to buy it from the city of Milwaukee. Milwaukee's water treatment plant has excess capacity. Under the compact, that water can only be used by those east of the surface water divide. Waukesha is on the west. But Waukesha argues there is a second divide, the ground water divide. Waukesha is between that divide and lake Michigan. The compact says the basin water includes all tributary groundwater within the basin. The groundwater divide lies near the Waukesha-Jefferson County line. The water pumped from the city of Waukesha's wells comes from underneath a water resistant layer of shale that slopes eastward from the groundwater divide and continues under lake Michigan.

Duchniak:

That water in the deep aquifer travels east towards the Great Lakes providing recharge to the Great Lakes basin and flowing underneath the Great Lakes basin. So the water that we're using in the deep aquifer actually recharges the Great Lakes.

Hackett:

Under this theory, if Waukesha stops pumping, groundwater levels will rise. Waukesha argues lake Michigan will benefit. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey built a computer model of southeastern Wisconsin's groundwater flows.

Daniel Feinstein:

The water that's actually coming out of the wells at this moment is water that was on its way very, very slowly, toward lake Michigan and would have gone to lake Michigan in a thousand or several thousand years, if, in fact, lake Michigan exists in several thousand years.

Hackett:

Hydrogeologist Daniel Feinstein says if Waukesha stops pumping groundwater levels will rise, but Lake Michigan will not see any measurable benefit. Feinstein adds that Lake Michigan would survive a diversion to Waukesha without noticeable effects.

Feinstein:

The pumping of Waukesha, if they took what they're pumping and diverted it all from the lake, it would have, that by itself would have virtually no effect on the lake. We wouldn't be able to detect any change in lake level or anything like that.

Hackett:

Peter McAvoy represented Wisconsin on the Great Lakes task force at the time the original compact was signed in 1985.

Peter McAvoy:

They use on the average we understand about nine million gallons a day. They've been talking about proposing a diversion of up to 25 million gallons a day. So if you look at current use, we could easily be up to a couple hundred million gallons a day of diversion for other communities like Waukesha. The problem is that we haven't even thought about Delafield or Sussex, or other communities further west of them that are going to be under increasing pressures.

Larry Nelson:

Most of the other communities that they're worried about, especially far away communities, wouldn't be eligible to even apply.

Hackett:

Waukesha Mayor Larry Nelson, says if his city is ruled to be outside the basin, there is a second way they could be allowed to use Great Lakes water. Under the compact, Waukesha and other communities near the Great Lakes basin can access Great Lakes water if they return the water to the Great Lakes watershed. Returning the water is complicated even for Waukesha. You can't just build a pipeline back to the lake.

Duchniak:

If we were to be required to do that, we're talking hundreds and millions of dollars, because in order to get under the City of Milwaukee, we'd have to be at depths around where the deep tunnel is or below the deep tunnel.

Hackett:

But Duchniak says there's another way.

Duchniak:

We've been working with the Department of Natural Resources to identify potential areas where we could take that back to a tributary that would go back to the Great Lakes. So essentially, there would be a river or stream that we'd discharge to.

Hackett:

Such as the Root River. The Root starts near the border between Waukesha and Milwaukee counties. It enters Lake Michigan toward the southeast at Racine.

Allen Stasiewski:

I doubt that the neighbors along those creeks are going to want waste water dumped into their streams.

McAvoy:

What is it going to do to that river and to its ecosystem? And so people who are trying to engineer this stuff without fully considering, I think, getting back to these options, what are your other options. So, you could blend. You could re-use. You could recycle. You could have a combination of strategies and never get into that situation.

Doyle, 1995:

These agreements will protect our Great Lakes from the threats of diversion out of this basin.

Hackett:

While the exact provides protection against some diversions, it also allows for exceptions. Waukesha, because of its location and the potential to return waste water, may be one of those exceptions. But the compact is currently just an agreement between governors and premieres. It still must be approved by legislatures, state and federal administrative rules have yet to be drafted.

McAvoy:

What we do with Waukesha is not just going to be for Waukesha.

Hackett:

In the meantime, critics of the Waukesha diversion argue it's still too early to grant an exception.

McAvoy:

Northern Illinois has similar conditions to what Waukesha is going through, and so does northern Indiana, and so does Ohio. So there's no way that when we get into this, that we're not going to be setting some kind of precedent.

Duchniak:

Well, we can't do nothing. We need to come into compliance with the radium standards.

Hackett:

In the meantime, Waukesha continues to search for a long-term radium-free source of drinking water.

Loew:

As Art told us in his report, the Great Lakes compact must still be approved by the legislatures of the states and provinces surrounding the lakes. Wisconsin's state legislative committee met earlier this week and the Senator Kedzie, who chairs the committee, tells us he hopes to finish in January. They're also pending before legislatures in Ohio and New York. You can find more information about the compact and other Great Lakes issues by going to greatlakesforever.org

Loew:

Next up, a celebration of sorts. This last June ushered in a new era in wildlife history in our state. For the first time in 100 years, two wild whooping cranes successfully hatched a brood of babies. This endangered species has been brought back from the edge of extinction by the dedicated efforts of state, federal, and private agencies. The hard work paid off with the hatching of two baby whoopers in the Necedah Natural Wildlife Refuge. You can see the birds that some have dubbed the royal family in this rare footage. Mom and dad are completely white. The babies have the brown coloring. To commemorate the milestone, we asked Wisconsin's poet laureate, Denise Sweet, to collaborate with Wisconsin Wisconsin Public Television videographer Frank Boll, and together they created this visual poem.

Denise Sweet:

"All the Animals Came Dancing."

Somewhere between nowhere and shadow, you held still and quiet. A quick slip and you would totter over the edge of the world, taking with you ancient songs of love, of devotion, of longevity, songs that celebrated the simple elegance of living in balance.

So many whimpered in your absence. The throatsingers tried in vain to call you back. Other winged creatures felt lost and cut off from the harmonious cranesong that once trumpeted across the marshlands. It was in our ignorance we fell silent. Helpless, anxious to be of use. We began to think of bogs and swamps as eerie, ugly, and useless. We drained those windigo wetlands, paved them over with asphalt or planted crops that floundered or refused to take root. Believe us, we tried to fill and give function to the empty camps of the whooping crane, or were we fumbling to fill that empty northwest in our own hearts shaped by your absence?

We are told by the old ones that it is inborn in all beings alive to return to the place of its beginning, to rise and sweep with what strength is left and begin that wondrous trek towards home, no matter the distance, no matter how difficult the passage. And so it is, shy, secretive, and cryptic in coloration, you appeared one day in the bright mist.

As in your own emergence account, you stood before us, waiting for us to send out a simple prayer, to properly greet you by simply standing still. You stood before us elegant, erect, and majestic in form. You stood before us, a hooded Shaman from the farthest sky, a stellar space out of range of the naked eye.

Through the bulrushes and overgrowth of slender reeds, your mate steps forward and with a slight but mutual bow and brief address, you wander together, winding through the wet meadows, springing unto a sandbar, and then suddenly a flawless lift into flight punctuating the sky with prehistoric angles some have never seen.

It has been 100 years since you have presented a clutch of chicks, treasures of Necedah. Some indispensible guiding spirit came into the hearts of humankind and coaxed you out of the shadows. This joyous birth is a ripple away from the impossible. While you nudge your brood into thicker, safer confines, we sang songs once again worshipping the ground you walk on, and all the animals came dancing.

Loew:

You can log on to our Web site at wpt.org/inwisconsin if you'd like to watch Denise Sweet's video poem again. You'll also find the text of the poem there. Officials at the refuge tell us that the crane family is still at Necedah, but is expected to soon migrate south for the winter. That's our program for this week. Thank you for joining us. We leave you with a walk through the deep, glacier-dug gorge of Pewits Nest in Sauk County. For "In Wisconsin," I'm Patty Loew. See you next time.

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