Blazing New Atv Trails in Parkland

  • Advocates of special trails for ATV riding say the trails would reduce environmental damage from uncontrolled use. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Managers at state parks across the country are scrambling to figure out how to deal with a
rising demand for trails for All-Terrain Vehicles. Stephanie Hemphill reports park
managers are finding it’s not easy to satisfy both fans who have fun on four wheel drive
vehicles and people who want a quieter time in the park:

Transcript

Managers at state parks across the country are scrambling to figure out how to deal with a
rising demand for trails for All-Terrain Vehicles. Stephanie Hemphill reports park
managers are finding it’s not easy to satisfy both fans who have fun on four wheel drive
vehicles and people who want a quieter time in the park:


As the name suggests, All-Terrain Vehicles are built to travel rough. ATVs power over
rocks and logs. Their go-anywhere knobby tires grip the land and take their riders just
about anywhere they want to go, and a lot of them want to go to public parks.


Whether it’s forests, dunes, bogs or a desert, riders say four-wheeling can be a fun way to
get out into nature. The vehicles are popular. Dealers are selling close to a million ATVs
every year, and sales are growing steadily. With that many people looking for a place to
play, states are scrambling to accommodate them.


In Minnesota, the state decided a long ATV trail might be a good way to attract tourism
dollars to a struggling rural area in the state.


Ron Sluka jumped at the idea. He’s the trail coordinator for a local ATV club. He’d been
wanting for years to build a trail in his area. Then he heard the state would pay for a
“destination” trail so well-built and attractive, people would come from all over to ride it.
Sluka thought it would be great news for his area.


He and county officials worked up a plan, but when it hit the local news, Sluka says a
few people raised a ruckus:


“The way it was presented to the people, eminent domain would take over in cases if
need be, and there were going to be up to 20 feet of your land taken for this trail. None
of the above is true, totally none of it is true, absolutely zero. But it’s too late: once
things are rolling, it’s rolling.”


Sluka says now, it’s hard to get a rational discussion of the issues. Beyond property rights
issues and worries about the ATVs being too loud, there are other concerns:


“The residents have kind of been left out of the loop.”


That’s Deb Pomroy. She lives near the proposed ATV trail.


Pomroy says most of her neighbors don’t mind the local ATV riders. It’s that idea of
drawing ATVs from all over the state that freaks them out, and Pomroy has her own reasons
for opposing a trail here, where the Cloquet River has its beginning: wood turtles.
Pomroy is a biologist. She says this area is a refuge for the turtles. They’re endangered in
most of their range, and listed as a threatened species in Minnesota.


Wood turtles bury their eggs in sandy soil. Pomroy says they would love to bury their
eggs in soil disturbed by ATVs, but the eggs wouldn’t survive:


“Even stepping on a nest, which is buried in soil, don’t know there are eggs there, is
enough to destroy the eggs.”


The trail is on hold for now, while county officials and ATV riders try to come up with
an alternative. Concern about damage to sensitive environmental areas is one of the chief
reasons many environmentalists don’t like the idea of letting ATVs into parks.


Jason Kiely is with Wildlands CPR, a national non-profit group that works to prevent off-
road vehicle damage on public land. He says fights over ATV trails are inevitable, as
long as public agencies don’t involve all park users in a comprehensive planning process.


“Primarily because off-road vehicles affect every other use of the forest so significantly.
So we advocate for doing comprehensive travel and recreation planning, not just trying to
carve off the ATV piece, but multi-stakeholder planning efforts that offer something to
everyone.”


Kiely says the US Forest Service and many state agencies have a lot of work to do, to
find the right balance between preserving nature and allowing ATV riders to have their
fun on public land


For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Dam Removal’s Balancing Act

  • The continued operation of hydroelectric dams will be up for debate in the next decade. Currently, the Army Corps of Engineers is looking to remove the Boardman River dam in northern Michigan. This dam removal could impact how all future dam removals are completed. (Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

The Army Corps of Engineers is tackling a dam removal project that could affect how the Corps approaches future dam removals. In the next decade, communities will be deciding whether to keep operating tens of thousands of hydroelectric dams on rivers across the country. This project is significant because it involves several dams being taken out of production along the same stretch of river. The GLRC’s Bob Allen reports:

Transcript

The Army Corps of Engineers is tackling a dam removal project that
could affect how the Corps approaches future dam removals. In the next
decade, communities will be deciding whether to keep operating tens of
thousands of hydroelectric dams on rivers across the country. This
project is significant because it involves several dams being taken out of
production along the same stretch of river. The GLRC’s Bob Allen
reports:


(Sound of water)


The Boardman River is beautiful. It winds and turns and tumbles
through forested hillsides and passes along northern cedar swamps.
Sections of the upper river qualify as a blue ribbon trout stream, but a
series of dams along the lower half of the river changed some of the best
river water.


Steve Largent has worked on repairing damaged banks along the
Boardman for the last fifteen years. He says removing the dams will
restore faster flowing sections of the river, and clearing out the sand and
silt built up behind the dams will be good for trout and other critters.


“The sediment that is building up in the back of Brown Bridge pond
continues to move upstream as it fills in the upper end of the pond it’s
aggregrating upstream. It’s moving upstream further and further destroying
habitat further upstream.”


So a free running river will help wash away that sediment, but these days
it’s not just anglers who are interested in the Boardman River. Recently
river engineers have been drawn to the Boardman like trout to a fly
fisherman’s lure. They’re interested in landing the job of studying the
Boardman River and its dams. The million dollar study will look at
whether to keep or tear down three hydroelectric dams along a 17 mile stretch of river in northern Michigan just before it flows into Lake
Michigan.


Craig Fischenich is a research engineer with the Army Corps of
Engineers. He says the potential to remove three dams along the same
stretch of river is not something you’re going to find anywhere else.


“Whereas in many parts of the country they’re removing individual dams, they’re on systems that have other dams on them, and so this is an
opportunity here to actually try to restore an entire watershed.”


Fischenich says taking out the dams would mean improvements for
native fish. But there are risks too. If the dams go, invasive species
such as the parasitic sea lamprey could get upriver, and introduced
species such as steelhead and salmon could swim into the river and
compete with the native fish.


That prospect doesn’t exactly thrill John Wyrus, who lives on the
Boardman. He’d rather see some kind of obstacle down near the mouth
of the river to prevent introduced species from entering.


“So that these steelhead and salmon can’t get up the river. I would just
like to see it a brown trout and brook trout fishery.”


That’s the kind of scenario the study of the Boardman River would
consider.


(Sound of people talking)


Recently a lot of the engineers vying to do the study gathered at a
conference put together by the Corps of Engineers.


Gordon Ferguson works for ENSER Corporation. His company
is one of a dozen that submitted bids to land the study.


“This is a particularly interesting project because it involves a lot of
complex issues both from an engineering standpoint and also local
community issues. Property rights issues of homeowners along the
watershed.”


What they learn from the Boardman could be important to communities
near rivers across the nation.


Many of the tens of thousands of dams across the country are aging, and
in coming years, just like on the Boardman River, those with hydroelectric generating stations will need to be upgraded to keep their operating license.


The local utility says the dams on the Boardman don’t generate
enough power to make it worth fixing them. So they’re giving up the
licenses to generate electricity. Ownership of the dams reverts to the
local governments, and local officials are asking the Army Corps of
Engineers to pay for the study of the Boardman. The federal agency is
eager to be involved in this project.


The Boardman River study offers a chance for researchers to figure out
how to count less tangible values. Like how removing dams will affect
other wildlife such as eagles and osprey along the river.


Jock Coyngham is an ecologist for the Army Corps of Engineers.
Typically, he says, wildlife and recreation get discounted in this kind of
study because it’s easier to quantify things like hydropower, but it’s
important to figure out what value they have.


“If you make all your resource decisions as a state and as a country over
a long period of time pretty soon there won’t be any substantial fish
populations, any wild reproduction. Just because traditional cost-benefit
analysis tends to underestimate those ecosystem services and values, let
alone aesthetics.”


The Army Corps is waiting final approval for funding. Once given the
OK, the study of the Boardman River and its dams… could very well lay
the groundwork for other dam removals around the country.


For the GLRC, I’m Bob Allen.

Related Links

A Legal Victory for ‘Rails to Trails’

  • Bicyclists enjoy Minnesota's Cannon Valley Trail. (Photo by Patricia Schmid, courtesy of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy)

Private landowners say their rights are being trampled on by hikers when the state implements “Rails to Trails” programs. The landowners claim the property should be theirs now that the railroad is finished with the right-of-way. One state recently won the court’s approval to keep its trail intact, including pieces that cross through private property. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Katherine Glover reports:

Transcript

Private landowners say their rights are being trampled on by hikers when the state
implements “Rails to Trails” programs. The landowners claim the property should be
theirs now that the railroad is finished with the right-of-way. One state recently won the
court’s approval to keep its trail intact, including pieces that cross through private
property. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Katherine Glover reports:


Mike Sandberg doesn’t want a public trail going through his backyard.


“Every time anybody goes down it the dogs are barking and I didn’t move out in the
country to hear all the stuff going on with everybody’s, you know, it’s kind of a pain.”


Sandberg bought the land he lives on from his brother a couple years ago. One thing he
liked about the property was that it had a dirt trail running through it, and he thought he
could pave it and use it as a driveway.


The trail used to be a railroad bed. The railroad company laid the tracks in the 1890’s,
after getting the rights to go through hundreds of different properties. Usually they only
had an easement to use the property, but every deed was a little different. There was no
standardized legal form, and most of the deeds were written by hand.


Of course, over the next hundred years, people stopped using the train so much. In
Minnesota, the railroad company sold a lot of its land rights to the Department of Natural
Resources in 1991. Similar deals were passed all across the country, and many states, like
Minnesota, used this land to build public trails.


The path that passes through Sandberg’s property is one of these trails, the Paul Bunyan
Trail. It’s popular with bikers, dog-walkers, in-line skaters, and in the winter,
snowmobilers.


Terry McGawhee is Executive Director of the Paul Bunyan Trail
Association, and he’s constantly lobbying the state legislature to expand the trail or pave
parts of it that are still dirt.


“Not every community embraces the trail, but those that have, have seen significant
economic influence on their communities. And the majority of the people along the 100
miles of the trail are eager to see the trail development.”


The state had held off on further work on the trail because of a lawsuit filed by Sandberg’s
brother and several other landowners. Sandberg said the railroad company didn’t own the
trail on his property, so they couldn’t have sold it to the state.


“The abstract states clearly in layman’s terms it was an easement that the railroad had and
when they quit using it for railroad purposes it should go back to the landowner.”


That’s the reasoning Sandberg’s brother and other landowners used when they blockaded
parts of the trail back in 1998. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources sued
them, and was initially successful. The landowners appealed, however, and the Appeals
Court overturned the decision. The state agency then appealed to the Minnesota Supreme
Court. On July 29th, the Court ruled in favor of the state trail.


Trail advocates across the country watched the case closely. Lawyers in trail land
disputes in every state could bring up this case as an example. For more than twenty
years, lawyers fighting for public trails have relied heavily on another case, also in
Minnesota. Dorian Grilley is the executive director of the Parks and Trails Council of
Minnesota. He says the Minnesota Supreme Court made the decision in 1983.


“In that case, the Minnesota Supreme Court decided that it was legal for that easement to
be transferred to a public agency for use as a trail because in the early 1900’s or late
1800’s, ‘railway purposes’ really meant public transportation, and that a trail qualified as
public transportation.”


In its recent decision, the court upheld the idea that a public trail serves the same kind of
purpose as a railway, moving people from place to place.


Now that the court has ruled in favor of the state, Mike Sandberg will be forced to
abandon plans to build a driveway along the old railroad bed. His brother is not sure
whether he’ll build his retirement home there as he’d planned, since bicyclists and hikers
will have access to the trail cutting across his property. But trail users can look forward to
seeing another section of the trail completed and paved.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Katherine Glover.

Related Links

Drawing the Line on Beachfront Properties

Some homeowners on Great Lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state… landowners are pushing legislation to protect their private property rights. But the bill worries recreation and environmental activists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Some homeowners on Great Lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide
where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state, land owners are pushing legislation
to protect their private property rights. But the bill worries recreation and environmental
activists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:


Dennis Bring is a big, burly guy who looks like he wouldn’t be scared of anything. But he says
he is scared. He’s afraid of the bureaucrats at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
They say the land he once owned is no longer his, simply because of the erosion caused by Lake
Erie’s waves.


It started more than twenty years ago. That’s when high waters on Lake Erie started to batter his
shoreline property and erode the bluff. Bring decided to use concrete and large limestone blocks
to protect it. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources required him to get surveys, pay for
engineering, and construction. It cost thousands of dollars. Then he was told he had to sign a
lease agreement, to lease the land that he thought he already owned.


“They said it wasn’t a big thing. But when we got it, we found out it was 17 to 20 pages long and
basically they had the rights to our property and we had basically no rights and they could come
on our property at any time.”


The cost of the lease isn’t that much, but Bring’s deed says he owns that land. It’s been in the
family for three generations and he pays taxes on it. But the state also wanted him to carry a
million dollars worth of liability insurance on the erosion protection structure.


So he called the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to complain. A state regulator told Bring
that he no longer owns the land because anything up to the high water mark, including the eroded
part that once belonged to Bring, actually belongs to the state.


“And I asked him, I said, ‘You’re telling me the lake is your property, correct?’ And he said ‘Yes,
that’s our property.’ And I said, ‘According to my gist on this, is that your property is damaging
my property. I’m trying to protect this property.’ But I said, ‘In turn you’re making me pay back
what is already mine.’ He said, ‘And we could tear your structure out if we wanted to.’ And then
I hung up the phone, and my wife and I were scared to death.


The state plans to enforce its claim that it owns up to the high water mark. But many lakefront
owners say the state is taking more than its share. They want Ohio’s jurisdiction pushed back
toward the lake – to the low water mark. The difference between the two adds up to thousands of
acres along Ohio’s 262 miles of coast.


Brian Preston grew up fishing in the marshes around Toledo. Speaking at a public meeting on
behalf of the environmental group, the National Wildlife Federation, he argued that the state is
right, anything the lake touches belongs to all the people, not just those who own the adjacent
private land.


“We’re not talking about their land; proximity doesn’t imply ownership. Those 262 miles in the
land going into the water is our land. Just because it’s in front of their house doesn’t make it their
land”.


But property owners disagree. They’ve pushed a bill in the Ohio legislature to move state
ownership back toward the lake. It would also take away much of the state’s authority to regulate
the shoreline. The private land owners say the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers already monitors
the Great Lakes shoreline. Homeowner Jim O’conner says that’s enough regulation.


“For years, shoreline structures have been built along the lake and have been fine. The Army
Corps has kept a pretty close eye on it. But now this program has turned into a radical mess by a
few people that have extreme radical views on what private property owners, shoreline owners,
should relinquish. In order to live on the lake you’ve got to relinquish your property.”


The state says without its additional regulation there would be all kinds of problems. That’s
because in the past houses and other structures have been built too close to the shore and
eventually storms eroded the dirt from underneath them and they fell into the lake. Some
scientists are also concerned that the engineered structures that protect the land from erosion end
up destroying public property. State geologist Don Guy says erosion provides the sand size
material that builds Ohio’s beaches.


“And by armoring the shore, we’re eliminating that source of beach-building material. And as
waves continue through natural processes to carry sediment, at least along this part from east to
west, eventually the sand is eroded from the beach at a given site and there’s nothing to replenish
that beach. So that’s maybe the hidden impact of all the shore protection.”


And that’s one reason the Ohio Department of Natural Resources wants to protect the beach.
State representative Tim Grendell sponsored the bill that would change the boundary from the
high water mark to the low water mark. He says it won’t have any negative impact on the
lakeshore or the environment. He says the state has taken control over more land than it should.
He notes that property deeds often say landownership stretches to the low water mark. Grendell
says state shouldn’t regulate beyond that.


“It recognizes what the Ohio constitution recognizes, that a government agency of the state has no
power to take away people’s property by redefining what they own.”


But most Great Lakes states regulate to the same boundary as Ohio. They say state ownership is
at the high water mark. The state of Ohio says it’s willing to drop some of the things it mandates.
For example, it might drop insurance requirements and help pay engineering costs of shoreline
structures it approves. But Ohio says it will not support turning public ownership over to private
landowners.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

DRAWING THE LINE ON BEACHFRONT PROPERTIES (Short Version)

Some homeowners on Great Lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state… landowners are pushing legislation to protect their private property rights. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Some homeowners on great lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide
where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state… land owners are pushing
legislation to protect their private property rights. The great lakes radio consortium’s julie grant
reports:


(sound of lake)


When the water of the Great Lakes batters shoreline property, it erodes the land. Homeowners
want to prevent that erosion. But there are lots of regulations on building shore protection
structures. Too many, according to Ohio homeowner jim o’conner. He says Ohio is regulating
land that he owns…


“They don’t have that right, but they’re doing it. And it’s a shame we have to try to get a bill to
say, ‘Hey, this is our property, don’t take it.'”


A bill in the Ohio legislature would push the state’s jurisdiction back toward the lake, so it would
have less authority over shoreline development. Other states are watching the issue because they
draw the line to same boundary as Ohio. The state says it might drop some regulations, but it will
not support turning public ownership over to private landowners.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

The Right to Sprawl

Governments are trying to figure out the best way to deal with urban sprawl. Legislators and planners are considering all kinds of approaches to manage the growth of cities, but some say government really has no business trying to stop the market forces that are driving the rapid growth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the deeper debate between property rights and land use protection:

Transcript

Governments are trying to figure out the best way to deal with urban sprawl. Legislators and
planners are considering all kinds of approaches to manage the growth of cities. But, some say
government really has no business trying to stop the market forces that are driving the rapid
growth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the deeper debate
between property rights and land use protection:


Through the public process, states that are grappling with urban sprawl end up hearing from everyone involved. While the media and environmental groups tend to look at the
problems of congestion and loss of green space and farmland due to the rapid growth at the edges
of cities, others see the growth as driven by what people want – it’s natural growth, even organic. In
fact, many property owners, builders and developers, see government interference as “un-
American,” as testimony from this public hearing in Michigan shows.


“As an American, I strongly believe in our citizens’ rights to pursue life, liberty and property.”
“Centralized planning did not work in Russia, Cuba, North Korea or anywhere else they’ve
attempted it.” “Are we gonna mandate where they’re going to live? Is this gonna be America?”
“The land should be controlled by the individual who has paid for the land and pays the taxes on the land and should be able to do with that property what he wants to do.” “Our Constitution tells
us about the preservation of private property rights.”


There’s something deeply rooted in the American cultural ethic that bonds people to the land – or
more precisely – to their land. It might be leftovers of the concept of Manifest Destiny where,
in the words of one essayist, land ownership was associated with wealth and tied to self-
sufficiency, political power, and independent “self-rule.” This seems to be especially true of
people who live in rural areas, or are only a generation or two removed from the farm.


Amy Liu is with the think-tank, the ‘Brookings Institution.’ She says when states start looking at
growth management techniques, commonly called “Smart Growth,” landowners and builders
become suspicious.


“There is a belief that the government needs to get out of the way of the market. And so the idea
of having government intervene in the real estate market and consumer choice is considered un-
American.”


And property rights advocates quickly become dogmatic about their beliefs and resist any kind of
restrictions on use of land.


In the same way, some environmentalists consider sprawl to merely be a matter of greedy
developers and builders wanting to make money no matter what the cost to the environment,
green space, or farmland. They sometimes ignore the fact that consumer demand for larger lots
and larger houses, as well as convenient shopping, is much of the driving force behind urban
sprawl.


Liu says many on each side of the urban sprawl debate are inflexible.


“You know, I think that there are definitely reasons why the environmentalists can be extreme
and why the property rights advocates can be extreme.”


And generally, the two sides are talking right past each other.


Ann Woiwode is with the environmental group, the Sierra Club. She says the opponents of
“Smart Growth” say they don’t want government interference, but she says they don’t talk that
way when they’re in need of roads, fire protection, good schools, and other government services.
Woiwode says “Smart Growth” doesn’t mean unreasonable restrictions.


“I’m not trying to take anybody’s rights away and I don’t think that’s the appropriate approach.
What in any society part of being a society is that we collectively decide how we’re going to
make decisions that affect the entirety of the community.”


And while Woiwode and other environmentalists are in favor of making sure green space is
preserved, most of them acknowledge that growth is inevitable. They say they just want to make
sure it’s the right kind of growth.


Amy Liu at the Brookings Institution says not every growth management plan makes sense.
Some of them only look at benefiting the environment and ignore market forces, the desire that
many people have for a bit of land and a home to call their own.


“There are certainly growth management policies that don’t work, that strictly limit development-
growth boundaries and are therefore anti-growth. I think the growth management policies, the
Smart Growth policies that do work are those that really do try to anticipate and accommodate
growth in a metropolitan area in a way that is going to promote economic development, that is
fiscally sustainable, that is environmentally sustainable, and that actually allows low-income
working families and middle-class and upper-income families to enjoy that growth.”


And finding that balance in a world where politics and competing interests sometimes muddy the
best intentions will be the real trick, as states try to define what “Smart Growth” will mean for
people pursuing the American dream of owning their own home.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Powerline Generates Controversy

No one likes the idea of a major powerline running through their
backyard. But a proposed bulk transmission line in Wisconsin is
generating more than the usual amount of controversy. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

No one likes the idea of a major power line running through their backyard.
But a proposed bulk transmission line in Wisconsin is generating more than
the usual amount of controversy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Stephanie Hemphill reports:


Steve Olson will never forget the night of June 25, 1998. He was working
the overnight shift at Minnesota power’s control center when something went
very wrong.


“I really didn’t know exactly what was going on at the time but I knew it was
serious. I knew it was something bigger than Minnesota power. It’s within
a matter of a minute or two we had half a dozen lines opening.”


The open lines meant the electric grid was breaking apart. The grid
connects Minnesota power to eight states and three Canadian provinces.
lightning strikes in Wisconsin – 200 miles away – caused the breakup. Over
40,000 people lost power.


John Heino is a spokesman for Minnesota power. He says that kind of
situation is one step away from a regional blackout.


“Normally this system is designed to work together so neighboring states and
systems can support each other, but in that situation, it just breaks up
into pieces and there’s no guarantee the power plants in that area are
enough to supply the load that’s left.”


The near miss convinced Minnesota power to do something to shore up the weak
link in the regional electric grid.


The Duluth-based company joined with Wisconsin Public Service to propose a
345-kilovolt transmission line from Duluth Minnesota to Wausau Wisconsin.
It would tap into cheap coal and hydro power from western Minnesota and
Manitoba. Heino says the new link would lighten the load on existing lines
and make service more reliable.


“With all these sources to the north and the west, and you have the Twin
Cities, Milwaukee and Chicago, to the south and the east, so there’s this
general day in and day out tendency for the power to flow to the south and
the east.”


The plan has attracted a lot of opposition along the proposed route. Eight
counties and over fifty local governments have gone on record against it.

Opponents worry about property values, loss of farmland, and health issues.


(sound of meeting)


At a recent meeting in superior Wisconsin, nearly 200 angry people showed up
to confront Minnesota power officials.


Person 1: “Both of these proposed routes would go through our property. We sunk our
life savings into it and we thought we could protect it. Lo and behold,
what did we know?”


Person 2: “As far as I’m concerned, this is a dinosaur. We’re looking at smaller
leading edge technologies that are more adapted to local generation.


Person 3: “I have a very nice neighbor and the power line is going across his land

and
he said to me, if it comes across my land, I’ll shoot’em.


Some Wisconsin farmers oppose the line because of problems they’re having
with other electric lines. Debbie Beyrl says ground currents have made her
cows sick. That’s reduced milk production and made it harder to keep the
business going. She’s also worried about her family’s health.


“I worry about my kids because they’re in the barn helping us. And I think
it’ll put us out of business, not that we’d want to quit but I think it
would finish us off, yeah.”


Power company officials say ground currents are caused by improper wiring or
local distribution lines, not large transmission lines.


But environmentalists question the need for the line. Chris Laforge sells
wind and solar electric generating systems. He says utilities could avoid
building expensive power lines by using alternative systems.


“It’s a perfect match. Distributed photovoltaic generation on rooftops of
large buildings can meet peak air conditioning demand because electricity
gets made right when you need it.”


Power companies say there’s great potential in alternative technologies, but
the current need is acute. Jim Loock is the chief electrical engineer
at the Wisconsin Public Service Commission. That agency has the authority
to approve the line.


“Our electrical system is growing at 2-3% a year, so we need 200-300
megawatts of additional supply every year. That’s why we say part of the
equation is energy conservation and demand side management, we feel strongly
that the consumer needs to conserve energy and use it as wisely as possible.”


Hearings are scheduled this month in Minnesota and this summer in Wisconsin.
if approved, construction could start in September 2001.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.