Author: Stephanie Hemphill

The deregulation of electricity has at times pitted rural dwellersagainst townsfolk, and region against region. Now in Minnesota andWisconsin, that battle has come to a head with plans to build a newpower transmission line. On the one hand are residents of major citiesacross the Great Lakes who want cheap power, and on the other are thosewho would be forced to live near the wires. The Great Lakes RadioConsortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

The deregulation of electricity has at times pitted rural dwellers against
townsfolk, and region against region. Now in Minnesota and Wisconsin, that
battle has come to a head with plans to build a new power transmission line. On the one
hand are residents of major cities across the Great Lakes who
want cheap power, and on the other are those who would be forced to live
near the wires. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill
reports.

Like most states in the region, Wisconsin uses more electricity every year
– about 2% more than the year before. And it’s expensive to generate that
additional power at home. So some of that power now comes from as far away
as Montana and Canada, where it’s produced cheaply at big coal and
hydroelectric plants. But utility companies say the lines that bring the
power to Milwaukee, Chicago, and other big Midwestern cities have reached
capacity. So Minnesota Power and Wisconsin Public Service are together
proposing a new link in the regional electric grid, to run between Duluth
and Wausau.

The federal government encouraged this large-scale approach to electricity
distribution when it deregulated the wholesale power market in 1992.
Minnesota Power’s Jim Roberts says – now that distributors are allowed to
buy power from suppliers anywhere in the country – many long-distance
transmission lines are simply overloaded.

“People are gonna try to find the cheapest source of electricity, wherever
it may be, so there’s a tremendous demand on transmission to get that cheap
electricity to their customers. If there’s a lot of cheap generation
somewhere, and only one transmission line, you’re limited.”

And as states move toward deregulation at the retail level, there will be
even more pressure on transmission lines. Roberts says the proposed Duluth
to Wausau line will help prevent blackouts and will keep prices low for
customers all over the Midwest.

But at hearings last fall, farmers and cabin owners along the planned route
spoke out loud and clear against it. Mark Liebaert farms land his
grandfather settled, south of Superior.

“Minnesota Power pretends they’re your neighbors and your friends and yet
they’re proposing the most environmentally damaging project to come before
the Public Service ever. Why? Because they wanna make money off it. My
ancestors that are gone still look upon me and I know they are proud that
we are fighting this fight. And I also know my grandchildren someday will
be very glad that we stood together and beat this proposal from Minnesota
Power. Thank you.” (applause)

Liebaert and other critics say Wisconsin should build power plants close to
the big cities that need the electricity. They say there’s no need to cut
a 150-foot-wide swath through farms and forests and line it with towers up
to 135 feet high, just to bring power to the region’s major urban areas.

And landowners aren’t the only ones fighting the line. The Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources says several routes for a new line were
studied, and the Duluth to Wausau route now being considered is the one
that would cause the most environmental damage. The National Park Service
doesn’t like the route either, saying it would slice across part of the St.
Croix National Scenic Riverway.

And the Wisconsin Public Service Commission’s own environmental analysis
raises questions about whether the line is needed. Officials there say a
combination of upgrades to existing lines and new local generation could
provide enough power.

Some of the people testifying at public hearings on the line are impatient
for new technologies. Retiree Jim Speck told the Public Service
Commission, as long as power companies are allowed to build the lines they
want, they won’t develop alternative sources of energy.

“There are other sources and Minnesota Power says they’re working on them.
If you don’t need to work on them quite so quickly, if you can get by with
the old technology, there’s not as much incentive. The Commission I hope
will hold their feet to the fire of these companies and say no we’re not
gonna let you get by with the old stuff, you’ve got to develop the new
stuff.”

The new stuff includes alternative sources of energy like wind and solar.
They are increasingly being added to the mix, but power companies say
realistically they won’t provide enough electricity in the near future to
meet the increased demand.

Hearings on the proposed powerline, meanwhile, are taking place in
Wisconsin and Minnesota. If either of the states rejects the plan, the
line won’t be built. For the Great Lake Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie
Hemphill in Duluth.

Gardeners across the northern reaches of the Great Lakes have given uptrying to grow sweet corn. That’s because a cool summer, or an earlyfrost,typical for the region could ruin their efforts. But Frank Kutkarefuses togive in. Instead, he’s experimenting on his northern Minnesota farmwithcorn from all over the world. He hopes to create a hardy variety ofcornthat will grow where few others can. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’sStephanie Hemphill visited his farm during the harvest, and filed thisreport:

Transcript

Gardeners across the northern reaches of the Great Lakes have given up
trying to grow sweet corn. That’s because a cool summer, or an early frost
typical for the region could ruin their efforts. But Frank Kutka refuses to
give in. Instead, he’s experimenting on his northern Minnesota farm with
corn from all over the world. He hopes to create a hardy variety of corn
that will grow where few others can. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Stephanie Hemphill visited his farm during the harvest, and filed this report:

On Frank Kutka’s farm, he has asparagus and other favorite vegetables. He also devotes
a quarter of an acre to experiments with two dozen varieties of corn. He’s
trying out seeds from other chilly places around the world. And unlike a lot of plant
research these days, Kutka isn’t manipulating genes in the lab; he’s designing plants the
old-fashioned way, selecting for desired qualities through many generations. In the
popcorn garden, he’s cross-breeding plants from the highlands of Mexico and Peru
with an early New England variety and a good popper from Iowa.

“We have a very nice stalk that you get from the Andean corn and
these hard yellow kernels that you get from the New England corn and so
this is a pretty nice looking corn, it’s much more cold-tolerant than the
original stuff from New England and it also is better adapted to here than
the Andean things are, and sometime here I think we’ll have a very nice
garden variety.”

Kutka is guiding his plants through generation after generation to create a
new variety of corn that will be well adapted to the short, cool northern
summers found in many of the Great Lakes states. He started out trying to
find a successful sweet corn for his own family garden, but now he thinks he might create
varieties that farmers could use for silage – chopped, fermented stalks fed to animals – or
even grain, which nobody tries to grow this far north.

“My whole world has exploded since the first year I started on this
because now I have corns, many of these are tall plants with lots of leaves
and they stand well, they might be good silage corn. And some of them are
early enough we could grow grain up here, ourselves, I think. And the
popcorn goes into local gardens pretty nicely, so there’s so many possibilities.”

Kutka shared some of his seeds with Carlton County Extention Agent Troy
Salzer. In the north, where agriculture is barely possible, Salzer says
farmers could benefit in a big way if they could grow a well-adapted corn.

“In years like this where we had late frost it could make quite a
dramatic difference. In our area specifically we do get a lot of cool east
winds off the lake, and If we had corn varieties that were cold tolerant,
that wouldn’t set them back so far.”

There’s another advantage to the plants Kutka is experimenting with. Some
of them have a lot more protein and minerals than standard corn.
Successful farming depends on finding a specialty niche, and corn with high
protein or oil content can be used as specialty feeds. South Dakota State
University researcher Zeno Wicks says some farmers are also interested in
breaking away from the highly consolidated seed market.

“Monsanto owns DeKalb, DuPont owns Pioneer. Two of the biggest
chemical companies now own the two biggest corn companies and a whole
different wing of people start to get concerned along those lines. Not
just hippies but people who are like hey I like to buy by corn from one
place and my chemicals from another.”

Kutka, meanwhile, seems to be having a lot of fun in his cornfield, and
he’ll probably never stop trying new combinations.

“There’s so much variety as far as kernel shape, size, colors,
number of rows, and yeah you never know exactly what you’re gonna get when
you pop one open. I have a lot of fun in my garden. I think it’ll be
useful but it’s also good for me.” (laughs)

Kutka has just enrolled in graduate school to learn more about plant
genetics, and he’s gotten a federal grant to research the nutritional
content of his corn and to search for ways to market it. I’m Stephanie
Hemphill in Duluth.

Many people who live around the Great Lakes feel a close connection to the water. They love to swim, sail, fish, or just walk along the shore. Now, their love for the lakes is reaching new depths. A camera is anchored to the bottom of Lake Superior, and images from the camera, called the Benthic Explorer, will soon be available 24 hours a day, on the Internet. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

Many people who live around the Great Lakes feel a close connection to the water.
They love to swim, sail, fish, or just walk along the shore. Now their love for the lakes
is reaching new depths. A camera is anchored to the bottom of Lake Superior. And images from
the camera, called the Benthic Explorer, will soon be available 24-hours a day, on the Internet.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports.

Ben, the Benthic Explorer, looks a lot like R-2 D-2. It’s a rounded pod with flexible legs.
It’s packed with video cameras trained on the benthic layer of the lake – that’s the bottom,
where many animals live most of their lives. Less than a year ago, this gadget was just a gleam
in the eye of Doug Hajicek. Hajicek gained notoriety last year when he put a camera in a bear
den and streamed video from the camera onto the Internet. Now he’s turning his cameras on the
lake’s bottom-dwellers.

“When we put a camera on each side the lights would not interfere with each other but they’d
intersect. Plus we have a camera on top so we hope to catch a lot of diving birds and of course
fish that swim over the top of it.”

(Sound of ship engine & horn)

Last spring, Hajicek and his colleagues took the Benthic Explorer to its new home in Lake
Superior, a half-hour outside Duluth. On the deck of the research vessel Blue Heron, Ben
squatted among 500 feet of bundled cables that would connect the cameras to shore.

(Sound of anchor chain rattling; radio in pilothouse, “wind coming up.”)

The captain struggles to get the boat anchored in just the right spot. When he finally does,
divers snake the cables through pvc pipe already attached to the lake bottom. Finally, with the wind
picking up and a chilly rain spitting on the crew, a crane dangles the Benthic Explorer over the
side, and Doug Hajicek christens it with a champagne bottle in a plastic bag.

(Sound of pop, and cheers)

“We know a camera like this has never been done, and we hope people will appreciate going on
the internet and seeing what’s happening at the bottom of Lake Superior.”

(Sound of lab (aquarium aerators bubbling))

The Benthic Explorer is anchored just offshore, and it’s connected by cables to this lab in the
basement of Greg Bambanek’s home. Bambanek is a partner with Doug Hajicek; he’s also a
psychiatrist who has created a small business selling a line of scent products designed to
attract fish. He feeds some of his products through a sort of umbilical cord out to the cameras,
and watches what happens.

“We’ve got five monitors, the color shoots through the dome, the next one is infrared for seeing
at night; this one is multifrequency to penetrate, and this one is hyperspectral”

The red and green lights on the explorer penetrate the occasionally murky Lake Superior water,
and the hyperspectral lights can turn various light frequencies off and on, so Bambanek can look
at how fish respond to different colors.

Although Bambanek sells fish attractants, he says he doesn’t intend to use the explorer just to
develop new baits. He says he’s also interested in finding a method of controlling some of the
exotic species that have upset the balance in the St. Louis River as it flows into Lake Superior,
like the river ruffe.

“It’s the largest biomass now in the St. Louis estuary, and it’s eating other fish’s eggs and we
don’t know the full impact that that’s going to have, and it’s spreading down the lake.”

Lloyd Shannon is also interested in exotic species. He’s a researcher at the University of
Minnesota Duluth, and he’s hoping the Benthic Explorer can help track exotic zooplankton as they
begin to populate this end of Lake Superior. Zooplankton are the main food for many fish, and
Shannon and other researchers would like to know more about their migration patterns.

“The camera is in relatively shallow water, about 20 feet, so we don’t see many during the day on
the lenses of the camera. But at night we see tons of them moving in there, so it’s an
opportunity to collect information to determine what conditions make plankton migrate in & off
shore.”

Right now, most of the information scientists have about zooplankton comes from the painstaking
process of identifying and counting what they bring up when they drag plankton nets behind
research ships. Experimental methods using optical and video technologies still require boat
trips on the lake. So Shannon says the Benthic Explorer can fill a useful research role.

“I think the main advantage is it’s simply in place & working 24 hrs/day, continuously recording
data, so it’s a tool that can continuously measure not only plankton but also the physical &
some of the chemical properties of water, so we can relate plankton abundance to lake itself.”

Soon, all of this will be available to anyone, by way of Discovery-dot-com. Video images
changing every four seconds will show a slightly jerky picture of the zooplankton, the fish, and
anything else that’s on the scene at the bottom of Lake Superior. For the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill in Duluth.

Many Americans are recycling more, but as a nation we’re also creating more trash than ever before. That’s because we’re consuming more. For instance, Americans buy nearly thirty million new computer systems a year. Cities and states are beginning to worry about what will happen to all the plastic, steel, lead, and heavy metals in electronics products as they reach the end of their useful lives. An experimental program in Minnesota points to some answers. It also highlights the broader issue of who’s responsible for the products we use, and eventually want to throw away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

Many Americans are recycling more, but as a nation we’re also creating more trash than ever before. That’s
because we’re consuming more. For instance, Americans buy nearly thirty million new computer systems a
year.

(Insert your state’s information here:)

In 1998, about 350,000 computers became obsolete in Minnesota alone
In 1998, about 386,000 computers became obsolete in Wisconsin alone.
In 1998, about 894,000 computers became obsolete in Illinois alone.
In 1998, about 762,000 computers became obsolete in Michigan alone.
In 1998, about 832,000 computers became obsolete in Ohio alone.
In 1998, about 1.3 million computers became obsolete in New York alone.
In 1998, about 436,000 computers became obsolete in Indiana alone.

Cities and states are beginning to worry about what will happen to all the plastic, steel, lead, and heavy metals in electronics products as they reach the end of their useful lives. An experimental program in
Minnesota points to some answers. It also highlights the broader issue of who’s responsible for the products we use, and eventually want to throw away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

It’s called product stewardship, and it means that everyone involved in producing, selling or using a product – from the manufacturer to the consumer – shares responsibility for that product’s environmental and economic impacts – including what to do with it when it’s not wanted anymore.

The first step is to learn more about the life cycle of a product, especially the end of its life.

Tony Hinault is learning a lot about computers as he coordinates a pilot electronics recycling effort at the Minnesota Office of Environmental
Assistance. He says the office tackled electronic equipment first, because it generally contains such things as heavy metals and toxic chemicals. So if electrical equipment is disposed of improperly it can cause serious toxic pollution.

“What we really wanted to do was to create an infrastructure to bring down the costs of managing this to the bare minimum and at the same time to set
up a system to allow for the private sector to manage the materials with
the least government participation as possible.”

Hinault’s office teamed up with Sony, Panasonic, and the American Plastics
Council to collect and recycle electronics products from homes all over
Minnesota for three months last year. They kept careful records of
collection and processing costs, and are making a detailed analysis of the
materials recovered from the 700 tons of products they collected.

(Sound of disassembly plant)

All 700 tons were brought here to the processing plant of Asset
Recovery Group, a division of the giant waste firm, Waste Management. The company recycles equipment for businesses around the state.

Taking an old computer apart for recycling is labor-intensive. Cases,
screens and picture tubes are thrown in separate bins. Wireboards, cords,
everything has to be sorted. And depending on the age of the product, most
of the components have little value. For instance, older computers and TVs
are often made from laminated plastic, which is more difficult to recycle
than a single plastic product. Cathode ray tubes, though, do have a little value. They are typically smelted to collect the lead they contain. But if
they’re recycled to create new CRTs, it’s cheaper than starting from scratch.

The two main goals of this whole process are to find a better way to make
things, and, says Tony Hinault, pushing manufacturers to make their
products easier to recycle.

“By taking a few simple steps in design and manufacture without adding cost,
possibly by reducing cost, they can increase the residual value of the
product when nobody wants it anymore and it gets into the recycling loop.”

Doug Smith, environmental director at Sony, says that’s already happening.

“We used to use screws, glue, we molded different types of plastic into
shells. And that all added extra manufacturing and assembly steps. If you
reduce assembly steps and time, you end up with a product that’s more
easily disassembled.”

And one that’s cheaper to make, as well. And that’s what’s motivating
manufacturers, Smith says, not government mandates.

Collecting and transporting the products amounted to 80% of the total
cost of handling them, so partners in the pilot program say creating
efficiencies in those operations will be critical to development of the
recycling industry.

Other states are looking forward to the results of Minnesota’s experiment.
Massachusetts recently banned CRTs from the trash. A tax pays for collection programs there. But Hinault says a survey conducted during
Minnesota’s program showed people believe manufacturers and consumers share
responsibility for managing unwanted products.

“They expect the manufacturers to step up to the plate, not government.
They want government to shepherd a solution but not to pay $15-20 per
television to make sure they get recycled properly.”

Results of the study will be available on the web at the end of August.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

In recent years, many rural communities have been hurt when their local school is closed or consolidated with a school in another town. Such closings can contribute to a decline in population and a loss of community identity. And the trend toward closings is growing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports on an unusual, parent-run project designed to strengthen a small rural school in northern Minnesota. The project could provide a model for other schools that want to strengthen their ties with their community: