SOUTHERN SOJOURN
	UP, UP, AND AWAY
	Editorial
	Wisconsin Favorites Visiting Viroqua Victorians

Southern Sojourn
Wisconsin Co-ops Line Up to Help Hurricane Victims

Aid to neighboring systems in a natural disaster is routine among electric utilities, and cooperation among cooperatives is fundamental to the co-op way of doing business. So electric cooperatives across a wide area were sure to pitch in after Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast late in August. The only surprise was how far Southern utilities would need to reach for assistance; that became apparent when the storm’s ferocity was fully known.

In Louisiana and Mississippi, whole electric distribution systems were leveled. One Mississippi cooperative estimated it had 30,000 poles blown to the ground. The mayor of Franklinton, Louisiana, about 60 miles north of New Orleans, told Wisconsin radio listeners that in parts of his town once heavily wooded, “Now you can see for several miles.”

Mayor Earl Brown happened to be talking with Ron Fruit of Richland Center’s WRCO Radio because an appeal from Franklinton-based Washington-St. Tammany Electric Cooperative was being answered by co-ops in Wisconsin.

Fluid Situations

Richland Electric Cooperative was first to respond, but the first priority was not to set poles and string wires. Over the Labor Day Weekend, CEO Shannon Clark, Member Services Representative Jeff Joseph, and volunteers Ed Keller and Kevin Smith set out for Washington-St. Tammany with two large trailers loaded with drinking water and Gatorade. The beverages they carried—in 16,000 bottles—were bought by the co-op and donated by the Richland Center community.

On arrival in Louisiana, they found a site prepared as if for a military operation: a 180 by 240-foot tent filled with cots on a plywood floor and air conditioners in the sidewalls; another tent holding a field kitchen and dining facilities for 300.

While the Richland party traveled, Wisconsin Electric Cooperative Association Manager David Jenkins and Environmental and Safety Services Director Tim Clay grappled with fuel concerns raised by a number of Wisconsin electric co-ops that were interested in sending line personnel and equipment south to help with power-restoration efforts. Earlier, there had been reports of repair crews from other states stranded, unable to refuel their vehicles in the disaster area. With refineries off line, evacuees streaming northward from New Orleans and Gulf areas, and widespread power outages that prevented gas stations from dispensing fuel, line crews from Wisconsin co-ops could not count on obtaining needed diesel fuel or gas south of Memphis.

Co-op Convoy

Help came ultimately from Missouri’s MFA Oil Company, a CENEX affiliate that donated a tanker and driver from Arkansas to supply a convoy of Wisconsin bucket trucks, digger-derricks, and other line equipment Wisconsin electric co-ops were sending southward just a week after the hurricane hit. The tanker, carrying 2,300 gallons of diesel purchased by Wisconsin electric co-ops, joined the co-op convoy at Blytheville, Arkansas, just north of Memphis. Traveling with line trucks that had only about a 200-mile range before refueling was needed, the tanker accompanied the relief column the final 350 miles to Franklinton. In the caravan were line crews from Adams–Columbia, Barron, Eau Claire, Oakdale, Pierce-Pepin, Riverland, and Scenic Rivers electric co-ops with coordination and logistical support from Dairyland Power Cooperative.

Within two weeks, those and other Wisconsin co-ops sent additional crews, starting rotations where personnel shuttled south to spell workers who needed a break from the intense effort under way. They got some advice from Adams–Columbia Manager of Operations John Ebert, who described life on the job in notes that need no elaboration:

“Everyone up at 5:00 a.m., breakfast at 5:30, working at 6:00, lunch taken in field, back to camp by 8:00 p.m. for dinner. There is no radio or TV for entertainment.

“Tetanus shots are available at camp some nights, free.“ I have seen one snake, today we were running into several very large spiders (we are told they are harmless)…lots of turkey, deer, and wild boars but have not seen any, just tracks.

“Bring a sleeping bag for cot, gets cold by morning with air conditioner in sleeping tent.” (The tent’s morning chill would be a short-lived problem. Daytime temperatures and humidity levels both stayed in the mid-90s with the discomfort index routinely topping 100.)

Co-ops from many states sent at least 1,200 men to help rebuild Washington-St. Tammany, mainly on two-week rotations, of which there will be quite a few. As Mayor Brown told WRCO, “We’re months away” from getting back to normal. “New Orleans and down there, they’re years away.”

Did we do this?

Every hour or so it seems there’s another major media story trumpeting research said to prove Hurricane Katrina was intensified by global warming and blaming energy use by ordinary Americans going about their daily lives.

All these stories revolve around one paper published this summer in Nature by Kerry Emanuel, a climate researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professor Emanuel says hurricane intensity worldwide has grown significantly in the past 30 years. He links this to a rise of one degree, Fahrenheit, in tropical sea-surface temperatures during 50 years and attributes the change to human activity.

Emanuel’s paper has been severely criticized by Colorado State University Professor William Gray, who may reasonably be called the father of modern hurricane forecasting. Gray says Emanuel relies on shaky estimates in many cases where direct measurements of hurricane wind speeds simply don’t exist.

Emanuel maintains he was able to adequately adjust for deficiencies in his data, but the media may find his candor inconvenient. On his MIT web site, Emanuel posts “Frequently Asked Questions about Global Warming and Hurricanes.” Some excerpts:

Q: Is global warming causing more hurricanes?
A: No.
Q: Is the intensity of hurricanes increasing with time?
A: There is some evidence that it is.
Q: Does this mean that we are seeing more hurricane-caused damage in the U.S. and elsewhere?
A: There is a huge upward trend in hurricane damage in the U.S., but all or almost all of this is due to increasing coastal population and building in hurricane-prone areas. When this increase in population and wealth is accounted for, there is no discernible trend left in the hurricane damage data.
Q: I gather from this last discussion that it would be absurd to attribute the Katrina disaster to global warming?
A: Yes, it would be absurd.

Of course there’s much more, viewable at http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/anthro2.htm, and a fair-minded reading will suggest at least two possibilities that cannot be dismissed: Warmer water strengthening storms, and at least some in the major media purposefully misleading their audiences.—Dave Hoopman

 

Up, Up, and Away
Heating Costs to Rise

One of the consequences of Hurricane Katrina will be a tightening of natural gas supplies this winter. This supply crunch has already sent the price of natural gas to more than $11 per million BTUs, up from $7.50 prior to Katrina’s assault on the Gulf Coast. The price of natural gas last winter was about $6/million BTUs.

While natural gas prices may back down somewhat, prices in the $8 to $9 per million BTUs will be frustrating to some consumers and a serious financial hardship to many. Since 75 percent of home heating in Wisconsin is fueled by natural gas, consumers will face significantly higher home heating bills this winter.

Propane (made from both oil and natural gas) and fuel oil will also cost more than last winter. Propane prices are forecast in the $1.45 to $1.65-per-gallon range.

While the price of crude oil—a globally traded commodity—has dipped from a high of $70/barrel immediately following Hurricane Katrina, the lack of unused refining capacity in the face of rising world demand for oil will mean gradually higher heating oil and gasoline prices this winter. Last week, the Economist magazine reported that the world’s refining capacity and crude oil use (83 million barrels per day) have converged.

There is nearly no surplus oil-refining capacity in the world.

Much of the refining capacity damaged by the hurricane has been put back online, though some refineries will have to operate limited runs for several weeks.

Electricity prices, though gradually rising because of fuel and transportation cost increases, will not increase nearly as much as primary fossil fuel sources such as oil and gas.

State and Federal Responses

Recognizing that rising energy costs represent a threat to this nation’s economy and the well being of its citizens, Congress passed and the president signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 in August. The new energy law is designed to address long-term energy supply and conservation. The new law significantly increases funding for renewable generation, clean-coal research, nuclear power development, and hydrogen technology research.

Electric cooperatives and other consumer-owned utilities should be able to build new renewable generation at low cost because of the Clean Energy Bonds provision of the law. This measure would provide interest-free loans to consumer-owned power providers to enable them to build more renewable energy projects at lower costs per kilowatt-hour.

The energy bill also requires that 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol be blended with the nation’s fuel supply by 2012 in order to help reduce the rising cost of petroleum products. The energy bill also provides consumers with increased rebates for certain energy-efficient appliances as well as tax credits for geothermal heating systems beginning in 2006.

In Wisconsin, legislation to implement the recommendations of Governor Jim Doyle’s Task Force on Renewables and Energy Efficiency will be ready soon. Those recommendations include expanding the renewables requirement for cooperatives and utilities to 10 percent from 2.2 percent. Other provisions address increasing renewable energy use in state buildings and devising a method to provide more stable funding for the state’s energy conservation and efficiency programs.

In addition, State Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz (R–Richland Center) has called for a statewide task force to address the broader energy issues facing Wisconsin—a proposal embraced by Governor Doyle. Senator Sheila Harsdorf (R–River Falls) and Rep. Steve Freese (R–Dodgeville) have co-authored bills to increase the use of ethanol in gasoline from approximately 4.5 percent to nearly 10 percent.

Wisconsin’s electric co-ops are seeking changes in the state’s uniform dwelling code regulations that would eliminate discrimination against electric heating in new housing construction. These changes— affecting new construction, not existing homes—are designed to lower both the capital and operating costs of extremely efficient electric heating technologies.

Anticipating a much larger need for low-income energy assistance this winter, the Division of Energy of the Wisconsin Department of Administration is likely to reprogram some existing funding to increase assistance to the state’s lowest-income residents. This will help cushion what will likely be very tough winter financially for the state’s most economically vulnerable residents.

Prepare for Higher Heating Bills

Despite efforts of the state and federal governments, citizens should prepare for higher heating costs this winter. Individuals have some responsibility for their own energy use.

October is the time to plan for insulation projects, weather-strip doors and windows, make sure that there are extra furnace filters for the heating season, and ensure that heating appliances are operating properly.

Installing automatic setback (or programmable) thermostats in your home can reduce heating costs by 10 percent if they are programmed to reduce temperatures by 10 percent to 15 percent during 8-hour periods.

Electric cooperative members with questions on how to reduce their heating bills should contact the member services director at their cooperative. Electric cooperatives, the State of Wisconsin, and local county human services agencies can provide information on low-income energy assistance for members who meet eligibility guidelines.

Our Predicament

Wisconsin is an energy-poor state. It has no coal, gas, oil, or uranium. It has limited hydroelectric capability, though what it does have could be expanded by 100 megawatts or about 20 percent. Wisconsin does have biomass and a limited amount of wind.

Electric cooperatives are developing new resources of renewable electricity, particularly methane landfill-gas recovery systems and anaerobic manure digesters that extract methane from livestock manure to produce electricity. If properly constructed and operated these are two of the lowest-cost renewable resources.

Neither conservation nor increasing renewables by themselves will solve the problem rural Wisconsinites will face this winter or in the years to come. Longer-term energy solutions for this state will have to include developing new lower-cost fuels (such as ethanol and bio-diesel), finding new sources of energy, and continually improving the efficiency of residential heating and cooling systems. Most importantly, there will be no relief from high oil prices over the long term unless the transportation sector becomes much more efficient. Expanding the use of geothermal heat-pump technologies can help a great deal. So can shifting more of our electric heating load off-peak with thermal storage devices.

Finally, no matter what we do in Wisconsin, there are global forces that will continue to put upward pressure on prices of oil and gas. In as little as seven years, China—not the United States—is likely to become the largest market in the world for new cars. The economies of other countries in Asia are also expanding at rates that significantly exceed that of the United States.—David Jenkins

 

Editorial
by Perry Baird

Dixie Dialogues

One observer predicted that so many tiny antennas on cell phones would be aloft following the meeting’s adjournment that it would look like a porcupine had wandered in.

Almost on cue, 14 electric co-op managers in the Dubuque hotel’s conference room pushed back their chairs, grabbed their cell phones, and headed for the nearest window to maximize reception for their outgoing calls.

They had just finished discussing the logistics of sending several new crews and equipment 1,000 miles southward, while also swapping out 10 lineworkers who had already spent a week rebuilding lines at Washington-St. Tammany Electric Co-op (WST) in Louisiana.

In Dubuque attending a regional meeting of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), the managers had arranged to speak via conference call with other managers and operations personnel back in Wisconsin, organizing the ongoing relief effort to which so many were contributing. The cell-phone scene occurred immediately afterwards as they called home to coordinate employee and vehicle movements to and from their individual co-ops.

Gone With the Wind

It was striking that the communications technology on display in every corner of the hotel conference room in Dubuque, Iowa, was so desperately missing from a widespread swath across several Southern states where Hurricane Katrina came ashore. Cell towers had toppled; land lines lay strewn across thousands of square miles.

For a week, communications with 22 Wisconsin co-op workers—in the first wave of volunteers working to rebuild WST’s decimated electric system—had consisted of one e-mail update each day from Jon Ebert, Adams–Columbia Electric Co-op manager of operations. Ebert supervised the Wisconsin crews as they constructed miles of new three-phase feeder lines to completely replace WST poles and wire that could not be salvaged. Katrina blew down virtually the entire co-op system serving 47,000 members.

At the Dubuque meeting, I heard: “Our only problem is Jon’s not going to want to come home until the job is done.” And prospects were for the job to take months. He wasn’t alone; other volunteers among the Wisconsin group were also asking to extend their stay beyond the original two-week tour that had been planned—despite 14-hour days in 95-degree heat, high humidity, and few luxuries at the tent compound set up to house visiting crews. These Yankee linemen take that sixth co-op principle—cooperation among cooperatives—quite seriously.

Appreciation Abounds

The Wisconsin volunteers’ tenacity and workmanship earned some early recognition: They were voted the best crews among the hundreds of lineworkers from numerous states who deployed to WST.

Just before the co-op managers had gone into their conference in Dubuque, NRECA CEO Glenn English had mentioned that in storm-ravaged areas he had visited a few days earlier, “There is no one more popular than those linemen.” The NRECA program also featured video of an international project where Haitian locals celebrated their newly energized electric system. The day after viewing that video, we learned of similar jubilation near Franklinton, Louisiana.

In his daily e-mail update, Ebert reported: “We finally energized about 100 members late yesterday. It was quite a boost. When we pulled around to switch, phase and remove temporary jumpers, I could not even hear the radio conversation because of all the cheering from members.”

They’re hearing cheers from back home, too.

 

Visiting Viroqua Victorians

To while away an autumn afternoon, take a leisurely stroll along the streets of historic Viroqua, one of our state’s charming communities designated as Wisconsin Main Street Program members. Along Viroqua’s quiet side streets, you’ll be see both impressive Victorians and captivating bungalows, while the downtown thoroughfares offer outstanding examples of architecture representative of the late 1800s and early 1900s. An October bonus is the warm glow of fire-red maples that shade many of the buildings. The Viroqua Revitalization Committee has made it easy for you to organize and chronicle your walking tours. With the assistance of the Wisconsin Humanities and the Vernon County Historical Society, the Revitalization Committee has prepared three helpful booklets for visitors: Heritage Hike, Court House Trail, and Main Street Meandering. Each pamphlet features a map of a small section of town, pointing out the names, histories, and highlights of each noteworthy site. Visitors with an affinity for turn-of-the-century dwellings should head for the Heritage Hike, which showcases most of the homes of Viroqua’s most prominent citizens of that era. Two prime examples are the Boyle House and the Dyson House (also called the Eckhart House). Together, these two gracious homes, across East Jefferson Street from one another, together make up the Viroqua Heritage Inn, a bed and breakfast that’s handy to downtown Viroqua and other mansions. In all, this tour encompasses 13 homes, the old railroad depot, early schools, a feed mill, the Viroqua City Cemetery, the Northern Wisconsin Tobacco Pool, and Viroqua’s first hospital. As you might expect, Main Street Meanderings directs visitors through the current business district of Viroqua, which still contains many buildings built at the turn of the century. Among them are the Fortney Hotel, Jacobson Studio and Opera Hall, theaters, tea rooms, City Hall, and many early stores. A few homes are also included in this tour. The last walking tour, adjacent to Main Street, takes explorers along Court House Trail. The Vernon County Courthouse and jail are here, as well as a variety of historic homes, businesses, a school, Pioneer Cemetery, and parks. Also included are markers commemorating local events in the 1800s, Viroqua’s Cave and the city’s centennial time capsule, and Court House Rock, where the legendary Winnebago Princess Viroqua leaped to her death after she was forbidden to marry her true love. If time permits, by all means follow all three walking tours, or at least follow along in your car. Whether it’s opulent Victorian homes, commercial architecture, or romantic legends you fancy, you’ll find them while ambling streets of yore in vintage Viroqua.—Linda Hilton For maps of all three walking tour maps, call Judy at the Vernon County Historical Society (608/637-7396). For information about the Viroqua Heritage Inn B&B, call 608/637-3306 or visit http://herinn.com.