PBS Wisconsin Original production.
>> We want to do everything we can to make folks who
have suffered those tragedies as whole as is
possible. >> Recovery efforts
continue after cities and towns were buried under
floodwaters and more tornadoes were recorded
last week than the state typically sees in a year.
I'm Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on "Here& Now",
with some communities still underwater, we look at
cleanup of the damage and if insurance will cover it.
Plus, a state climate report says this kind of
extreme weather is here to stay.
[MUSIC] for refunds from tariffs
deemed illegal, but it may not be that easy. And we
continue our coverage of the governor's race. It's
"Here& Now" for April 24th. [MUSIC]
>> Funding for "Here& Now" is provided by the Focus
Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
>> After a week of historic storms across the state,
residents near the Wolf River in central Wisconsin
were some of the hardest hit with flooding. Some are
just beginning to assess the damage after evacuation
orders sent them fleeing to higher ground. Beyond
bailing out the water, many are calling their insurance
companies to find out what damage is or isn't covered.
Here and now, reporter Steven Potter has this
report from Waupaca County. >> People were in kind of a
panic because this rose faster and more water than
we've ever seen in our lifetime.
>> When heavy storms struck central Wisconsin late last
week, it was far too much for the Wolf River to
handle. A long waterway that bends through Waupaca
County, many residents near the river, and even some
not near the river, quickly found their homes and
property underwater. Communities like Fremont,
New London and Shiocton were swamped.
>> It's worse than anybody anticipated.
>> Jim Falke is a village trustee in Fremont.
>> There's quite a few homes in the area that are
severely damaged with waist deep water. The businesses
have all been shut down for for a week now.
>> As you can see here in Fremont, much of downtown
is flooded still days after. We've got water pumps and
trucks trying to get this water out. One business
owner told me they're simply trying to move water
from one place to another. Resident Yvonne Clemens
owns two businesses in Fremont, one downtown and
one on the river. >> Of course, there's
always been some high water, but I don't think anybody
has ever expected to see it this high.
>> So as for her resort on the river, she says she
doesn't know what's been ruined because it's so
waterlogged she can't get to it.
>> Honestly, I have no idea. I won't know until we see
the extent of the damage and what needs to be
replaced. all the water and the
damage, those affected by recent storms also have
another challenge dealing with insurance companies.
>> It can be a very difficult time for people,
right? You have a storm come through. You realize
that your car is damaged, your house is damaged.
Maybe your your personal belongings are damaged and
it can be scary. You know, people don't necessarily
know what to do, where to turn.
Wisconsin's insurance commissioner. His office
serves as the state's insurance industry watchdog.
>> We're here for people who have questions about
dealing with their insurance policy, or for
people who maybe feel like they're not being treated
fairly. have never encountered
natural disasters before, he strongly recommends
keeping good records in the aftermath.
>> Before you start cleaning up anything or
spending money on any repairs. Make sure you
document the damage. Take pictures. Create an
inventory of anything >> Houdek says people
should resist the urge to move too fast during
cleanup. >> Before you make any
major purchases or throw anything away, you really
want to work with the adjuster to make sure that
you're doing everything in complying with what you
need to, to make sure that the claim is handled
properly. >> But what if your claim
isn't being handled properly?
>> If you feel like your insurance company or the
adjuster is not treating you fairly in terms of
covering things that you feel like should be covered
by your policy, that's when we encourage people to
contact our office to, you know, potentially file a
complaint or just to ask questions.
>> Houdek also notes that insurance policies vary
widely and can be very different depending on the
company and specific coverage. It pays to read
the fine print. >> We encourage people to
check their insurance coverage regularly to make
sure that the coverage they have is appropriate and
provides the necessary protection.
>> One very pertinent example of that is like
what people in Waupaca County are going through
right now. >> If you have damage or
you experience a loss from flooding that typically
isn't covered by a homeowner's policy.
>> Houdek says that Wisconsin residents who
actually have flood insurance are very few and
far between. >> Through the National
Flood Insurance Program, there's only about 10,000
policies statewide. And, you know, obviously we're a
state of about 6 million >> But Houdek says flood
insurance can be affordable and worth it.
>> A designated flood plain or in a place where you
experience flooding regularly. Really? You want
to consider getting flood insurance because we're
seeing more and more situations where flooding
is occurring in places where it really never has
before. Even one inch of water can cause as much as
$25,000 of damage. >> Roy Toepke is a lifelong
Fremont resident. >> I'm going to be 73
shortly and never been anything close to this as
far as flooding. >> He hadn't been back to
his home since evacuation orders were given last
Saturday. He doesn't have flood insurance.
>> We have an exposed basement that I think may
have had some water come in. We'll find out when we get
there. We didn't really look into flood insurance
because technically there's never been a flood where
where we're at, but it might be something we need
to look at in the future. >> Worse than not having
flood insurance is not having any insurance at all.
>> There is a lot of people on the river that do not
have homes, homeowners insurance because of the
cost or just because. Yeah, they just don't have it.
>> Luckily, we do have flood insurance. We have a
call in to them, you know, to start the process. Of
course, it takes a while. We also have regular
insurance. >> Those who may have
insurance may not have enough or the right kind.
>> But you know, sometimes that doesn't cover lost
wages. So for those folks that have businesses that
they rely on for income, it's going to be hard on
those folks. >> Early estimates on the
water damage from last week's storms in central
Wisconsin are already in the millions and continue
to climb. And that's not counting all of the time
spent and tears already shed.
>> I think it's going to be a long haul before we're
able to get it up and going again.
>> Reporting from Fremont. I'm Steven Potter for here
and Now. >> Climate disasters like
flooding and storms are on the rise across the state,
resulting in added human and financial costs. A new
report projects we'll see more intense storms into
the future and more rapid shifts between very wet and
very hot conditions. But there are ways to encourage
climate resiliency, according to Steve Vavrus,
co-director of the Wisconsin Initiative on
Climate Change Impacts. Just out with its 2026
assessment. And thanks very much for being here.
>> Thank you for having me. >> So are the current
floods and last week's 24 tornadoes across the state,
evidence of a changing climate?
>> I think last week's severe weather outbreak is
a combination of random weather variability, i.e.
bad luck in this case, and also climate change. And
the climate change fingerprints are on it
because climate change favors the warm, humid air
masses that we saw out of season, we typically don't
hit 80 degrees and have humid weather in the middle
of April. But if we do, we have the fuel that
generates severe storms. >> So according to your
assessment, what are other trends for climate impacts
going forward? And some examples of that.
>> One of the the key terms or key phrases I like to
use is warmer and wetter. That describes the climate
change we've seen to date, and also the climate change
we're expecting in the future. In Wisconsin, for
example, the 2020s are currently the warmest
decade in state history. The 20 tens were the
wettest decade in Wisconsin's history, and
we've seen an increasing number of heavy rainfalls
punctuated, unfortunately, with the state record last
year. Last summer in Milwaukee, dumping 14.5in.
>> And your report said something that stood out.
It was March used to be part of winter, but now
it's part of spring. >> Yeah. And that's an
interesting new finding that came out of the State
Climatology office. And the reason we talk about it
that way is that in the past, starting in the most
of the 20th century, the majority of time in
Wisconsin, March was below freezing, below 32 degrees.
And recently in the past decade or so, that's
flipped. And now we spend the majority of March above
freezing. And that has big consequences in terms of
whether we get rain or snow. If we get snow, how long it
sticks around, and when our lake ice melts in the
spring. very measurable. And yet
there is still, if not scientific political
skepticism around climate change. What is that like
for a climate scientist? >> More and more people
understand that the climate's changing. The
evidence is all around us. It's hard to miss the
politics. Enter into it in terms of how serious a
problem it is compared with other issues that we're
dealing with, and also what can we do about it, or what
should we do about it, and how much resources should
we put in terms of climate change and other other
issues that we're facing? So I think that the shifts
there's been a shift in terms of how we talk about
climate change, and the surveys show that
increasing numbers of Americans understand and
are aware of climate change. >> Your report looks at
ways Wisconsin can mitigate against the impacts like
nature based strategies. What's an example of that?
>> Yeah. So we talk about in the wiki report, the
wiki assessment, a range of options ranging from what
we call traditional mitigation strategies,
which is cutting carbon emissions, reducing the
source of climate change to adaptation. And that is
accepting that there will be impacts. And now
figuring out what to do with it. We try to promote
nature based impacts. These are things like green
infrastructure. Instead of relying strictly on
traditional infrastructure. So for instance, with more
heavy rainfalls, the traditional engineering
approach is to build bigger stormwater pipes, increase
the size of culverts. But there are also nature based
green strategies such as rain gardens and green
roofs, and bioswales and wetland restoration that
can all be as effective or more effective, and also
more reduce the costs as well.
>> How well does Wisconsin's infrastructure
hold up to these changing climate impacts?
>> It's a mixed bag. One of the ways that we're
struggling right now is with these increasing
numbers of extreme rainfall, because much of Wisconsin's
infrastructure was built 40, 50, even 100 years ago, in
some cases for a different climate. And that climate
was cooler and it was drier than the climate we're
experiencing now. And so certain ways that we used
to manage stormwater just aren't valid anymore. They
aren't as effective. And so the infrastructure can't
hold up as well. >> So is there a dollar
figure on how much it would cost to make Wisconsin
climate resilient infrastructure and
otherwise? dollar amount. But I like
to bring up the old adage that an ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure. And a lot of studies show
that a dollar invested in becoming more resilient
pays off many times over in terms of reduced damage.
And a good example of that was with Milwaukee becoming
much more flood resilient over the years. The
Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District in
particular, has done a number of things that have
made the city more resilient to climate change
and heavy rainfalls, and the damage from last
summer's rains would have been much, much worse
without that. >> All right. Well, Steve
Vavrus, thanks very much and thanks for your work.
>> Thank you. >> The federal government
is being forced to return more than $165 billion in
collected tariffs to domestic importers and the
online portal to request those refunds went live
this week. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down President
Trump's tariffs, resulting in the order to refund the
import taxes. Wisconsin businesses are looking to
get some relief, including Viroqua based Wonderstate
Coffee, with its three locations across the state.
CEO T.J. Semanchin joins us now from Viroqua. And
thanks a lot for being here. >> It's good to be here.
Thank you. >> So first question, how
much did tariffs cost you? >> Yeah, we paid almost
$140,000 in tariffs last year.
>> That's that's a that's a big number for any business.
But but in this tariff discussion is coffee
unusual because it's almost all imported.
>> Yeah. We have been saying this from the get go
that we really didn't understand the purpose or
the intent of taxing and tariffing a product that we
can't even, you know, promote. Domestic
production of all coffee is grown in the tropics.
There's a tiny bit grown in Puerto Rico and Hawaii, but
not close to being able to meet the U.S. demand. So we
were, you know, paying a tax that we didn't even
understand what the the impact was, was for.
>> So describe for me where you source your coffee from.
What country? >> Yeah, we source a lot of
coffee from Latin America, from places that people
think about when coffee like Colombia, but also
Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and then also in
Africa. We bring in a lot of coffee from Ethiopia,
which is the birthplace of coffee, and also smaller
countries like Rwanda and Burundi, Kenya.
>> What of the cost of the tariffs meant for your
business? >> Yeah, last year was
really challenging. It was unexpected. You know, my 25
years in coffee, we've never even once considered
a tariff on our coffee that we import. So it was a
curve ball. And already in a challenging business
climate where other costs are going up, like health
care, shipping costs, things like that, that this
was just one more headache. And, and again, not being
expected at all. We had to deal with these costs. One
of the things that people don't quite realize is we,
we had to pay for the tariff before we even got
the product in the country. So, you know, this is
before we could even sell it, we had to borrow money
to pay pay the tariff. So we were then paying
interest costs on, on the, the money we borrowed for
the tariffs. So all these things were compounding and
just making it harder and harder for us.
>> Have you gone online to request a refund and if so,
how is that process going? >> Yeah, we technically are
not the importer of record, so we work with brokers who
do a lot of the logistics for us. So their names are
the ones that are on record for being the importer. So
we're working with them and they as, as one of their
clients and they are, they're applying for those
refunds. And we haven't gotten any word of what the
progress is or, you know, there's a lot of
uncertainty on how this process is going to unfold.
>> To those tariffs, as significant as they were
for a small business get passed along then to your
customers. >> Yeah. In some way or
fashion they did. We had again, last year was
challenging in a lot of ways. Coffee itself, the
cost, the commodity price of coffee skyrocketed last
year. So we were paying a tariff on what was already
historical costs for for coffee. So all these things
were compounding. And we did have a price increase
last year that we passed on to our customers. And
tariffs were a part of that. So the you know how much of
that was the tariffs gets a little confusing. And you
know just because there was a lot of factors.
>> What has business planning been like over the
course of these changeable tariffs.
>> We had to reforecast our profit and our budget last
year. We even pulled back on some investments in
growth. We decided not to buy a piece of equipment
last year just because of the the business climate.
This would have been expanding our production
capabilities. And we, you know, this was a piece of
equipment that the one that we're looking at was mostly
built in Wisconsin. So we we did not, you know,
invest. And we did not make that purchase. So you could
see even where the ripple effects might be. But we
did pull back on, on our kind of expectations for
growth and profit and even hiring and being able to
invest in our staff that, you know, coming into 2026
with the change in tariffs. And it feels like, you know,
we we are a little more optimistic kind of going,
we're going back a whole year where we kind of came
into 2025. We're kind of coming back into 2026 with
that perspective. But I would say that it felt like
a whole year of just kind of a holding pattern.
>> How optimistic are you that you will get the
tariffs that you paid refunded?
>> I'm a pretty optimistic person, so I put our
chances at better than 50%. But again, I'll believe it
when the money is in our bank. Because again, this
has been such a uncertain process from the beginning.
We're hoping that the administration doesn't
fight as the, you know, as this portal is open and
money starts flowing, that they don't cut off those
funds. But we don't, you know, we don't know. We're
not we're not counting on it until we actually have
the money in our bank, which might be months,
months or a year from now. We don't know.
TJ Semanchin, thanks very much.
>> The burgeoning interest in sports related
prediction markets over the last few years has led to
platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket to trade in
billions of dollars annually and wanting to
cash in on Wisconsin customers. But State
Attorney General Josh Carl this week filed a lawsuit
against these and other similar platforms, saying
they may use new terminology, but they are
still violating Wisconsin gambling laws.
>> The platforms where this is taking place are known
as prediction markets. And what we allege is that the
way these companies have framed this is that you can,
on those prediction markets, purchase what they what
they call an event contract. And what we allege here is
that the the event contracts on sporting
events are indistinguishable legally
or practically for that matter, from sports betting
and constitute sports betting under Wisconsin law.
>> Anyone who has thought about buying or selling a
house recently knows prices are up, interest rates
remain higher, and more people seem to be locked
out of owning a home. In our continuing series,
looking at the biggest issues in the race for
governor "Here& Now", senior political reporter
Zac Schultz asked the candidates for governor
about what the state should do to help fix the
affordable housing crisis. >> A 2024 study by the
Wisconsin Policy Forum showed. Over a five year
stretch, home prices went up 53% while incomes rose
by less than 20%. State government can't lower the
price of materials or labor, but it can create an
environment making it easier to build new homes.
So we asked the candidates for governor how they plan
to address the affordable housing crisis in Wisconsin.
>> So the plan to increase affordable housing is to
ensure that we put a stop on corporate monopolies
that are buying up wholesale properties. This
is going on in Milwaukee. These these monopolies are
making it difficult for first time homeowners.
These monopolies are making it easy or, excuse me,
making it more difficult for people to be able to
afford rent because if they own all the properties they
can, they can price people out or just charge whatever
they want to charge. And where else are people going
to go? >> We need to look at it as
a three legged stool. There is the legislation that we
have to make sure that we have laws that allow us to
build affordable housing. rules and making sure, like,
you know, how you can build what type of permits that
you need. And then there's funding. And right now,
there is nobody who is looking at all three of
those things to make sure that they're aligned. So as
governor, I would assign somebody to make sure that
they are looking at housing overall, having a statewide
strategic plan to make sure that we have some of those
starter homes that we certainly don't have in
Wisconsin anymore. >> Housing is a is a vexing
problem, but it is not insurmountable. And what
we've seen at WEDC, the work that we did was to
support innovative housing, housing, whether it's
bringing a nursing home into housing, a nursing
home that's closed in Gilman, we were able to
support making that into apartments or schools that
have closed due to lack of population, turning those
into housing. But we are also seeing new housing
being built. And so what I would want to do is make
sure that local communities have the resources they
need to provide the infrastructure, the water,
the sewer for new housing, but then also making sure
that we're supporting developers all around the
state as they make the move to build housing.
>> We have to have a multi-pronged approach, and
we have to make it easier to build housing and look
at different avenues and innovative ways to ensure
that we have permanent affordability when it comes
to housing. I'm interested in looking at community
land trusts about how we can provide better zoning
regulations and the ability to build ADUs and ensure
that we have spaces for some folks who may no
longer need to be in their homes. Where there can be
starter homes for folks who are moving into communities
and looking at diversifying our housing stock for folks
who are moving or maybe downsizing.
>> Wisconsin likely needs a top to bottom housing plan
where we can look at all aspects of this, and there
are tools at our disposal that we have through Wida
that I'm not sure that we are using to the best of
our abilities. And if we need new tools, we'll go
out and get them. But this is kind of the core of
affordability for Wisconsin families, is ensuring that
they have a safe and secure place to put a roof over
their head, that they can build equity, that they can
build wealth for their family over time. So that's
one of the issues that I look forward to working on
as soon as I become governor.
>> Well, first of all, we need to get control of
property taxes. At a minimum, freeze them. I
would get rid of the 400 year property tax increase,
but I think we can do a lot of it via regulatory reform.
And I refer to it as a red tape review. You look at
the state of Virginia, they did something like this,
and they reduced their regulations largely by
by about 25%. They reduced the cost of building a new
home by about $24,000. We've seen studies by the
Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, where they've
said as much as $80,000 goes in to the cost of a
new home. That has nothing to do with building
materials. So I think we can get control of some of
that by reducing duplication in regulations.
>> It's important to understand that there isn't
a one size solution that fits all of the problems
that we're facing as a state. What works in
Milwaukee may not work in Menasha, may not work in
Marinette, may not work in Barron. And so we have to
make sure that we're working with those local
organizations, those local units of government, to
figure out what right size solution works for them.
Yes. Do we need more affordable housing?
Absolutely we do. We need that for our seniors, for
working families, for people with disabilities.
But we also need attainable housing as well. And
attainable housing is those who have the ability to
afford those who may not qualify for affordable
housing, but have the means to buy their own home. Yet
we don't have the housing stock.
doing more to incent development projects,
helping local governments make zoning changes to
allow for more housing to be built, and to allow more
flexibility in how we use our dollars so that we can
actually get more bang for our buck in terms of
building new housing. But ultimately, this is really
a supply and demand problem. We have too much need for
housing and not enough houses being built, and
it's been that way for since the Bush recession.
We've underbuilt housing and now we're really
reaping the consequences. So we just have to get more
housing online quickly. >> Reporting from Madison.
I'm Zac Schultz for "Here& Now".
>> For more on this and other issues facing
Wisconsin, visit our website at PBS
wisconsin.org and then click on the news tab.
That's our program for tonight. I'm Frederica
Freyberg. Have a good weekend.
>> Funding for "Here& Now" is provided by the Focus
Fund for journalism and friends of PBS Wisconsin.