News Blooms - 2009 Spring Newsletter


Moelter Wildlife Preserve As the Conservancy land protection specialist, one of my favorite duties is visiting the 20 properties we have protected with voluntary land protection agreements. What makes this so-called task even more enjoyable is visiting with the property owners. It is refreshing to hear the landowners talk with such passion about their properties and share stories about the land the owners love so much.
One in particular is the Moelter Wildlife Preserve owned by Charles Moelter and his wife Joanne Gasperik. I can take myself back to one of our visits right now, sitting at the kitchen breakfast bar with a cup of freshly made coffee, looking up to see a model airplane hanging from the ceiling (Charlie is an avid pilot), and listening to Charlie reminisce about the many joyous times he has had on the farm since 1948 when he purchased the 240-acre property with his parents.
	The farm has undergone changes in the last 60 years. It started as a large working farm. While there is still a portion of the property that is actively farmed, it is also sprawling with large areas of pine and spruce trees. The property also includes a nice, large area of prairie that showcases a variety of native grasses and wildflowers.
Charlie and his father Bruno dug out two of the ponds, while Charlie, Joanne, and Lyle Kyle dug out the third later on. A large portion of the southern boundary of the property travels through a stream and wetlands. These unique property features allow for great plant and animal diversity. The preserve is located directly off Highway 50 just east of Lake Geneva. Once you enter the property, you are immediately taken into a different world. The sounds of cars, trucks, and semis disappear as you wind your way back into the property. Depending on where you are on the 240 acres, all you hear are the wind streaming through the pine needles and oak leaves, the birds fluttering around, and the water gently flowing by your side. The place truly is something to cherish, and Charlie and Joanne want to share it so others may learn. And the couple has done a great job doing so.
Charlie always had wanted the property to be used for education. He had school groups tour the property a few times a year, but he wanted more. One day in 2004, Charlie received a phone call from Frank Guskie, a local Boy Scout troop leader, who was looking for a place to take his scouts. Frank made the right call. Since then activities on the property have flourished. Charlie and Joanne have graciously opened their property to school groups and Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts for a variety of activities, ranging from an afternoon visit to a weekend campout.
Each passing year there is increased exposure, including school field trips, numerous scouting events and campouts, church activities, and weekend family campouts. While on the property, children learn about management of the property, help remove invasive species, create campsites, and participate in other recreational and educational activities. Not only is the preserve available for recreational and educational activities for the scouts and schoolchildren, but there is a ceremonial area for Native Americans. Ten acres of land have been set aside to be the site of the Odanah project or "village." This, too, will be an educational area for visitors. This village will have a small sweat lodge and a long house. Through the different Native American ceremonies, the hope is they will reconnect people with their individual cultures and educate people about other cultures around us. The melding of balance and awareness will bring peace to all who visit here.
One of the many Native American gatherings/activities on the property.	The preserve is protected with a voluntary land protection agreement, so rest assured the property will continue to be used the same way with ongoing activities. Charlie and Joanne, with the help of others, also have set up the Moelter Foundation to ensure that the property will remain a preserve for future generations to enjoy and learn. Property owners like Charlie and Joanne, with the assistance of the Conservancy, help to keep some of the character in this area alive.
If you or people you know are interested in property preservation or if you have questions about land protection agreements, please call us at 262-275-5700 or stop at our office at the historic Mill House, 398 Mill St., Fontana. ~ Lynn Ketterhagen Land Protection Specialist

Alternative Energy Resources
Gone with the Wind Power

Windmills are an iconic image usually associated with turn-of-the-century farms or a quaint Dutch countryside. Whatever image is inspired, those farmers and their European forbears knew one thing: wind is a cheap, clean, and in some places a consistently reliable method of producing energy. From grinding grain to powering one's home - or contributing to the overall power grid - wind power is an alternative energy whose potential is only just being plumbed.

Wind Energy: What is it?
Wind is, at its most basic, an extension of solar energy. Air heated by the sun rises and is replaced by cooler air, a process that creates wind. Windmills or more modern wind turbines use rotating blades to harness the kinetic energy into mechanical energy, which can be converted into electricity or used for specific tasks such as pumping water or grinding grain.

Environmental Impact
According to the Energy Center of Wisconsin (ECW), traditional electrical production is responsible for:

64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions (acid rain, fine particulates)
40 percent of manmade emissions of carbon dioxide (greenhouse gases)
25 percent of nitrogen oxides (smog, acid rain, and fine particulates)

Power plants are also a source of heavy metal emissions such as mercury, which affects human health, damages buildings and crops, and contaminates lakes, rivers, and other sensitive wildlife habitats and natural resources.

Alternatively, wind energy is one of the cleanest available renewable resources. It is also relatively inexpensive. Innovations in wind power are driving down costs as production becomes more efficient. In some places, wind power out-competes electricity derived from gas, coal, and nuclear power plants.

Issues
Despite being inexpensive and clean, wind energy does have its detractors. While modern wind turbines may be more efficient than their charming Dutch antecedents, for some people turbines are not nearly as pleasant to look at, and many complain that wind farms ruin views of the landscape that are known as view-sheds.

Visuals aside, wind turbines can also affect avian populations, especially at higher altitudes.

While the lattice-style pillar and high turbine speeds have mostly been replaced with the solid turbine pillar and slower turbine speeds, concerns remain, and commercial wind farm manufacturers and communities are becoming more sensitive to the location of future wind farms.

Noise is another complaint. While wind power is quieter than most industrial activities, many of the latter are not located in rural or low-density residential areas. According to ECW, noise from a single turbine generating at 400 feet is 57 decibels, similar to that of a clothes dryer. In Walworth County, ordinances require that any wind turbine be situated at least 1,000 feet from the nearest school, residence, hospital, church, or public library. At this distance, the sound from a wind turbine is around 40 decibels, or similar to a moderately quiet room or general background noise.

To minimize noise complaints, most commercial wind farm manufacturers place the rotors upwind, streamline towers to increase aerodynamics and reduce vibration, and soundproof the mechanical equipment in the nacelle.

Ultimately, it is up to a community and its citizens to utilize and regulate energy production and initiate regulation of view-sheds and noise pollution. In Walworth County, the Large and Small Wind Energy System Ordinance is under review by the county board of supervisors.

Innovations in Wind
Offshore wind turbines
Just as the need for oil drove innovators to plumb the resources of the ocean - and develop the platforms necessary to do so - so too are wind innovators developing better methods to catch offshore winds.

Two methods exist to harness oceanic wind energy, one being the standard wind turbine tower, which can withstand depths up to 200 feet . Several offshore wind projects are in the planning phases in the United States - even some in the Great Lakes - and some are a reality in Europe, where wind energy has better financing and a stronger advocacy base.

In addition to the coastal offshore projects, the development of mid-ocean, floating commercial wind farms has begun, circumventing visual complaints and catching stronger winds. The float uses a tripod tower structure borrowed from modern oil-rig architecture and allows the wind turbine to be installed at depths greater than 200 feet.

Vertical Wind Turbine
Traditionally, vertical wind turbines have been proven inefficient and expensive. However, a Racine man - Adam Fuller - has designed a new type of vertical wind turbine, one that has bucket-like wheels on a center axis that balances the airflow speed regardless of wind direction. Still in the development stage, Fuller has built a prototype windmill in East Troy, Wis.

Up Next: Alternative Energy Resources: Solar Power

~ Katie Sullivan
Membership and Outreach Coordinator

The Geneva Lake Conservancy's budget in 2008 was just over $350,000. The expenses were categorized to maintain the Conservancy's programs, including land protection, the watershed education campaign, and the maintenance of the historic building we call home.

In addition to program costs, the Conservancy has many of the same overhead expenses as other small businesses and organizations. These are the costs of doing business and allow us to keep the lights on and to function on a daily basis.

The graphic above shows some of the program expenses from the 2008 budget. For 2009 we have managed to cut $50,000 from the proposed budget. This year will likely prove to be a test of our skills to keep costs down while still raising the funds necessary for our programs, funds that come almost entirely from private, individual contributions such as yours. We need you!

Please consider renewing your membership for 2009. If you have already done so, thank you for your continued support and generosity.

~ Katie Sullivan
Membership and Outreach Coordinator


In the last issue of the newsletter (Happy Holly-Days, Winter 2008), we introduced the Groundwater Flow Models, which were purchased with help from the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation and donations raised at the 2008 Mai Tai No Tai. The groundwater models are one of the components of the Conservancy's Watershed Education Program, which began two years ago with an economic survey and the installation of signs at entry and exit points along the Geneva Lake watershed last spring. On February 20 the Conservancy conducted its first successful introduction of a groundwater model to an area school. Brookwood Middle and Elementary School science teachers were introduced and trained on the model. They will use two of the models until mid-March. The next schools up on the list are Reek Elementary, Fontana Middle School, and Badger High School.	Brookwood science teachers, from left: Melissa Bobula, Jack Blake and Karyn Kretschmer
The groundwater models are an interactive classroom tool designed to show the flow of water and toxins though differing gradients, aquifers, and, for the Conservancy's purposes, watersheds. Additionally, the models can help students visualize what happens when too much water is drawn from the surface and ground watersheds and what effect it has on local bodies of water such as Geneva Lake. The models also highlight the effects of contamination of the groundwater supply.
For the Conservancy and its campaign to bring watershed awareness to Geneva Lake communities, the models show clearly that anything that happens within the Geneva Lake surface and ground watersheds not only affects drinking water derived from wells but the water quality of the lake. Common contaminants such as road salt, fertilizers and pesticides, oil and other pollutants washed away from impervious surfaces (streets and parking lots), leaky septic tanks, and animal wastes can and do have an immediate effect on the watershed. If you are an area teacher or local organization and you would like to borrow one of the Conservancy's four available models, please call Katie Sullivan at 262-275-5700 or e-mail katie@genevalakeconservancy.org. ~ Katie Sullivan Membership and Outreach Coordinator	GLC staffer Katie Sullivan sets up the groundwater model for the demonstration.

Behind our house my wife and I look out on an old oak forest, largely untouched for a hundred years, maybe longer. But the tall oaks have been dying off and have not been replaced by younger ones because of the tangle of invasives on the forest floor and the junk trees throughout.

Thanks to the advice of a neighbor, we finally found a way to deal with the decline of the forest and open it up to new healthy growth and restore the wildlife habitat.

We contacted the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), which has an office in Elkhorn. The district conservationist is Greg Igl, who may be contacted at (262) 723-3216 or go to www.wi.nrcs.usda.gov.

The service can provide advice and counsel to establish a conservation plan to restore your forest, wetlands, or fields. Plus, the service has a Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, open until April 17. This program will help pay for such planned conservation treatments as heavy brush management, including mechanical removal of unwanted brush species such as honeysuckle and buckthorn, and application of herbicides to prevent resprouting of woody vegetation.

We selected Midwest Prairies of Milton, Wis., from the contractors list provided by the NRCS Elkhorn office to do the brush removal and treatment, establish fire breaks, and do a prescribed burn over an 18-month period. The firm recently completed heavy brush removal, effectively covering more than five acres in one day with a powerful, tracked forestry mower that shreds and mulches brush up to four inches in diameter.

Midwest Prairies has been doing such habitat restoration work for 15 years. For more information, contact Ron Martin at (920) 723-0453 or go to www.midwestprairies.com.

Now, we're looking forward to seeing new, young oaks, and our old woods already has been transformed from a weedy tangle into a beautiful open wooded vista.

~ Chuck Ebeling
GLC Board Member