Wood County Board

Welcome everyone to Midday Magazine for this February 28th, 2024.

Have your host, James J. Mailov here at 330.

We're going to welcome in our friends from the ODC.

We'll have Anne joining us and maybe she'll bring a friend.

We're looking forward to it if she does and talking with them right now.

Looking forward to this conversation as we always do.

Whenever we have Lance Plymouth with us, Wood County Board chairman always

appreciate the time Lance.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks James.

I was happy to be here and be part of your show and you brought a friend.

I did.

I brought a friend.

Yeah, I brought Bill Lightman and Bill Chairs.

It's called our seed committee.

That's the acronym, but it's conservation, education, economic development.

And one of the things they deal with is water.

And that's one of the things we wanted to talk about today because they have a fairly

large presentation coming up here that's going to be open to the public.

We want to make sure we make them aware of the issue, the problems and the

opportunity to show up at that.

So at this point, I'm going to probably, you know, basically be quiet.

Let you talk to the expert who is, who is Bill.

I did want to say a note to you real quick, Lance.

I was looking at our notes, some of our early interviews you and I did together and

discovered that I've been doing this about five, six years now together.

You and I and our midday magazine guests and everything.

And in that time, this topic continues to come up.

I think you could make the argument.

It's the most consecutive consistent conversation that comes up our water quality

and talking about this.

Any opportunity we have to touch on it, I appreciate that.

And especially bringing in somebody like Bill, who, as you said, knows what he's

talking about here.

Yeah.

I mean, I might know this, you know, a half an inch deep and Bill knows it all the way

to the bottom of the pool of lake or reservoir.

The interesting part is, you know, this is just something that's imperative to

quality a life in an area and to have a place where people feel safe can live.

And one of the most interesting studies I've been part of in the last couple of

years was where is the most in migration going to happen in the United States

in the next 50 years?

And the answer, shocking surprise to me was Duluth, Minnesota.

You're going really, I thought everybody left Duluth to go south.

Right.

I hit the warm weather, but it was based on natural disasters, quality life,

but most importantly, kind of an unlimited supply of fresh water.

If you don't ruin it.

So that's my segue to the guy who can tell you how to get there nicely done, right?

It's nicely done.

It is the simplest of basic needs.

It is the simplest of things that we ask of our of our society, clean water.

Like, it doesn't get much more basic than that.

But yeah, here we are, Bill, with this situation.

Lance mentioned that you have a program coming up that we want to talk about in the

highlight before we get to there, Bill, let's talk a little bit about the history of

this issue and how long you've been involved with it and some of the things that

you've seen with this.

So let's start right there.

Where did this start and how long has this been going on?

You have this organization.

Okay.

Interestingly enough, James, for me, it started.

I've been on the county board now for five terms.

And so it started in 2014, actually started in 2012.

But I was, I ran on a platform of protecting our water.

And as you just said a few minutes ago, our number one natural resource, no doubt about it.

I don't think that I think that's undisputed.

So at any rate, five terms on the county board, over that time, I've been really

interested in this, became chairman of seed as Lance alluded to.

I'm also chairman of the citizens water group from Wood County, which sort of reports

to seed.

I'm also the chairman of a six county collaborative, which is Juneau Adams, Wood,

Washer, a portage and market.

It's called a county's collaborative is made up of county board supervisors, members

of the land and, or actually, no, uh, county cons and then members of the health

departments from all six counties, uh, appreciate all of that bill.

Really, really do.

I also have my first question is when do you sleep?

Uh, do you have hobbies?

Do you do you have any personal token?

Uh, but I do, it shows the passion that you have for this.

It also shows how much we need this that we have that many different things going

on involving this particular topic.

Um, you, you guys both have mentioned seed.

I don't know if that's something that, uh, the community completely knows about

inside and out and everything we touch on that a little bit, uh, where that

program started and, and the purpose of it.

So you guys, I'm sure you want me to take that.

Go ahead.

Yeah, it's just another acronym, but go ahead.

Okay.

The acronym that Lance just mentioned is conservation, education and economic development.

And I, I think that's a real nice mesh of topics that are related to each other.

Um, in many other counties that, that I work with, um,

there's usually a land and water conservation committee.

But we've taken it that extra step and included some other departments.

Yeah.

So, um, I, one of the things I majorly wanted to do is talk about our program or event.

So if we can jump into that, right?

It's dive right in.

Okay.

So this is, yeah, I kind of caught that.

Okay.

So the date is March 18th, um, it's six PM at McMillan Library, um, everybody in

the area knows where that is.

Um, I don't know how wide your audio, your radio audiences, but 490 East Grand Avenue.

Wisconsin Rapids.

Um, the title of the program is the future of clean drinking water in the central

sands.

So kind of what we're doing here is we're going east and basically south, the counties

that I mentioned previously.

Um, what I want to spend the most time on this morning is the four panelists who will

be the presenters and seeing you sitting beside me here, I think I have to mention

this.

The program will be moderated by our Wood County Board chair and also the president

of Wisconsin County's Association.

Mm-hmm.

Well, that's pretty impressive when we get somebody that, that how high powered

a personality very to be, to be our moderate.

Okay.

So four panelists, um, probably the most noteworthy, the one who will speak first is

Dr. George Kraft, a name that's pretty familiar in the area.

He's professor emeritus at UW Stevens Point.

He worked in the School of Watershed Science for probably three decades.

I don't know if it's 27 years or 34, but it was there for a long, long time.

As a researcher and a hydrogeologist and what he studied in all that time is

issues of widespread keyword, widespread nitrate and pesticide pollution and

then everything related to that.

Um, he was trained by Bernard Shaw, is that the right name?

Mm-hmm.

You got me.

You're the water expert, I believe it is.

And, and then he trained Kevin Mazarik, who's there now.

Wow.

So when you get somebody like George Kraft, um, you have somebody that's been

looking at nitrates now, we'll be talking about, um, since the 1970s.

Um, more specifically to the 1990s and then right on to, to present day.

Not only a person who knows this stuff and has the, uh, the brain for this and

the schooling and everything, but also the data and the history of, of this as well.

So yeah, you're right.

That's a great, that's a great speaker to have there.

And so I know some of the things he's going to say because I've listened to him

many times.

I don't know where the program's going to go this morning, but I can fill in a

little bit of that.

I think your audience would be absolutely.

Yes, let's, let's go on to some of the other people though.

And we'll come back to that.

Yup.

So Dr. Kraft, number one, um, the next panelist is Melissa Johnson.

Somebody I've known for almost all of the five terms that I've been on the

county board.

Also, she was former director for solid waste management, solid waste, um,

for both portage and marathon colonies.

And I think it was at the same time that she was doing that job.

Um, she's in some, I retirement now, but knowing her personality, it's kind

of what you alluded to, you know, when do they sleep?

Um, currently she's the executive director.

So we have a high powered speaker here of Wisconsin greenfire.

And Wisconsin greenfire is a nonprofit that's dedicated to conserving and

preserving our natural resources.

Another great speaker.

So while George will be talking about nitrates and a related item,

pesticides, um,

Melissa's going to be talking about PFAs and PFOs.

Excellent.

Okay.

So then the third member of the panel is, is Wood County's own Ben Jeffery.

He's number two at the health department.

He is what's titled the environmental health supervisor or the environmental

health officer for Wood County.

But James is bigger than that.

Um, Ben is also contracted by our, Wood County health department is by

Adams and Juno County.

So he serves in that same capacity for three counties.

And what Ben is going to do is he's going to look at data that was gathered

over the past six months, very specific to Wood County.

Um, are actually our health director used six student interns from UW

Claire working through the, the wood of it at Marshfield, that campus.

And she gave them five things to do as related to PFAs in our drinking water.

And so one of the things that comes into play here is everybody thinks, okay,

drinking water is just a problem for those rural residents who need to test their

own water.

Not true municipal systems are just as much involved in this.

And I think that's where Ben is going to go.

Um, what we did when the three of us met is he was directed to have the

student interns look at each of the smaller communities, the pits,

fields, the Auburn Dales, the Vespers, that have municipal systems and say,

what do you do to look for PFAs in municipal water?

So not just private rural wells, right?

Okay.

And then the last person somebody I want to spend a little bit of time talking about

is the mayor of Warsaw, Katie Rosenberg.

Um, one of the questions that I would hope you would ask me or somebody

would ask at some point is who's doing anything about this?

It's number one on my list.

Katie, Katie is doing something about it.

Yeah.

So here's, here's what's happened with Katie.

Um, they found along the Wisconsin River, River predominantly in downtown

Warsaw, six municipal wells, all sky high on PFAs.

First question or to come from nobody knows.

Okay.

Second question, how are we going to provide municipal water for 40,000 residents

of the wasa area?

Well, the answer was we need to build a wholly different plant, different sort of

facility.

Yes.

So what Katie was able to do and I think I priority credit where credit is

do here, the wasa city council and mayor.

Yes.

Rosenberg, um, what they were able to do was to secure 17 and a half million

dollars from the federal government to build not only a water treatment

plant, but a PFAs removal and processing plant.

That went together so fast.

We had the director of public works down here.

His name is Eric Lenman to talk to us and they built that facility so fast.

You won't believe it.

Yeah.

So at any rate, um, who's doing something about this?

Katie's doing something about this.

And I am thrilled because I've never met the lady.

Although I think Lance says, um, I'd like to hear her speak.

I've, um, I've spoke with her once and, uh, just in that one conversation was

really in, um, like I was already a fan and became an even bigger fan of her

afterwards.

We're very fortunate in our area here in Wood County and in surrounding cities.

We've got a lot of great mayors and a lot of people doing some good work.

Katie at one of the top at the forefront of that and some of the things that she

is dealing with in that city and in the area, not just with this, this situation,

but with other ones.

Uh, so I'll, any chance I can, I'll shout her out.

I'm glad to see she's a part of this too.

Not only because of the good work she's doing, who she is as a person, but to have

other cities represented, um, as far as I know, and I did my homework on this

when I double checked rivers don't end at city lines.

Um, I had to die to triple check that just to make sure and everything.

So it's isn't just a one city problem.

This isn't just even a one county problem or a one state issue.

This is something that literally travels up and down our whole country.

And it's something that, uh, the only way to tackle something like that is with

a group large group of people with many different voices and opinions and thoughts

to tackle this because there's people out there that we're losing, uh, on this

fight where, where, where, where people that like everybody wants better water.

And I would like to think Lance and this in the, in a device of here like this in,

in everything, this is one topic we can get everybody on board on.

Like, okay, everybody wants clean water, right?

Everybody, but yet we have people who are getting like, uh, to a point where they're

getting burned out, they, they're just to be blunt about it.

They hear the PFAS in this conversation here.

PFAS and that and all of a sudden they start tuning out.

And that is one of the most dangerous things in the world when we get people to

not care, when we get people numb to soft to a subject.

It's so important to have a discussion like this that we're having right now and

to have this, um, this great citizens water group, uh, united and, and putting

together something like you guys are going to be doing on the 16th.

I, I really appreciate that bill and all the people coming together on this.

You know, Jay, it's part of the reason for the collaboration and some of the

groups that, uh, you know, Bill's been instrumental in putting together.

There's not only don't rivers and their communities don't end at political

boundaries. Uh, you know, we always laugh.

People have no idea what capacity we really serve and I get people from

Portis County that think I happen to be their county board gym because they live

in the town of Grant, um, obviously, same aquifers, uh, same problems.

But, you know, not only this is, is this a health concern, which it is,

it's also an economic development concern because that's what I talked about with

Duluth is those companies that look to locate, uh, relocate to build new facilities

and factories, they're looking for this.

They, they need clean water.

And generally speaking, Wisconsin has pretty good water or at least an abundance

of water compared to the rest of the country.

So, you know, the first part is, as Bill said, is we got it less now.

It's, it's easier not to ruin it than to fix it later.

Yeah.

Uh, so how, how can we be proactive?

And then the end of the day, you know, how do we be reactive if we need to put

something in place to make sure that, uh, the citizens of our area are clean?

And I'm hoping that if you, you know, you go to this program, uh, you come away

with some of that knowledge and some of the ability to, uh, you know, on your own,

uh, be proactive or at least, uh, work in that direction within your community.

We're speaking with Lance Plymo Wood County Board Chairman along with our friend Bill

Lightman, uh, with Wood County Board Supervisor and Chairman of the Citizens of Water group.

I want to send a shout out to our friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media as well

of being here.

Um, Bill, you mentioned that you had some notes on Dr. Kraft.

Did you want to go back to that?

Did you already include those?

Just let's finish up just one second, James.

Um, the date of that event is March 18th.

Um, and then to finish out what I talked about as far as who's going to be there,

our moderator or our panelists.

Um, I want to just put this plug in that the program is designed so, so that probably the

last 45 minutes, let's say from 7.50 on, there will be a question and answer segment for the audience.

And we've sent out invitations to 90 different organizations, politicians, other groups that we

thought would be interested.

Uh, we did this four years ago in Acusa.

And I was really surprised at that event at that time, um, when I walked out into the audience,

how many people, oh, you know, a long ways away.

People, a lot of people from Madison, there, a lot of people from, from the UW Madison there.

But anyway, I wanted to mention that, that question and answer session at the end.

Yeah, I see, uh, the League of Women voters aren't going to be involved in this.

We always like to shout them out, appreciate them.

Great organization.

And while you're doing a shout out, then, um, uh, trying to think of the, the acronym here,

the Clean Green Action group from Wisconsin Rapids, they'll, they'll be there helping us too.

Excellent.

Okay, before I go back to Dr. Kraft, um, scope of the problem, I really think your audience needs

to know this, you know, how much of a threat, how much of danger is there?

Some statistics for your audience, um, one million of the six million people that

live in Wisconsin drink from rural private wells.

So that's that component, one sixth of our population.

Wow.

And then municipal systems, let's talk about that for a minute.

Statistically, I can go back to 2012, I shouldn't go back further than that.

But in 2012, there were 47 of 611 municipal systems.

Now, this is nitrates that had as they intake the water into the system,

they had a parts per million level over the federal recommended 10 parts per million.

So they were taking in water to treat that was water that couldn't be treated, right?

And then the 10 parts per million as way too high pregnant women little children

should be two parts per million.

Okay, so that was, that was 2012, 47 out of 611.

Before that, in 1999, it was 14 out of 611.

Okay, let's go more recently.

In 2017, Wisconsin is ranked 11th worst.

11th worst among the 50 states.

We had, we've had 1400 safe drinking water violations reported to, I suppose,

the department of health services or dad cap or the DNR or whatever.

Today, in large cities in Wisconsin, PFAS can be found in Dane County, LaCrosse,

Clare, Wassau, as we talked about before.

On a rural level, on the town of Stella, East of Rylander, has gotten a lot of press recently

because of the paper mill sludge being spread on potato fields there and awarded the PFAS come from.

Yeah, I'll let your audience figure that out.

Yeah, I think we can fill in the blanks on that one, which, which does bring us back to a bigger

issue on this, because I'm not a bigger issue, but another part of this issue to me, and I just

real quick want to throw in there that it's great to see all these individuals. It's great to see

so much of the community involved in this. I want to see more businesses involved in this.

I want to see more CEOs. I want to see more companies being involved in this,

and on this topic, not so much necessarily maybe these kind of meetings or programs we have,

but I, just me speaking for myself here, nobody else would like to see a lot more companies being

involved in these conversations. Bill, you were saying.

Last thing, as far as what I was talking about with regard to the scope of the problem,

27 million Americans out of our total population drink from community water systems

who have found at least one PFAS in their system and have to treat it 27 million.

How big of a problem is this? I think when I got on the county board 10 years ago, people were

looking at me like, oh, what's this problem? Here's an environmentalist. It's all of our

environment. Okay, you want me to talk about Dr. Kraft for just a minute, and I wish I had time to

do that with the other three panelists. But here's one of the things you're going to hear from Dr. Kraft

because I've heard it. I don't know how many times. Where does the nitrate problem come from?

It comes from fertilizer and manure, and he'll say that that's 96% of the problem coming from

it. Wow. 96%. Okay, so that begs everybody to say, okay, what's the other 4% even though we know

what 96% is. The other 3% is from failed or failing septic systems. So that's, we're at 99 now.

That's the other 3%. And then 1% is from those overzealous subdivision landowners, people in

city lots, golf courses that put way too much lawn fertilizer on. It's recommended four times a year

on every major holiday. You don't need that often. So Dr. Kraft would say, where's it coming from?

As far as nitrates, that's where the contaminants are coming from.

And this is an issue I think that we've been talking 27 minutes about this. And if you've been

listening that whole time, you're sitting there and even if you knew up on this kind of information,

it could be daunting. It could be a lot to take in. I want to make sure that it is clear to the

audience that this is something that we can do something about. This is something that we can make.

We've already made some ground on and we can continue to. We can improve this thing. This is not

too big for us. And let's never forget, and I don't care how corny this sounds, we're Americans

dammit. Like we get things done. We wanted to get to the moon, we did it. We wanted to do this,

we did it. Like that's what we do in this country. Let's take some pride in our state. Let's take

some pride in our land. And let's improve this situation because we can. We can do this. It's not

too big of a issue. It's not too big of a problem. It could be if we don't do enough about it.

And thankfully, we have people like yourselves that are working on this and many other people that

are. But it is something that there are two. They're so it's so easy to get overwhelmed by these

situations. And it's understandable to get overwhelmed. Just don't ever let just don't forget that

this is something we could do something about. And we need more and more people to be on this on

this cause and on the right side of history with this. This what you guys have coming up on the

18th is another opportunity for people not only to learn more about it, but to show those things.

Bill, before we let you go, can we go over the program one more time, the future of clean drinking

water in central stands? Okay. So the title of the program is the future of clean drinking water

in the central sands expands beyond that expands statewide and nationwide date March 18th,

6 p.m. McMillan Library, 490 East Grand Avenue. We have four panelists, Dr. Kraft, Melissa Johnson,

Ben Jeffries and Katie Rosenberg moderated by our own Lance Plummel. And I don't know how much time

you've got here, but just a little comment that I think some of your viewers will find interested.

Interesting. Lance and I are fortunate enough to work in a nonpartisan atmosphere.

This problem is nonpartisan. One of the things that I see happening, I heard Channel 7 last night

talking about PFAS money that could be spent 125 million dollars. It's caught in a partisan

quarrel. Yeah, good. Yeah, it's you get credit. You know, and what we're looking at, you know,

how do you blend best practice, which we can work on, affordability, and then incorporate new

technologies. You know, where do we go and how do we get it done? Go into this and find out more

and be involved in this, everybody. Appreciate the time from you guys. Thank you so much for

we'll take a quick break and we'll come back with some more fun on midday magazine right here at WFHR,

locally grown radio.