The Wisconsin Magazine; No. 1504

<v Speaker>On tonight's special edition of the Wisconsin magazine, an examination of water <v Speaker>from acid rain research to the effects of this summer's drought, from the mystique <v Speaker>of fly fishing to a profile of Wisconsin's latest environmental purchase, the Chippewa <v Speaker>flowage. All about water. <v Speaker>Tonight on the Wisconsin magazine. <v Speaker>I'm Dave Iverson. Tonight, our program is a little bit different. <v Speaker>Each of our stories this week has to do with water. <v Speaker>A number of years ago, I saw Charles Kuralt introduce a story about water. <v Speaker>It was a story about a small town in Oklahoma.

<v Speaker>And what Kuralt said was this from the days of the Roman aqueducts to a <v Speaker>small town in Oklahoma. <v Speaker>Water has always made all the difference. <v Speaker>Tonight, we're going to look at the ways in which water affects our lives. <v Speaker>And we start with a story about the Chippewa flow edge, the Chippewa flow, which is a <v Speaker>new acquisition to the state of Wisconsin, something we've picked up for the price of six <v Speaker>point nine million dollars. <v Speaker>It is a remarkable combination of land and water. <v Speaker>Our Queller produced this report narrated by Joanne Garrett. <v Speaker>Our story starts here at the bottom of this dam, a gray concrete mess <v Speaker>forever dampened by the unending spray. <v Speaker>It was built in 1921, the signature of an industrialized society. <v Speaker>But do not mistake. This story is one about urban aggression. <v Speaker>Rather, it is about a wild place in northwest Wisconsin created <v Speaker>by mixing human design and the natural process. <v Speaker>There are a lot of ironies in life, and not the least of those is

<v Speaker>the one of the trip wildflowers being established by a dam, <v Speaker>holding back a lot of water and triple our river and <v Speaker>setting up an enormous shoreline that's very complicated <v Speaker>and convoluted. Probably shoreline big enough to get lost in. <v Speaker>This is the Chippewa flowage and uncivilized area created by a damned really. <v Speaker>Third largest body of water in Wisconsin, perhaps the greatest piece of wilderness <v Speaker>between Milwaukee and Canada. <v Speaker>A portion of these waters and lands were recently purchased by the state of Wisconsin, <v Speaker>a move celebrated by many people, including the vice president of the Wisconsin Nature <v Speaker>Conservancy, Brant Haglund. <v Speaker>I am a person of modern, post-industrialist world, <v Speaker>a world with a lot of concrete, with a lot of gray in it.

<v Speaker>But here along the shores of the Chippwea Flowage, here's green. <v Speaker>And we're not going to wreck it. We are going to constrain ourselves. <v Speaker>We're going to act for future good to keep <v Speaker>the shorelines green and the waters blue. <v Speaker>And that's to set up constraints for ourselves and future generations. <v Speaker>And in this place, I'm glad for. <v Speaker>Consider the dimensions. The flowage holds 10 billion cubic feet of water. <v Speaker>It has 230 miles of shoreline. <v Speaker>One hundred and forty islands dot its waters and bays. <v Speaker>But what makes it really unique is the absence of shoreline development. <v Speaker>Ninety nine percent of the shoreline has never been altered. <v Speaker>Only a few resorts and cottages have ever been built here. <v Speaker>Jane Bidwill is part owner of one of them. <v Speaker>Host lakes are totally overdeveloped or totally developed, and everybody has <v Speaker>their summer home and their place to get away from it.

<v Speaker>But here the person to come and camp on an island all by themselves <v Speaker>and not have to listen to some ways boombox and not have to look out at some of these <v Speaker>living room lights. You can get away from everything. <v Speaker>Totally undeveloped. <v Speaker>Pristine, quiet, undeveloped place <v Speaker>to get away from urban stresses. <v Speaker>Trees. Stumps. <v Speaker>You don't see houses and don't some buildings. <v Speaker>So you see eagle sitting in trees. <v Speaker>You just see a pristine nature. <v Speaker>Aldo Leopold once wrote, Our ability to perceive quality in nature <v Speaker>begins as an art with the pretty. <v Speaker>It expands through successive stages of the beautiful values as yet uncaptured

<v Speaker>by language. <v Speaker>Since the early days, going back to the 1920s, the flow which has been owned <v Speaker>and managed by northern states power. <v Speaker>Back then, the company refused to allow any significant development of the shoreline. <v Speaker>Development brings pollution, something that doesn't mix well with making hydroelectric <v Speaker>power. Today, the flowage is still used as a water reserve to <v Speaker>assist downstream electrical generation. <v Speaker>Brant Hagelin. <v Speaker>A Chippewa flowage will release water that will eventually <v Speaker>produce power that will eventually produce jobs that will eventually <v Speaker>produce many other economic benefits and a <v Speaker>pure, clean reservoir of water. <v Speaker>It is a marvelous asset and one that Wisconsin should be really <v Speaker>proud of.

<v Speaker>The flowage is now owned in part by the federal government, the Lac Courte Oreilles <v Speaker>Chippewa Band of the Ojibwe Nation, and as the new kid on the block, <v Speaker>the state of Wisconsin, a change in ownership, but not in mission. <v Speaker>What you see now is what you will see in the future. <v Speaker>DNR spokesperson Paul Gottwald. <v Speaker>It's pretty hard to find it undeveloped shoreline in Wisconsin <v Speaker>and face other states power over their years of management that they <v Speaker>didn't allow the development to take place. <v Speaker>Virtually better than 90 percent of the shoreline is undeveloped. <v Speaker>And our goal is to keep it that way. <v Speaker>The best thing that could have happened to us because we did sit in limbo for so long, <v Speaker>not knowing who was going to buy it and wondering if northern states power, who stood to <v Speaker>make a lot of money by selling it off chunk by chunk, private to private <v Speaker>owners, they had the the ability to do that, but they didn't. <v Speaker>They kept it in one chunk and sold it to the state and kept it in its pristine <v Speaker>wilderness state, which has been promised to us by the state now.

<v Speaker>So it's wonderful. <v Speaker>The foliage has a sort of crystal ball texture. <v Speaker>You can't tell if it's 1940 or 1988 or even <v Speaker>2001. The telltale signs of civilization are absent. <v Speaker>No one is suggesting anything else. <v Speaker>There's still a place to get away from it all to find yourself. <v Speaker>I think everybody needs a quiet place to go and <v Speaker>walk through woods and not see a sign of man somewhere. <v Speaker>To me, that's what it means to me. <v Speaker>And I think that's what people are looking for nowadays. <v Speaker>I think that the generation. <v Speaker>Five hands, one hundred years from now, we're gonna look back at the people in 1980. <v Speaker>They're going to say, you know, those people did it right. <v Speaker>They had a chance to see an asset frittered away. <v Speaker>And they seized an opportunity instead.

<v Speaker>Our story ends at the beginning. <v Speaker>The Chippewa River that feeds the flow, which Leopold wrote <v Speaker>Wilderness, is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called <v Speaker>civilization. You can see civilization by looking out your window, <v Speaker>but you can see where it came from. By looking here. <v Speaker>As of the 1980s began, a new phrase entered the environmental dialog.

<v Speaker>Acid rain. The likes of the Adirondacks and New York were showing disturbing changes, <v Speaker>and scientists in Wisconsin were starting to wonder if the same thing could happen here. <v Speaker>In 1985, our state became the first in the union to pass acid rain legislation. <v Speaker>Has it worked? Should the federal government now follow suit? <v Speaker>Reporter Art Hackett decided to look into those questions and find out the latest on <v Speaker>how acid rain is affecting our lakes. <v Speaker>Judy, who do go is about to do in a matter of minutes. <v Speaker>What acid rain does over a period of decades, clad in a rubber <v Speaker>suit and a facemask. She's going to take a cruise with a jug of sulfuric <v Speaker>acid, the same stuff that's in the battery of your car. <v Speaker>When she's done dumping it in a little bit of Little Rock Lake will be a little <v Speaker>different.

<v Speaker>And what we're really doing is sort of mapping the course of a way <v Speaker>that a lake responds to having acid added to it. <v Speaker>University of Wisconsin researcher Tom Frost and the rest of the people working on the <v Speaker>Little Rock Lake experiment want to know how the lake responds because <v Speaker>what comes out of powerplant smokestacks may eventually do the same thing <v Speaker>as a jug of acid. Power plants burn coal. <v Speaker>Coal has sulfur in it. <v Speaker>The burn sulfur goes out the smokestack as sulfur dioxide <v Speaker>when it comes down along with the rain. <v Speaker>The net effect is the same as millions of Judy do goes cruising. <v Speaker>All of the lakes all over the country. <v Speaker>If the rule of burning fossil fuels in producing acid rain is a certainty, <v Speaker>the effect of that acid rain as it falls in the lakes of northern Wisconsin <v Speaker>is far less of a certainty. <v Speaker>How much damage does it do? <v Speaker>How long does it take for the damage to occur?

<v Speaker>Those are some of the questions they're trying to answer here at Little Rock Lake. <v Speaker>Little Rock Lake is a lake divided, divided by rubber curtains. <v Speaker>A second one was added this summer to assure that water's pure and polluted <v Speaker>shall not mix. Until this experiment is done, the goal is to measure <v Speaker>all the subtle changes that take place even down to the microscopic animals. <v Speaker>These students of Tom Frost's are collecting. <v Speaker>We've seen some species disappear and in other cases, other species <v Speaker>that were relatively rare in the lake have increased markedly during the course of the <v Speaker>experiment. <v Speaker>And what we're seeing there is are fundamental differences in the Lakes <v Speaker>food web. The lake is just changing and it's in its basic nature. <v Speaker>Ultimately, those kind of changes will be reflected in the abilities of the fish to <v Speaker>gather their resources. <v Speaker>For the fish, it's kind of like if the supermarket you had shopped in four years

<v Speaker>was closed under straight. Bill Swensson of the University of Wisconsin Superior says <v Speaker>this has yielded a lake full of stressed out fish. <v Speaker>That stress, we believe, might cause that animal to be less efficient at converting <v Speaker>what it uses to itself, burn more energy, grow slower and have a higher mortality, <v Speaker>given the limited amount of acid input is resulting in lower <v Speaker>food conversion in young bass. <v Speaker>When we go, we have gone downhill further. We found some effects on reproductive success, <v Speaker>it appears. <v Speaker>And as these things are occurring, where we're losing young <v Speaker>bass in the population and the acidic base, <v Speaker>as researchers search for acid rains effects, legislators are at <v Speaker>the same time trying to stop any more acid rain from falling. <v Speaker>These laws seem to be having an effect. <v Speaker>Wisconsin's acid rain law passed in nineteen eighty five.

<v Speaker>Cut the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air by one third. <v Speaker>The acidity of rain has also started to drop. <v Speaker>Tom Shefi is with the DNR Bureau of Air Management. <v Speaker>Quite frankly, I was very surprised that we would see that rapid a turnaround. <v Speaker>I thought that the the acidity of the rainfall would very slowly <v Speaker>and gradually decrease. <v Speaker>And this is a very pleasant surprise to me. <v Speaker>That pleasant surprise carries a price tag. <v Speaker>Wisconsin Electric of Milwaukee, the state's largest electric utility, will eventually <v Speaker>wind up spending 35 to 50 million dollars a year to comply <v Speaker>with the law. But utilities, by and large, felt the controls were reasonable. <v Speaker>Mark Steinberg is superintendent of air quality for Wisconsin Electric. <v Speaker>And we also felt, based upon interviewing <v Speaker>our customers. Public opinion surveys, that the public felt very strongly about <v Speaker>the need to do something with acid rain.

<v Speaker>And people may start feeling even stronger about acid rain because even though <v Speaker>acid levels are dropping, there are still signs acidity may hurt people as <v Speaker>well as fish. Back at Little Rock Lake, Nancy Richardson is trying <v Speaker>to trace the flow of the toxic heavy metal mercury through the lake's food chains. <v Speaker>There's a fair amount of evidence that mercury levels in fish are higher in waters <v Speaker>that are more acid. <v Speaker>Mercury contamination makes fish unsafe to eat. <v Speaker>UW researcher Carl Waters says it's a widespread problem <v Speaker>in Wisconsin. <v Speaker>Officials say more than 300 lakes surveyed, about 90 have had advisories <v Speaker>issued because of mercury contamination. <v Speaker>While acid rain does seem to cause problems, Mother Nature keeps trying to help. <v Speaker>In Little Rock Lake, for example, acid is perpetually being added to the water. <v Speaker>The lake, through a number of natural processes, keeps trying to neutralize the acid <v Speaker>because some lakes seem to be able to cope with acid rain.

<v Speaker>Some utility officials question how big a threat acid rain really is. <v Speaker>Ed Newman is director of environmental affairs for Wisconsin Public Service, <v Speaker>a Green Bay based electric utility. <v Speaker>You just can't go out and say there's an acidic lake in Wisconsin. <v Speaker>The rainfall is acidic. <v Speaker>Therefore, it's a cause effect. <v Speaker>There are so many things that are happening that we don't understand. <v Speaker>We didn't understand and we're understanding more now. <v Speaker>But we still have a lot to learn. <v Speaker>But we don't know why those lakes are sitting. <v Speaker>But the DNR contends there are at least nine lakes in Wisconsin where there is <v Speaker>a clear chemical link between the sulfuric acid in the water and the sulfur <v Speaker>dioxide that comes out of power plants. <v Speaker>Ed Newman, though, has another possible explanation: bogs. <v Speaker>DNR used 12 lakes as their suite of lakes to say <v Speaker>that these lakes mean acidify by acid deposition. <v Speaker>All but one of those lakes had major bog systems on it.

<v Speaker>The dispute is over whether a bug can acidify a lake without leaving telltale <v Speaker>brown stains. The DNR, his position is that bogs just aren't <v Speaker>the problem. Tom Shefi. <v Speaker>Well, it's certainly not in the mainstream of scientific thinking if they're arguing that <v Speaker>bogs acidified lakes. <v Speaker>I thought we had dismissed the Killer Barg issue some years ago. <v Speaker>UW Madison Lake researcher Tom Frost. <v Speaker>There's no doubt, first of all, that the rain is acidic because of the effects of <v Speaker>fossil fuel burning. That's an absolute fact. <v Speaker>And there's just no getting around it. <v Speaker>There are lakes in the Adirondacks and in Scandinavia that show very strong <v Speaker>evidence of having been affected by that acid produced by fossil fuel burning. <v Speaker>Evidence for acidification of lakes in Wisconsin is much more limited. <v Speaker>We've got thousands of lakes and perhaps some no fewer than 10 show <v Speaker>some evidence of having been affected. <v Speaker>This debate will continue because the federal government may soon follow Wisconsin's lead

<v Speaker>and may attempt to pass federal acid rain controls. <v Speaker>Acid rain is a national problem. <v Speaker>Half of Wisconsin's acid rain comes from places as far away as Missouri <v Speaker>and Ohio. But when the national debate takes place, expect utility <v Speaker>lobbyists like Walt Sandburg to question what effect the acid rain <v Speaker>actually has. <v Speaker>Are you saying flat out that you don't think it is a problem or you just don't know or. <v Speaker>I'm saying I don't know. <v Speaker>There is undoubtedly some connection, but I don't think we <v Speaker>can show that spending a dollar on <v Speaker>a particular piece of equipment or one of our utility generating plants <v Speaker>is going to result in the dollars worth of benefit to the environment or <v Speaker>perceived or otherwise at this time. <v Speaker>It's hard to sit here and tell you that pollution reduction <v Speaker>is not a good thing to do. You can't I honestly, philosophically

<v Speaker>can't say that. <v Speaker>And it sounds as though when we're sitting here arguing, begging the point, you're <v Speaker>arguing the point that sulfur dioxide reduction isn't necessary. <v Speaker>We're talking out of both sides of our face. <v Speaker>I agree that it's necessary, that it's a good thing. <v Speaker>Pollution reduction is a good thing to get something for it. <v Speaker>It's always nice. <v Speaker>When the acid rain controversy started, there were dark visions that Wisconsin lakes <v Speaker>would become like those in upstate New York lakes in which there were no fish. <v Speaker>It's now fairly clear that won't happen here. <v Speaker>But what's been discovered at Little Rock Lake is that there will be changes. <v Speaker>How great those changes will be won't be pinned down for several years. <v Speaker>The question is whether those changes will be great enough to warrant a change <v Speaker>nationwide in the way electric utilities do business. <v Speaker>[singing] Water, water, water, water.

<v Speaker>The effect of acid rain on Wisconsin Lakes has worried state fishermen for a number of <v Speaker>years and fish are the subject of our next report. <v Speaker>But not just any fish. This is a story about trout. <v Speaker>Now, more has been written about fly fishing for trout than just about any other kind <v Speaker>of fishing. Ernest Hemingway, Charles Kuralt, Jimmy Carter and Don <v Speaker>Johnson have all been hooked on fly fishing. <v Speaker>I'm not a fisherman, so I wouldn't know. <v Speaker>But the best line I ever heard on this particular subject was this <v Speaker>fly fishing, said Arnold Gingrich, is just about the most fun you can have <v Speaker>standing up. Here's Steve Gendasech's report on fly fishing. <v Speaker>Spectacular catch under a bridge.

<v Speaker>One day, Tom Windelberg decided to leave all of their concerns behind and go fishing. <v Speaker>Well, I had a little pinto wagon that was livable. <v Speaker>And if you scratched up a little in the back and I'd <v Speaker>just load it up with my fly-Fishing cattle and I would go from place to place. <v Speaker>And I decided to live along the streams and actually spend a lot of time <v Speaker>being there. And I enjoyed the heck out of it. <v Speaker>I did that for for two years. <v Speaker>For two years. This self-proclaimed truck bum lived in fished on the banks of Wisconsin <v Speaker>trout streams. <v Speaker>Why would- why would a fly fisherman spend- spend all that time? <v Speaker>OK, what I did is really not that unusual. <v Speaker>There's something about the fascination of clean flowing water, the <v Speaker>outdoors, the environment, the beauty of the trout, the beauty of the water. <v Speaker>Perhaps even more than the beauty of the trout. <v Speaker>The active fishing itself is almost more important than catching fish.

<v Speaker>Except for those times you're not catching fish. <v Speaker> Windelberg may be an extreme example of an angler who got hooked on fly fishing. <v Speaker>But he says many trout fishermen catch the same bug at one time or another. <v Speaker>And they become hopelessly involved with it to the point where they give <v Speaker>up skiing. Their families and other <v Speaker>secondary encumbrances and burdens. <v Speaker>As fish go, the trout has inspired philosophers and poets more well known than Tom Windle <v Speaker>Berg. Ernest Hemingway was a devoted trout angler and wrote affectionately about <v Speaker>this most wary of fish. And Robert Trever, writing in Trout Magic, told <v Speaker>us why he fishes.

<v Speaker>I fish because I love to because I love the environs <v Speaker>where trout or farm, which are invariably beautiful and hate <v Speaker>the environs where crowds of people are trying to variably ugly. <v Speaker>For many anglers, the subtle art of fly fishing is the only way to catch trout <v Speaker>someplace right up in here. There was a fish working earlier in. <v Speaker>Gary Borger is a prominent Wisconsin trout angler. <v Speaker>He is also an associate professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin, Wausau, <v Speaker>and a producer of instructional fly fishing videotapes. <v Speaker>Probably more than anything, people like fly fishing because it's like solving a giant <v Speaker>puzzle. What are the fish eating? <v Speaker>Can I select the right fly? <v Speaker>Is my casting good enough? Can I put the fly where it's supposed to go and all that? <v Speaker>And then can I catch the fish? <v Speaker>I was a little surprised there. That's about where those fish were working and we saw <v Speaker>from up above. Well, fly fishing is a very old sport. <v Speaker>The first real written book that we had one five fishing that actually describes <v Speaker>the technique of fly fishing, how to build rides, how to make flies is just about 500

<v Speaker>years old. Fourteen ninety six in England. <v Speaker>For a sport steeped in legend and mystique, fly fishing starts with a simple enough idea. <v Speaker>Tiny hand tied lures made out of fur and feathers are cast upstream. <v Speaker>These artificial flies land gently on the water near a hungry trout <v Speaker>just lying near your feet. <v Speaker>The idea is to fool the fish who thinks it will swallow up its favorite bug. <v Speaker>This timeless sport of English, gentlemen, is now trendy, Daffy's, with money and leisure <v Speaker>time are taking up Rod Real Vest and waiters evidence. <v Speaker>This television commercial where a young couple escaped to a trout stream with their fly <v Speaker>rods and naked. <v Speaker>Again, the words of Robert Trever. <v Speaker>I fish because of all the television commercials, cocktail parties <v Speaker>and assorted social posture, and thus escape because <v Speaker>in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing things they hate,

<v Speaker>my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an <v Speaker>act of small rebellion. <v Speaker>So fly fisherman make up only about seven percent of the total number of sport fishermen <v Speaker>in the country. Their number is growing. <v Speaker>Rod Warren from Green Bay had never held a fly rod before coming to this fly fishing <v Speaker>class on the Wolf River in June. <v Speaker>Fly fishing just seemed to be a, I guess, progression from spinners <v Speaker>and worms to fly fishing, and he seems to be a mystique about it. <v Speaker>I want to find out what that was all about. <v Speaker>What is that mystique? Not sure. <v Speaker>Haven't found out yet. Yeah, I caught a fish on the fly. <v Speaker>That's like. Yeah. Though I'll get closer to the magic, I guess. <v Speaker>All right. And stay in the same plane. <v Speaker>All right. You don't want to end up down here and stopping back here. <v Speaker>OK. All right. Give that a try. <v Speaker>And don't don't like that. <v Speaker>There are now dozens of fly-Fishing schools across the country that teach the techniques <v Speaker>of casting. Dave Ritz conducts this class on the Wolf River in Langley County.

<v Speaker>And then at the end here, forward cast, pretend you're wringing water off of the tip of <v Speaker>your rod. So you want to take that and bring it off. <v Speaker>Take your thumb and force it forward. <v Speaker>Like a hammering that nail into the wall or... <v Speaker>Fly fishing is considered the most elite way to fish. <v Speaker>There are so many aspects to this sport, one could specialize in casting, fly tying <v Speaker>or entomology, which is the study of insects and would have a fly fishing instructor. <v Speaker>Dave, Ritz. <v Speaker>In some regards, it's a thinking man's sport. <v Speaker>But more important, I think it's an observant man's sport. <v Speaker>It's very important to observe nature and be able to get <v Speaker>your cues from nature when you're fly fishing. <v Speaker>See what insects are present on the water, what type of insects the fish might be feeding <v Speaker>on, and to match those insects in that hatch in the natural land and <v Speaker>larva or pupil limitations as your midges, the small copper <v Speaker>nymphs. <v Speaker>Still, you don't have to have PhD to enjoy fly fishing. <v Speaker>Patience may be more important than skill.

<v Speaker>Tom Lindenberg worked almost forty five minutes trying different flies before he landed <v Speaker>this brown trout on light tackle. <v Speaker>All the mileage on the reading when you catch a minor. <v Speaker>Wendelbergh is the author of hundreds of articles on truck fishing, a dedicated fly <v Speaker>fisherman and an expert fly tire. <v Speaker>When I was a kid and I got my first fly tying kit, I read the instructions and threw it <v Speaker>away. <v Speaker>With chicken feathers and bits of fur from elk, deer and rabbit, Wendelburg can fashion <v Speaker>imitation flies that will fool the trout. <v Speaker>There's something about a fuzzy body that really catches fish. <v Speaker>There are dry flies which float on the water and what flies would sink under the surface. <v Speaker>Which one you fish with depends on what the fish are feeding on.

<v Speaker>And the more one knows about what the fish are eating or entomology, the more successful <v Speaker>one becomes. <v Speaker>That's one of danger to fly fisherman has over. <v Speaker>Other anglers is being able to predict what fish are going to <v Speaker>be eating and when you're going to be eating it. <v Speaker>Another advantage to fly fishing is the solitude one finds on trout streams. <v Speaker>Solitude, as described by Robert Trever in his book Trout Magic. <v Speaker>I fish because only in the woods can I find solitude without loneliness. <v Speaker>Because bourbon out of an old tin cup always tastes better out there <v Speaker>because maybe one day I'll catch a mermaid. <v Speaker>Trout anglers are somewhat unique in the fact that <v Speaker>they're very solitary and that kind of pursuit. <v Speaker>My day is spoiled if I see a boot track on my favorite stream. <v Speaker>Bob Jackson is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse there. <v Speaker>He has surveyed Wisconsin anglers to find out what it is they like about truck fishing.

<v Speaker>Hello. I clean day. Having said, I don't mind riding to the stream with <v Speaker>somebody and riding home with them and maybe talking a few words with <v Speaker>one old man at midday. <v Speaker>But that's all I want to see. <v Speaker>Jackson conducted the survey with the State Department of Natural Resources. <v Speaker>Wisconsin Trout Anglers studies are the result of serving nearly 1000 trout fishermen <v Speaker>in Wisconsin, according to the study. <v Speaker>The most important pleasures of trout fishing are beauty and solitude. <v Speaker>I fish because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought <v Speaker>or bribed or impressed by power. <v Speaker>But to respond only to quietude and humility <v Speaker>and then lose patience. <v Speaker>The trout itself is beautiful, I grew up with mystique about it. <v Speaker>The trout has been raised to almost mythical status. <v Speaker>It is a hard fish to catch. So it has been mistakingly referred to as smart.

<v Speaker>According to Gary Borger. <v Speaker>Let's put it this way. 50 percent of a child's brain is devoted to vision. <v Speaker>50 percent is devoted to hearing. That doesn't leave much for smarts. <v Speaker>But they're extremely wary. And that's that's why I tried so hard to catch, because <v Speaker>they're extremely wary. <v Speaker>Because trout are so wary, so hard to catch, that is part of the thrill, Jackson <v Speaker>study found that fly fishermen are more interested in the method of catching fish than <v Speaker>with filling their Creoles with a day's catch. <v Speaker>I think I see an Aldo Leopoldian kind of philosophy emerging, <v Speaker>a oneness with the Earth. <v Speaker>The results of this oneness with the trout is that many trout anglers have adopted a <v Speaker>catch and release policy by carefully releasing the trout back into the stream. <v Speaker>It will be around for someone else's fly another day. <v Speaker>There are people that are catching the 100th fishing season, and it's not that the <v Speaker>resource isn't important. It's that the resource is so important you <v Speaker>realize it can be harvested. <v Speaker>You have that love affair with the trout. <v Speaker>And they tell us that of all the satisfaction, you have the right anything from me

<v Speaker>and the natural setting to catching the trophy and so on, that releasing the fish <v Speaker>is probably one of the two or three most satisfying aspects of their <v Speaker>whole experience. <v Speaker>Let me go. Is there something about putting it back? <v Speaker>Seeing the way it turns people. <v Speaker>After Tom Wendelburg caught this trophy sized trout he revives it before he releases it. <v Speaker>Look at those gills beginning to work. I had one I revived for 40 minutes, and then <v Speaker>it paid off. I saw him again next year. <v Speaker>It's got to be a couple of fish. <v Speaker>That right. <v Speaker>It's interesting that fly. <v Speaker>One of the things that so intrigues me about fly fishing that I like so much <v Speaker>about it is it is the great escape. <v Speaker>And you lose all sense of time. <v Speaker>It is all sense of care. You're not worried about anything except what's happening out <v Speaker>there on the river. <v Speaker>I fish not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important,

<v Speaker>but because I suspected so many of the other concerns of men are equally <v Speaker>unimportant and not nearly so much fun <v Speaker>doing it as a big one. <v Speaker>So far on this program, we've talked about the beauty of water and water quality. <v Speaker>But right now we're going to take a few moments out to talk about the ways in which human <v Speaker>beings need water in order to survive. <v Speaker>Joining me to do that, as always, is our medical consultant, Dr. Ted Goodfriend. <v Speaker>We think of water as a given, something you're looking at, something you enjoy. <v Speaker>But but what do we need inside? <v Speaker>Well, stop to think for a minute that we are half water. <v Speaker>So we need water to survive, to exist. <v Speaker>Do we need it every. Every. Is there a I guess, a prescribed amount? <v Speaker>I mean, do people have to have a certain amount each day? <v Speaker>Well, you may have had somebody tell you when you were young to drink eight glasses of <v Speaker>water a day. I think that's a little extravagant.

<v Speaker>You could probably do on half as much. But we always need water. <v Speaker>And there are times when we need more doing. <v Speaker>Do we have to have is do we know anything about water, therapeutic effects? <v Speaker>I mean, people drinking lots and lots as opposed to a little bit. <v Speaker>I have a book which I just picked off a newsstand that talks about the healing <v Speaker>effects of water. And there is a lot of fad ism about that. <v Speaker>But I don't believe that that really holds much water. <v Speaker>I think we don't need water to do to purify us any more than the minimum amount. <v Speaker>Does everyone need the same amount? <v Speaker>Everyone needs the same amount except when they are either sick <v Speaker>or sweating. For example, in very hot climates, you have to drink more water or if you're <v Speaker>ill, if you had some reason for losing water like diarrhea or vomiting, you'd need <v Speaker>more. But everybody needs a minimum amount of water. <v Speaker>We would die a lot sooner without water than we would die without food. <v Speaker>What is it specifically do for the body? <v Speaker>I mean, why why do you need water as opposed to Coca-Cola or whatever? <v Speaker>I mean, what is it? What does it actually provide the body with?

<v Speaker>Water is the main stuff of which blood is made. <v Speaker>So without water, you couldn't have circulation, you wouldn't have any oxygen going to <v Speaker>your brain, you'd die from that. <v Speaker>Water is also the bathing fluid that into which our cells put <v Speaker>their waste products. And then out of which the kidney removes them. <v Speaker>All right. And we will talk in a moment about the kinds of water that there are and why <v Speaker>pure water is important. That'll come up in just a moment. <v Speaker>[singing folk song] <v Speaker>Dr. Ted Goodfind will rejoin us in just a moment to talk more about the water we drink. <v Speaker>But first, this story about what happens when water isn't around, when water doesn't

<v Speaker>fall from the sky, when things dry up like they did during the great drought <v Speaker>of 1988. <v Speaker>Thousands of Midwestern farmers will probably go out of business because of <v Speaker>the long, hot summer, because of this drought. <v Speaker>It was a time that made us realize, perhaps more than any other, just how directly we are <v Speaker>all affected by water and what happens when we don't have it. <v Speaker>Reporter Art Hackett spent the summer following one Iowa farmer. <v Speaker>Here's Art's report. <v Speaker>It is the 20th of June. <v Speaker>There's only been half an inch of rain since Mother's Day. <v Speaker>Today, Greg Katar is in the field plowing up seeds he planted in May. <v Speaker>Seeds that never germinated. <v Speaker>I made a mistake when I told it, and I. <v Speaker>I lost some moisture in the tillage process, but with no rain since <v Speaker>Mother's Day, it was it was doomed. <v Speaker>The crop is, Milo, sometimes known as green sorghum.

<v Speaker>A crop that's used to feed cattle. <v Speaker>Katar decided to plant it this year instead of corn. <v Speaker>Perhaps his instincts were telling him something. <v Speaker>Milo is more drought resistant, but not this drought resistant. <v Speaker>I guess it started so early in the spring. <v Speaker>That was what my father had been farming for 70 years. <v Speaker>And he's never seen it this dry, this early, this severe before <v Speaker>even the 30s. <v Speaker>Today, Katar faced a choice he could give up on the prospect of producing grain from this <v Speaker>field and to plant a grass crop instead. <v Speaker>But because of a recent drizzle, he thought it might be just barely moist enough. <v Speaker>He decided to plant Milo again. <v Speaker>What goes through your mind when you're having to do that? <v Speaker>Well, today I'm really one, and if I'm wasting my seed again, <v Speaker>I've already got my fertilizer and so I don't have that expense again.

<v Speaker>I'm putting more fuel into it. <v Speaker>I'm just I'm really, you know, questioning the wisdom <v Speaker>of what I'm doing. <v Speaker>Greg Katar at least has the luxury of a second shot at his crop of grain sorghum. <v Speaker>He's not so lucky with some of his other crops like alfalfa and oats. <v Speaker>In those cases, he's going to have to take whatever Mother Nature dishes out. <v Speaker>This alfalfa was seeded at the end of March, <v Speaker>first part April, and normally it should be the height of this <v Speaker>Otis right now that I ate early in the spring. <v Speaker>I didn't even know if I was going to emerge. <v Speaker>It was so dry and dusty and and it was so much heat. <v Speaker>And as you can see, it has finally emerged, but they don't look very healthy. <v Speaker>Alfalfa is used for hay to feed the cattle. <v Speaker>Midwest farmers usually harvest one crop of alfalfa in the spring,

<v Speaker>one in mid summer and one in the fall this year. <v Speaker>The second cutting, as it's known, was non-existent. <v Speaker>And the fear on this one hundred five degree June afternoon was <v Speaker>that the crop would die altogether. <v Speaker>If you get right down here close, you can see these alfalfa plants and starting to wilt. <v Speaker>That's my next three years a crop. <v Speaker>And that's the crucial thing for me is whether this seeding survives <v Speaker>the impact to lose it. If this seeding dies from me, that impact is going to be felt much <v Speaker>longer than the Milo that that's <v Speaker>that's going to make me forced me to liquidate my cattle herd if I lose this. <v Speaker>It's now July the 8th. And there's been no rain since the Miloje was planted <v Speaker>and it's still hot.

<v Speaker>You know, we dug down here at all five days ago, <v Speaker>you know, and you can see these sprouts and then you could find the kernels. <v Speaker>And they had a they had germinated and they had to shoot on. <v Speaker>But you can see a lot of that. Never made it never made it out of the ground. <v Speaker>We were we were thinking we were going to get maybe like a 100 percent stand at that time <v Speaker>because it's still. But this, you know, jumped up to one hundred ninety eight. <v Speaker>Ninety seven. That took care of that. <v Speaker>You know, I'm amazed there is any here at all to tell you the truth. <v Speaker>We've had just nothing for moisture since we planted it. <v Speaker>We had that for tents there a couple of days for planet, you know, there in <v Speaker>June. <v Speaker>You said you were wondering then if you're wasting your seed or not. <v Speaker>Did you? <v Speaker>Yeah. Well, what do you think?

<v Speaker>It sure looks to me like I did. <v Speaker>The drought had some strange effects on the natural desires of farmers today. <v Speaker>Keiter was actually hoping it wouldn't rain. <v Speaker>That's because of the drought continued. <v Speaker>Just a little longer. There was a chance corn plants on neighboring farms wouldn't <v Speaker>even form ears. Kater would then be able to bond earless stocks <v Speaker>cheap if it doesn't rain. <v Speaker>Well, if it rains, that probably won't be able to probably just go <v Speaker>for early weaning of the calves. <v Speaker>Keep the calves. Sell the cows because they're the big forage consumers. <v Speaker>And try to hold over the badger heifers to breed back next <v Speaker>year and be back in the cattle business in two years. <v Speaker>You'll want it to rain or don't you? <v Speaker>Yeah, I do. But. <v Speaker>Economically would be the best for me right now if it hold off for about a week. <v Speaker>Just because the fact that I would be able to get some corn

<v Speaker>for silage or I hope like I could buy something from some neighbors <v Speaker>in the next two days. <v Speaker>It would rain nearly an inch in August and September. <v Speaker>Rainfall would be at or even above normal. <v Speaker>The corn fields that Cater had hoped to chop for salvage were in some cases producing <v Speaker>yields of over one hundred bushels an acre. <v Speaker>Nowhere near the records, but not bad for a year when a total failure <v Speaker>of the corn crop had been feared. <v Speaker>It is now September 26. <v Speaker>Greg Cator is now harvesting some of the alfalfa fields he'd given up for dead. <v Speaker>Never ceases to amaze me the survivability of alfalfa. <v Speaker>We had three year old plants that were dormant the second week in June <v Speaker>just dried up. And they look for all purposes to be dead <v Speaker>and they're green and growing again now. <v Speaker>So.

<v Speaker>I guess I was whining too soon. <v Speaker>Some of Keita's milo crop also bloomed into what looked like fluffy years of <v Speaker>corn. This will wind up in his silos. <v Speaker>He'll be counting on it to help assertive cattle make it through the winter. <v Speaker>But even though fall turned out to look so much better than summer, Tater's <v Speaker>still faces problems. <v Speaker>He's going into winter without his usual stockpile of hay. <v Speaker>The winter reserve was used up in July when green pastures turned brown. <v Speaker>As Greg Katar takes in his fall harvest, the questions on his mind are whether <v Speaker>the rains will continue through the winter and whether next summer <v Speaker>will be dry too. <v Speaker>I mean, are you out of the woods financially on this? <v Speaker>Ask me in April. <v Speaker>Art Hackett produces our last report. <v Speaker>Ted Goodfriend rejoins us now to talk a little bit more about water and the way it

<v Speaker>affects us inside our bodies. <v Speaker>Ted, we were talking before about everybody needs water, but what kind of water do we <v Speaker>really need? <v Speaker>Well, we need water that's pure to a certain extent. <v Speaker>We need water that doesn't have bacteria in it that would give us diseases, especially <v Speaker>bacteria from other people. That's not good for everyone. <v Speaker>You read every year about water contamination problems or people becoming more <v Speaker>and more concerned about water quality. <v Speaker>What are the big things to really worry about? <v Speaker>As I mentioned, the bacteria that are viruses that would come from other people would be <v Speaker>serious bacteria that come, let's say the green stuff that gets <v Speaker>in our lakes by the end of the summer is not very serious. <v Speaker>So if you take a gulp of lake winger water, when you're swimming at Violence Beach in <v Speaker>Madison, for example, that's not the end of the world. <v Speaker>No big deal. By the way, it always strikes me as ironic that we worry about getting a <v Speaker>little diarrhea from contaminated water in the spies of Europe, where people go to drink <v Speaker>special waters. They're so full of minerals that everyone instantly gets diarrhea from <v Speaker>it and they pay for it.

<v Speaker>Now, what about mineral water? That is certainly something that's become extremely <v Speaker>popular in the last few years. You go and buy, you know, a bottle of water for 50, 60 <v Speaker>cents or whatever. Is it better for you? <v Speaker>I don't think so. I think there are less controls to keep the bottled <v Speaker>water pure than there are on our tap water. <v Speaker>Our tap water is a remarkable achievement of public health and sanitation. <v Speaker>And I think it's pure than a lot of the bottled water. <v Speaker>So are people wasting money when they buy bottled water or add. <v Speaker>Well, let's go to the next part of my question, I guess, which is adding the purifiers, <v Speaker>the home water purifiers, again, unnecessary. <v Speaker>If there were contaminants in one's water supply, for example, if the well was <v Speaker>contaminated, I would say it's not unnecessary. <v Speaker>It would be unnecessary from my point of view for city water or water that comes <v Speaker>out of a tap because some of the purifiers have been taken off the market for adding <v Speaker>worse things than they were taking away. <v Speaker>What about the overall quality of water is in in our state? <v Speaker>I mean, are we blessed with with good quality water that people really can have every <v Speaker>reason to feel good about drinking?

<v Speaker>It's interesting. We have water at least around here that's hard, has a lot of minerals <v Speaker>in it, and some people go to great lengths to remove those minerals. <v Speaker>They are adding back salt. I might add, which isn't good for you. <v Speaker>But the minerals that we remove assiduously with our water softeners <v Speaker>apparently are responsible in England for a longevity effect. <v Speaker>In other words, when they studied all the people of England, when public health surveys, <v Speaker>the people from hard water areas lived longer than the people from soft water <v Speaker>areas. <v Speaker>Now say so far you've put the bottled water people out of business, that the water <v Speaker>purifiers aren't so hot. And now you're saying we shouldn't have water softeners either? <v Speaker>Well, water softener is really do a great job to protect your appliances, but I think <v Speaker>they may do some harm to your own pipes inside. <v Speaker>What about the kinds of things that we drink other than water? <v Speaker>A lot of people don't drink much water. They drink pop, they drink this. <v Speaker>They drink that. I mean, you know, the beer advertisements may say it's <v Speaker>the water, but in fact, is it and is it more important to drink water than all that other <v Speaker>stuff?

<v Speaker>It's not more important to drink pure or tap water than it is to drink water that comes <v Speaker>in a can of water. That's ice cubes. <v Speaker>I know some people whose only source of water is the ice cubes that they add to their <v Speaker>drinks. But but I think it's interesting that people are very concerned about the purity <v Speaker>of their of their tap water. And yet they will pour that water over leaves to make tea <v Speaker>or over beans to make coffee and not worry about the thousands of ingredients or hundreds <v Speaker>that are added when they do that. <v Speaker>So all those other things, if you're really going to be concerned about what you put <v Speaker>inside, you shouldn't just worry about what comes out of the tap. <v Speaker>It's all that other stuff. <v Speaker>I would say the purest thing you put in your body is the water that comes out of a tap. <v Speaker>All right. Ted Goodfriend, thanks very much. <v Speaker>If you would like to comment on this week's broadcast, write The Wisconsin magazine <v Speaker>821. University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin. <v Speaker>53706. <v Speaker>We wrap up tonight's program with a story about life along the most famous body of

<v Speaker>water that touches our state. The mighty Mississippi. <v Speaker>CBS does a documentary program called 48 Hours. <v Speaker>It takes you to a dramatic location, an emergency room, the Middle East, or the back <v Speaker>streets of New York, and tries to convey to you what life is like there over <v Speaker>a 48 hour time span. <v Speaker>Well, what follows is our version of that, a simpler version. <v Speaker>It's one day and one small Mississippi River town. <v Speaker>This is called 24 hours in Trempealeau. <v Speaker>We look to water as a source, a source of growth and of life, but <v Speaker>water is also the source of social interchange of trade <v Speaker>and of community. The town of Trempealeau sits on the edge of the Mississippi, <v Speaker>just north of Lacross. The Chippewa came by here first. <v Speaker>Then the Europeans roughly translated. <v Speaker>Trump alone means mountain, whose feet is bathed in water and water, has always <v Speaker>been Trempealeau's lifeblood.

<v Speaker>Trempealeau's heyday was in the middle part of the last century, 15 to 20 steamboats <v Speaker>stopped by here each day. The town grew large enough to support six barbershops. <v Speaker>One even came complete with its own palm tree. <v Speaker>But like so many small towns, Trempealeau's heyday is now just a memory. <v Speaker>Today, Trempealeau couldn't be quieter. <v Speaker>The steamboats are gone and the barges don't stop here. <v Speaker>But people are still anchored here to this small town into the river. <v Speaker>To me, it's it's a sense of it's a great sense of peace <v Speaker>and a great sense of home tremolo. <v Speaker>Resident Eddie Allen is a songwriter who's lived along the Mississippi most of his life. <v Speaker>I think of the river as the circulatory system of the country, just like you would think <v Speaker>of the veins in your arm as his is pumping blood to <v Speaker>the river pumps a bit more muddy blood.

<v Speaker> The muddy Mississippi still pumps blood into Trempealeau. <v Speaker>But ever so slowly. A hundred years ago, the center of town was the Trempeleau <v Speaker>hotel. It still is today. <v Speaker>You can't buy dinner here for 25 cents anymore, but a room still costs just 15 <v Speaker>bucks a night. And it remains the town's political and social center. <v Speaker>[indistinct conversation] <v Speaker>They call themselves the Trempealeau Board of Trade. <v Speaker>A group of old time residents who meet at the hotel every morning for coffee and <v Speaker>conversation. Ritual is important to the Board of Trade. <v Speaker>A daily dice game determines who buys the coffee. <v Speaker>[indistinct conversation] <v Speaker>No one's quite sure who came up with the name. <v Speaker>Board of Trade. But over the years they've debated town politics, raise money for <v Speaker>charities and as befits their name, traded on the stock market.

<v Speaker>We purchased stock when I went to sell it for the <v Speaker>Board of Trade. The brokerage firm wanted a resolution from the <v Speaker>board of directors. All of the things that the corporation would have to submit. <v Speaker>We were a little bit nonplused as to how it affected. <v Speaker>Each man here and grew up on the river. <v Speaker>Each moved away. Each came back. <v Speaker>The Mississippi and has always been home. <v Speaker>And it wasn't until I was gone from here about ten or fifteen years and came <v Speaker>back to visit. And all of a sudden I realized that I missed the river and the bluffs. <v Speaker>There's nothing like that in Janesville. <v Speaker>It's a little hard to follow this next comment, fly swatting <v Speaker>instead of gavel pounding was taking over the Board of Trade meeting. <v Speaker>But listen anyway to how Mike Nielson sums up why life and Trempealeau is hard to <v Speaker>beat. <v Speaker>I told em, they talked about the scenery and one thing, you know, and I said, <v Speaker>well, if you stay here long enough to wear one pair of shoes, you

<v Speaker>never leave. <v Speaker>Wear out one set of shoes here and you'll probably never leave, which is why being named <v Speaker>the Trempealeau citizen of the Year is considered a high honor. <v Speaker>The Board of Trade helped select the person for this lofty post, and last year they <v Speaker>selected Squeak Mycroot, a man who has a reputation for being one of the best <v Speaker>fisherman on the Mississippi. <v Speaker>Well, if you don't get fish, I think think like one <v Speaker> Squeak Mycroot is another lifelong river man. <v Speaker>At age 14, he got his first job aboard the last of the Mississippi steamboats. <v Speaker>He's never left the river. <v Speaker>Every day I hear of other than where you go and so <v Speaker>many tourists. <v Speaker>You wanna go fishing you go fishing. If you don't want it, don't go. <v Speaker>On this date, the fish weren't biting much. <v Speaker>It didn't matter. <v Speaker>You took my all. <v Speaker>Well, some days you just don't catch none.

<v Speaker>I got I got a couple friends. <v Speaker>I take them fishing every once in a while. <v Speaker>I say, well, we can't catch fish. <v Speaker>But when we were at the train. <v Speaker>My wife will say how can you stand it out there? <v Speaker>Well, it's easy. <v Speaker>No problem. <v Speaker>There are few problems around here. <v Speaker>Last year, the number of violent crimes in Trempealeau county, assault, battery and the <v Speaker>like numbered exactly zero. <v Speaker>With the approach of nightfall, the term below hotel again becomes the center of things. <v Speaker>Eddie Allen, who is a baker by day, becomes Trempealeau's balladeer by night. <v Speaker>[singing folksong] From the birch canoe to the age of steam. <v Speaker>To the people yet to come.

<v Speaker>The river has carried a thousand dreams, but promises <v Speaker>for none. It'll be here after I am gone. <v Speaker>Carrying your precious cargo on. <v Speaker>River Road. Why? <v Speaker>It's no doubt easy to overly romanticize life along the Mississippi, <v Speaker>but there's no overestimating the power and persuasiveness of the river. <v Speaker>We only spent a day in Trempealeau, not long enough to wear out a pair of shoes. <v Speaker>But as for coming back. <v Speaker>No problem. <v Speaker>[singing] That is flowing in the old river of life. <v Speaker>Flowing down to the sea. <v Speaker>And that wraps up our special edition of the Wisconsin magazine, our program all about <v Speaker>water. We hope you've enjoyed it. And we will see you again a week from tonight.

<v Speaker>I'm Dave Iverson. Have a good week. <v Speaker>Next time on the Wisconsin magazine, the

<v Speaker>U.S. Senate race comes to public television. <v Speaker>Susan Engeleiter and Herb Kohl face off in the last televised debate before the <v Speaker>election. This special live presentation is co-sponsored by Wisconsin <v Speaker>Public Television, The Wausau Daily Herald and the Green Bay Press Gazette. <v Speaker>Where do the candidates stand on the issues? <v Speaker>Find out next time on the Wisconsin magazine.