WisconsinWatch.org » Health & Welfare

Key findings: Mental health services at UW System campuses

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:05:43 +0000

About this story

Jenny Peek and Kate Prengaman reported this story with other journalism students in a UW-Madison class taught by Professor Deborah Blum, in collaboration with the nonprofit, nonpartisan Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and the Investigative Journalism Education Consortium, which includes Midwestern university journalism professors and students working on news projects in the public interest. The Consortium is supported by a grant from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. Read the IJEC consortium stories
Main story: Gaps persist in campus mental health services

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Explore data on mental health services across the UW System

In collaboration with a reporting class taught by UW-Madison Professor Deborah Blum, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism examined mental health services at the University of Wisconsin System’s 13 four-year campuses. The project included extensive public records requests, interviews with students and officials, and data analyses.

Key findings include:

More UW students are seeking mental health care, reflecting nationwide trends.
In response, campus counseling centers are identifying and treating urgent cases first, emphasizing group therapy, limiting counseling sessions and referring students to off-campus providers when they need longer-term care.
In 2011, just eight campuses met recommendations made by a 2008 University of Wisconsin System subcommittee audit calling for one mental health provider for every 2,000 students. The average was about one mental health provider for every 2,027 students across the 13 campuses.
Only two schools — UW-Stevens Point and UW-Superior — met the stricter international standard of one provider for every 1,000 to 1,500 students.
Campuses are trying to follow up more closely with high-risk students referred off campus, another of the subcommittee’s recommendations. UW-Madison, for example, hired a full-time case manager in 2010 who works only on student referrals.
To improve access, some campuses have introduced programs like “Let’s Talk,” in which counselors try to reach students who may not be comfortable seeking therapy.
Students are forming campus mental health groups to support peers and fight stigma.

— Amy Karon

The Center also collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and other news media. Works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or its affiliates.

Stressed: Demands, counselor shortages strain Midwest campus mental health systems

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:01:54 +0000

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By Pam Dempsey and Brant Houston
For the Investigative Journalism Education Consortium

Counseling and psychiatric services at Midwest universities are buckling under the increased demand from students — many of whom are entering schools with more serious illnesses than ever seen before.

Indeed, many counseling programs are failing to meet the nationally accepted standards for counselor-to-student ratios, leading to longer waits for assistance and a limited number of sessions, an investigation by a consortium of Midwest journalism faculty and students has found.

The consortium also found that many campuses have not implemented key recommendations made to improve campus safety and mental health services in the wake of the fatal shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and at Northern Illinois University in 2008.

In addition, the consortium discovered that counseling centers are juggling limited staff and cutting programs because of shrinking budgets.

All this comes at a time when counselors are seeing more students entering college with histories of mental illness.

In the past, “if someone had a mental illness, college was not a feasible option,” said Christy Hutton, programming and communications coordinator for the University of Missouri’s counseling center. “They either received long-term treatment for their illness or they were placed in a closet and hidden from the rest of society.”

Now, she said, it is possible for most students to balance outpatient care and college coursework because of the treatment and medication they received before they entered college.

The five-month examination of programs was conducted by the Investigative Journalism Education Consortium, a network of journalism faculty and students at Midwest universities and colleges. The project is funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation based in Chicago.

The consortium reviewed services at more than two dozen campuses in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri. In its ongoing review, the consortium found that centers often fell far short of the number of mental health providers recommended by the International Association of Counseling Services.

The association’s recommendation for staffing levels calls for college counseling centers requires a minimum of one mental health provider for every 1,500 students. Yet most campuses have ratios of one provider for more than 2,000 students, with some having ratios as high as one mental health provider for every 16,000 students.

As a result, students in need wait weeks for appointments and get only a few sessions. In some cases, outreach programs and preventative services have been cut, reduced or turned over to trained students to run.

“It means making tough choices,” said Carla McCowan, director of the counseling center at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “It’s a nick here and a nick there because I can’t cut people, really. I can’t cut clinicians.”

The situation is frustrating and worrisome for many students.

For example, when University of Wisconsin-Madison senior Rachel Steidl sought counseling services this year, she was assessed the same day under a new process at her Madison campus. But because her immediate needs weren’t deemed urgent, she was asked to wait three weeks for her next appointment.

“If my depression gets worse, it could escalate,” Steidl said. “I want to avoid getting to the point where I have to call the crisis hot line.”

As part of its review, the consortium culled through data and documents and conducted numerous interviews with mental health providers, experts, university administrators and students.

Among the consortium’s findings:

Four years ago, a University of Wisconsin System subcommittee recommended that, in the short term, its four-year institutions try to meet 75 percent of the association’s staffing standard or one mental health provider for every 2,000 students. The average is now is about one mental health provider for every 2,027 students across its 13 campuses. But when students at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism used the subcommittee’s methods to re-calculate ratios for 2010-2011, it found that five campuses failed to meet that standard.
In Missouri, the University of Missourice-Kansas City has seen a 175 percent increase in the number of students seeking services over the past decade, while the University of Missouri-Columbia saw 80 percent more students seeking services over the past five years. At the Columbia campus, there were 602 students seen for individual, couple or group therapy in the 2006-2007 school year. For the 2010-2011 school year, there were 1,091 students seen.

At the Kansas City campus, there were about 830 students seen for therapy in the 2010-2011, up from 300 students during the 2000-2001 school year.

On average, University of Missouri says it has one mental health provider for every 1,900 students.
In Indiana’s public universities, counseling centers have been consistently understaffed. As a result, trainees are heavily used to provide clinical services. Ratios range from one mental health provider for every 2,208 student to one mental health provider for more than 16,000 students.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale has one mental health provider for every 3,000 students, while the ratio at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one counselor for every 2,100 students.

“We start to get a wait list and what that means is that a student comes in this week but we won’t have any ongoing openings for three more weeks,” said Rosemary Simmons, director of counseling at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Simmons added, “For the past 10 years, we have had a built-in triage system and so we really make an effort to meet every student when they come in to make an initial assessment.”

The consortium also looked into other issues related to mental health on campus, including psychiatric treatment and the creation of behavioral or threat assessment teams.

In some instances, it was difficult to assess problems because campuses did not provide information despite repeated requests.

National experts say the challenges at Midwest universities reflect national trends.

A 2011 National Survey of Counseling Center Directors found an influx of students with serious psychological problems including large increases in crisis issues that require an immediate response and an increase in students arriving on campus already on psychiatric medication.

“Sometimes counseling centers have to decide which is the least worse because there’s no money,” said Dan Jones, president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors. “There are some things you just can’t address because of the budgets.”

Gaps persist in campus mental health services

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:01:52 +0000

Matt Vohl (left) meets with Rachel Steidl in the Student Activity Center on East Campus Mall in Madison, Wis., Jan. 27, 2012. Vohl and Steidl help lead the UW-Madison campus chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

SIDEBARS

About this story

Other UW-Madison journalism students contributing to this report were Anna Bukowski, Gayle Cottrill, Monica Hickey, Thomas Mitchell, Daniel Rose and Sam Zastrow.

By Amy Karon, Kate Prengaman and Jenny Peek
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

A decade ago, Thomas Murphy was a college dropout who used alcohol and drugs to deal with undiagnosed depression. Now he’s back at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he co-leads a chapter of Active Minds, a national, student-run group promoting open conversations about mental illness.

Therapy made the difference for Murphy. But he can’t receive it at school. When he re-enrolled at UW-Madison and went to the counseling center, he walked out with no appointment and a list of referrals.

“They couldn’t help me because of my extensive history,” Murphy said. “So I go out and pay on my own for the services I need.”

Murphy’s story underscores a national dilemma: a surge in students seeking intensive counseling and psychiatric care, which college mental health centers often lack resources to provide. The problem has become even more urgent in the wake of mass shootings by troubled students at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois universities.

In Wisconsin, understaffed counseling centers are prioritizing services for those with urgent needs, expanding group therapy options to reach more students, and referring patients off campus for long-term treatment. And students like Murphy are forming campus organizations to support peers and fight the stigma of mental illness.

A growing need

Step onto a U.S. college campus today and you’ll still find students rushing between classes or holding hands with first loves.

But 80 percent of college counseling center directors reported seeing more students in crisis during the past five years, according to a national survey in 2011. The same study found that students with severe psychological problems now account for nearly 40 percent of counseling center visits — more than double the proportion in 2000.

Last spring, 19 percent of college students surveyed by the American College Health Association said they’d been diagnosed with depression sometime in their lives, up from 12 percent a decade ago. Almost one in five students had seriously considered suicide.

These statistics aren’t all bad news, said psychologist Danielle Oakley, director of mental health services at UW-Madison, where counseling visits increased 10 percent last year alone. More people know about mental illness and are seeking help, and better psychiatric medications enable some to attend college who couldn’t have a generation ago.

But Oakley said the faltering economy is fueling worries about paying for school. Many students are stressed, overworked and sleep-deprived, which can cause mental health problems.

Though studies show people with serious mental illness usually aren’t violent, there have been tragic exceptions: In 2007 and 2008, troubled students shot themselves after killing 37 people and wounding dozens more at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois universities.

Campuses across the country responded by revamping policies for handling disturbed students and staff. At UW campuses, threat assessment teams — whose members hail from deans’ offices, academic departments, campus police, and counseling centers — try to identify and help such people before they hurt themselves or others.

“If there is a silver lining in something like that happening, it’s put the spotlight on some needs on our campus,” said John Achter, counseling director at UW-Stout.

Still, most people with mental illness fly under the teams’ radar. And despite attempts to meet demand, Wisconsin students are being turned away — or told to wait weeks for care.

UW-Madison senior Rachel Steidl, Jan. 27, 2012. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Long waits, but some improvements

UW-Madison senior Rachel Steidl was one such student. “I grew up really focused on helping other people,” she said. “When I had my own problems with depression, I didn’t feel like I had anyone to turn to. I was pretty lonely my freshman year.”

Steidl later saw a psychology intern at the campus counseling center. She learned to open up more and made friends. When she returned to the center this year, an intake provider saw her the same day to assess her needs.

That’s because at Oakley’s urging, UW-Madison began offering same-day assessments in early 2011.

“We don’t want any barriers to get to us,” Oakley said. “The day you decide that you want support, all you have to do is walk in.”

But what happened next frustrated Steidl. Because her immediate needs weren’t deemed urgent, she said, she was asked to wait three weeks for her next appointment.

At UW-Madison, crisis line staffers keep up with demand

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s crisis line received 14 percent more calls last academic year than ever before, but data suggest staffers have kept up with demand. Last fall, the average time to answer was 19 seconds, 86 percent of calls were answered within 30 seconds, and the longest hold times were a few minutes, said Dr. Sarah Van Orman, University Health Services director.
— Amy Karon

“If my depression gets worse, it could escalate,” she said. “I want to avoid getting to the point where I have to call the crisis hot line.”

Most UW campuses use such triage systems to help students in crisis first. UW-Eau Claire student Anneliese Vaini, for example, was prescribed Paxil when she sought help for panic attacks in 2009. After she stopped eating and sleeping and went on a “financially disastrous” shopping spree, her campus counselor and psychiatrist correctly identified and treated her bipolar disorder — ending eight years of bouncing between clinicians who’d misdiagnosed her.

“They saved my life. Literally,” said Vaini, who now works as a pet groomer. “I wasn’t able to complete a degree, but they gave me a brighter future than education.”

But Steidl’s wait time is more typical. Last fall, UW-Madison students went an average of 14 days between their intake appointment and first regular counseling session, said Dr. Sarah Van Orman, health services director. Other UW campuses report similar waits.

Such delays stem partly from inadequate staffing. A UW System audit found that five years ago, only UW-Madison met the international standard of one mental health professional for every 1,000 to 1,500 students. The auditors recommended that over the short term, UW institutions aim to employ one mental health staffer for every 2,000 students.

But as of 2011, just eight of 13 campuses had achieved that ratio, an analysis by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism showed. Of those, only two schools — UW-Stevens Point and UW-Superior— met the international standard.

The average was about one mental health provider for every 2,027 students across the 13 campuses.

To improve counselors’ availability, UW-Madison wait-lists students for earlier sessions, offers daily drop-in groups and confidential consultations in several campus locations, and has more than 25 process and support groups to help students deal with issues ranging from low self-esteem, grief and social anxiety to graduating or coming out as a sexual minority.

None of these options was right for Steidl, though. She found a therapist in private practice.

Thomas Murphy’s face still bears scars from a violent mugging three years ago in the Dominican Republic. During his treatment for a resulting brain injury, he also got the counseling he needed for depression. Photo taken Jan. 23, 2012. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Referred off campus, some never find help

It took a violent mugging in the Dominican Republic in 2008 for Thomas Murphy to finally face his depression. During rehabilitation for a brain injury, he also got the counseling he’d needed.

Milwaukee native Mary Martinco sought help sooner, seeing a therapist for depression for two years in high school. But transitioning to UW-Madison was painful.

“Freshman year I felt so alone, crying all the time,” recalled Martinco, now a junior.

Like Murphy, Martinco sought help at UW-Madison’s counseling services and left with a list of off-campus referrals. But in her case, they either weren’t a good match or didn’t take her insurance. In the end, it was her mother, not her school, who helped her find a therapist.

Most UW counseling centers limit students’ counseling sessions. UW-Madison students like Martinco, who need more than the 10 permitted each academic year, are often asked to go elsewhere from the beginning.

Oakley said that’s because making students change therapists disrupts their treatment. But a 2006 University of California-Davis study found that 42 percent of students referred off campus never connected with providers — usually because of financial concerns.

To address that problem and help prevent tragedies like those at Northern Illinois and Virginia Tech, UW System officials recommended in 2008 that campus providers follow up with high-risk students to help ensure they’re successfully referred.

A half-time case manager now fills this role at UW-Oshkosh. And in 2010, after Martinco’s failed referral experience, UW-Madison hired a full-time case manager who saw 300 students her first year— five times more than expected.

Still, lack of health insurance “poses great barriers” for students referred off campus, Van Orman said. She cited campus surveys that show 6 to 8 percent of students at UW-Madison are uninsured and another 30 to 40 percent have no coverage in the Madison area.

The case manager connects these students to agencies that charge a fraction of the going rate or to the student health insurance plan. She also helps students navigate deductibles and co-pays.

Some students struggle to pay for psychiatric prescriptions. Martinco saw peers risk going off medication when short on cash. She and Murphy said they knew students who self-medicated with alcohol or illegal drugs because they couldn’t afford mental health care.

“The self-medication issue is complex,” Oakley said. “For example, students who use substances such as alcohol to treat anxiety can end up with substance abuse problems in addition to their anxiety.”

Alcohol withdrawal symptoms can mimic anxiety, Oakley added, leading students to drink more or use stronger drugs. In the end, she said, money spent on drugs and alcohol, lost time at work, medical treatment for accidents and legal consequences can far outstrip medication costs.

UW-Madison senior Matt Vohl, Jan. 27, 2012. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Student groups expand

Frustrated by her experiences on campus, Steidl joined fellow student Matt Vohl two years ago in reviving the campus chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

“We saw a lack of resources available for students with mental illness or even just mental health problems,” Vohl said. “We wanted to offer an alternative.”

Students responded en masse: More than 70 signed up at the campus organizational fair last September, Vohl said. A month later, they peppered Bascom Hill with signs.

“The best way to reduce the stigma is by educating people,” Vohl said. “We want to let people know that (mental illness) is not this inherent condition that makes people freaks, it’s not demonizing, it shouldn’t be taboo. It’s something that can affect anyone.”

Steidl and Vohl are working with the counseling center to train students to provide confidential, face-to-face support for peers who want to talk about everyday problems.

“You can go there and know that people kind of understand you at least,” said a member with obsessive-compulsive disorder who asked not to be named for privacy reasons. “You get to know their struggles every day, whatever they are, and to be there to be support for them and other people as well.”

Murphy and Martinco now run UW-Madison’s branch of Active Minds, which promotes mental health awareness. Five other Wisconsin campuses also have chapters. At UW-Parkside last semester, members practiced yoga, colored and made squeezable stress balls.

“Finally I feel able to talk about it, and I want to help others talk about it too,” Martinco said.

“I had this deeper, darker side that I never talked about,” Murphy agreed. “For me, communicating my emotions, my struggles, and my successes has been vital.”

Amy Karon is a reporter for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Kate Prengaman, Jenny Peek and Sam Zastrow contributed as students in a UW-Madison journalism class taught by Professor Deborah Blum, in collaboration with the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center (www.WisconsinWatch.org).

Campus mental health: Connect, learn, find help

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:01:47 +0000

About this story

Interactive map

Explore data on mental health services across the UW System

If you’re in crisis, call:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-TALK (8255)
TTY: 1-800-799-4TTY (4889)
Español: 1-888-628-9454

Veterans crisis line
1-800-273-TALK (8255): Press 1
Or text to 838255
Or chat confidentially on the crisis line website

UW-Madison’s 24-hour mental health crisis line: 608-265-5600

Campus resources

Interactive map with links and summaries of University of Wisconsin counseling centers.

UW-Madison chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
uw.nami@gmail.com
608-268-6000

Active Minds
Chapters exist at Marquette University, UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, the Milwaukee School of Engineering, UW-Parkside and Carthage College.

Supporting Peers in Laidback Listening (SPILL)
Chapters exist at UW-La Crosse, UW-Madison and UW-Whitewater.

Off-campus organizations and links

National Institute of Mental Health

NAMI Wisconsin
608-68-6000
800-236-2988

Mental Health America of Wisconsin
Milwaukee office:
414-276-3122 or toll-free 866-948-6483
info@mhawisconsin.org
Madison office:
608-250-4368
shelgross@tds.net

Helping Others Prevent and Educate about Suicide (HOPES)
608-274-9686

Wisconsin Department of Health Services: mental health and substance abuse programs

Prior mental health coverage from the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

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UW-Milwaukee strives to improve mental health care

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:01:19 +0000

About this story

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Explore data on mental health services across the UW System

Five years ago, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee had the worst mental health care of any four-year UW institution, by some measures.

Students waited the longest for counseling appointments — up to four weeks, according to a UW System audit. UWM had just one counselor for every 4,289 students, the highest ratio of any four-year UW campus and nearly three times worse than the international standard.

But the university has worked to shift those figures. In 2008, it formed a task force to identify students’ needs and find ways to improve. Some outcomes:

The university hired two more counselors and quadrupled its number of counseling groups, said counseling center director Paul Dupont.
Like most other UW campuses, UWM now uses a triage system to identify and help at-risk students first.
Staffers now follow up with students referred off campus for treatment. They also track high-risk students throughout their care, Dupont said, and notify authorities if students who leave counseling are considered imminently likely to hurt themselves or others.
The campus has stepped up suicide prevention efforts, having trained about 675 students, faculty and staff how to recognize when someone could be suicidal and assist.
To encourage students to seek help when they might not be comfortable coming to therapy, plans are under way for counselors to offer all students first-come, first-serve consultations at designated times and locations outside the counseling center.

Those changes have brought results. While UWM’s counselor-to-student ratio remains the worst among four-year UW institutions, it has improved by 20 percent. Wait times have dropped to three weeks during busy times of the semester, said Dupont, even though there’s been a 32 percent increase in the number of new counseling appointments in the last two years.

— Daniel Rose and Amy Karon

At UW-Stout, ‘obsessive’ data crunching to save — and improve — lives

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:01:06 +0000

About this story

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Explore data on mental health services across the UW System

By Sam Zastrow and Amy Karon
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

The University of Wisconsin-Stout had a problem, counseling director John Achter told the student association last year. Twenty-two percent more students were seeking counseling services than ever before, forcing patients to wait up to 26 days to be seen.

Presented with those numbers, the association designated enough money for Achter to hire a new counselor.

That’s the power of data, Achter says, and why his counseling center’s number crunching borders on “obsessive.” Creating detailed analyses of who uses campus mental health services and why enables Achter to better direct resources to help students in need.

But some UW counseling centers don’t track even basic information on patients. UW-Milwaukee doesn’t count the number of students seen, for example, only the number of appointments. And though UW-Green Bay collects data on patients’ races and ethnicities, it does so on paper forms that it doesn’t analyze — despite the fact that it has the second-highest percentage of Native American students of any UW campus, and Native Americans have the highest suicide rate of any racial or ethnic group in the state.

“We have been trying to reach out to all students, including Native American students,” said Amy Henniges, UW-Green Bay health services director.

Henniges said that although a campus counselor focuses on suicide prevention, the counseling center could do more to reach Native American students through UW-Green Bay’s intercultural center. She added that she is seeking funds to convert to an electronic medical record to improve data reporting.

Achter, for his part, now chairs a UW System subcommittee — created on the heels of a 2008 audit that reported inconsistent data tracking by UW campus mental health centers — which aims to standardize the information collected. The effort, he says, will enable providers to compare “apples to apples,” improving mental health care throughout UW System.

UW-Madison journalism student Monica Hickey contributed reporting.

In Haiti, U.S. deportees face illegal detentions and grave health risks

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 06:01:47 +0000

Ricardo Lisade waits to be fingerprinted on a bus at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti the morning of his arrival on Sep. 13, 2011. Jacob Kushner/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

About this story

Wisconsin native Jacob Kushner reported this story in Haiti and Florida. He produced this story for the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, with additional reporting funded by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, where he formerly worked as an intern. His research was supported by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund and the Investigative News Network. To learn more about this project, and the collaborative efforts that made it possible, click here.

Video: Samuel Durand’s story

Click the photo to see Samuel Durand, a Haitian immigrant, tell his story.

Map: A 2,000-mile journey

View Wisconsin and Haiti in a larger map

By Jacob Kushner

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The United States this year has deported more than 250 Haitians, half of whom were jailed without charges in facilities so filthy they pose life-threatening health risks.

Some Haitians faced lengthy confinement in U.S. immigration facilities before the deportations. Officials held Chicago resident Ricardo Lisade in a Kenosha, Wis. detention center for five months before deporting him, and Haitian authorities then placed him on probation without charging him with a crime.

An investigation by the nonprofit Florida Center for Investigative Reporting found evidence that the Obama administration has not followed its own policy of seeking alternatives to deportation when there are serious medical and humanitarian concerns.

One deportee who arrived in April suffered from asthma, hypertension, diabetes, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and head trauma, among other ailments. That same month, the U.S. government deported a mentally ill immigrant whose psychiatric medications were lost by Haitian authorities after his first day in jail.

“What’s distinct about the situation in Haiti is that, unlike in other countries, people are immediately jailed, and the conditions in Haitian jails are condemned universally for violating human rights,” said Rebecca Sharpless, director of the University of Miami Law School Immigration Clinic, which helps immigrants appeal deportation orders.

The health risks for incarcerated deportees have increased significantly since October 2010, the beginning of a cholera outbreak that has infected more than 470,000 people and killed 6,500, including some prisoners.

International health experts say deportees in Haiti’s jails are at risk of contracting cholera, which can spread rapidly in overcrowded cells that lack clean water, soap and waste disposal. Once exposed to cholera, victims can die in less than 24 hours. One deportee has already died — two days after he was released from detention in a Haitian jail cell where he became stricken with cholera-like symptoms.

Haitian authorities told FCIR that they place approximately half of all deportees in jails to monitor what they term “serious criminals” — a largely arbitrary determination.

These detentions, which have lasted as long as 11 days, have occurred although the Haitian constitution bans the detention of anyone for more than 48 hours without appearing before a judge, and a United Nations treaty states that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.”

‘Crisis has not gone away’

One day after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake destroyed much of Haiti’s capital, the U.S. government suspended deportations. Since then, the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an independent initiative of the Organization of American States mandated to promote and protect human rights among member nations, have lobbied countries against deportations due to worsening conditions in Haiti.

“The crisis has not gone away,” said Michel Forst, the U.N. independent expert on human rights, appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council to examine and report on conditions in Haiti. “The most important help the international community can give to Haiti is to suspend the forced return of Haitians.”

Still, the Department of Homeland Security resumed deportations to Haiti on Jan. 20 —the same day the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning urging Americans to avoid Haiti due to health risks and lawlessness.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said deportations to Haiti resumed because a U.S. Supreme Court decision required detainees to be released after 180 days. That requirement, they said, would have placed“some detained Haitian nationals with significant criminal records into U.S. communities, which in turn poses a significant threat to the American public.”

But FCIR found at least three deportees arriving in August and September were convicted of non-violent drug offenses, and three-quarters of all Haitian deportees in recent years had no criminal convictions at all, according to immigration records.

“The hypocrisy is stunning,” Sharpless said. “U.S. officials have known for a long time that it’s dangerous to send people back to jail in Haiti. They also knew that the cholera outbreak raised the stakes even higher because cholera and Haitian jails are a deadly combination. Yet they decided to resume deportations anyway.”

Held in Wisconsin

When U.S. immigration officials finally placed Chicago immigrant Lisade on a deportation flight to Haiti in September, he was eager to be released after spending most of the previous 17 months in immigration detention centers in Wisconsin, Illinois and Kentucky.

Lisade, 33, who was brought to the United States from Haiti at age 8 as a legal resident, amassed a criminal record in the Midwest that included a 1994 conviction for armed robbery and home invasion, a 1999 residential burglary, and a 2007 domestic violence conviction.

Ricardo Lisade, 33, was deported to Haiti in September after spending 17 months in and out of immigration detention centers in Wisconsin and other states. Jacob Kushner/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

But in March 2010, after completing a prison sentence, Lisade was surprised that instead of being allowed to return to his family in Chicago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials took him into custody. He was confined in a section of Kenosha County Jail reserved for ICE detainees, from which an immigration judge ordered Lisade deported to Haiti two months later.

Because the U.S. had temporarily stopped deporting people to Haiti due to the conditions after the January 2010 earthquake, Lisade spent the next five months in that Kenosha jail.

Immigration authorities released Lisade on extended supervision in August 2010 because a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling forbids ICE from detaining immigrants with final orders of removal for more than six months in most cases.

In December 2010, Lisade was taken back into custody on the premise that his deportation to Haiti was imminent. On Jan. 20, ICE sent the first flight of deportees to Haiti since the earthquake. But Lisade would spend an additional eight and a half months in a Kentucky immigration center before his time came.

Key details of his case were confirmed for this report by an attorney with the nonprofit National Immigrant Justice Center in Illinois.

An unexpected homecoming

After officials finally deported Lisade to Haiti on Sept. 13, he was surprised when Haitian authorities placed him on 18 months of probation — even though he was not charged with a crime in Haiti. The probation requires Lisade to report weekly to a judicial police station to sign his name, and forbids him from obtaining a passport, visa or other travel documents until he successfully completes the period.

A flight carrying deportees from a Louisiana detention center arrives at Toussaint Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince on Sept. 13, 2011. Jacob Kushner/Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Some deportees have no other form of identification in Haiti, meaning they cannot receive wire transfers from their family in the United States and risk being apprehended by Haitian police who routinely stop people and demand such identification. At the time he was interviewed, Lisade said he did not have any Haitian ID.

“I haven’t been on probation since I was a juvenile,” Lisade said the morning he arrived at the airport in Port-au-Prince. “Now I have to do another probation for a country where I never committed a crime? A country I left when I was eight years old? That doesn’t make no sense at all.”

The day of Lisade’s arrival, another deportee, longtime Chicago resident Samuel Durand, learned he would be immediately placed in “administrative detention” — meaning a Port-au-Prince jail.

Durand said he moved to the United States in 1996 with his mother and five siblings to join their father, a U.S. citizen and longtime Chicago cab driver. He grew up playing soccer in the Oak Park neighborhood West of Chicago and graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School in 1999.

WATCH VIDEO: Samuel Durand’s story

On Dec. 14, 2006, Durand violently confronted a man he says scratched his car, and he was arrested later that day – one of about 20 times he was arrested in the United States, court records show.

Durand eventually was convicted of robbery, battery and marijuana manufacturing and delivery, according to court records. He was sentenced to four years in prison and served two before being ordered deported to Haiti due to his felony conviction and because his 10-year legal residence had expired.

“It is a shock to me because the country is not functioning … and the U.S. government is still sending people here,” Durand said.

But the bigger shock came when he arrived in Haiti expecting freedom, only to be placed in a 20-by-10 foot cell along with three other deportees and various Haitian prisoners.

“The holding cell holding like 15, 17 people in that little cell,” Durand said. “Ain’t nowhere to sleep, people sleeping on top of other people—the jail condition is not good at all.”

Dr. John May, president of Health Through Walls, a North Miami nonprofit organization that works to improve jail conditions in foreign nations, travels frequently to Haiti. He visited the facility where Durand was held one week before his arrival.

“This is what we see everywhere,” May said. “Tuberculosis would thrive in this environment, certainly skin conditions like scabies, which we see often. And most seriously and concerning in Haiti recently is cholera, and it would just take one person with cholera here and it would quickly spread to the others.”

Because there is no waste disposal, a shower stall and toilet fill with garbage and urine in the Pettionville jail cell on a day when five deportees were held there. Jacob Kushner/Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Cholera is spread primarily through feces and can result in severe vomiting and diarrhea. “Any situation that doesn’t have a lot of good hygiene is a great setting for the spread of cholera, which is what we have here,” May said.

In January, 34-year-old deportee Wildrick Guerrier, whose Florida criminal record included convictions for battery and possession of a firearm, died from what doctors described as cholera-like symptoms two days after being released from the holding cell where he became ill — one of the same cells where deportees are incarcerated today.

When asked if detaining deportees in such conditions poses life-threatening health risks, Chairman of Haiti’s Commission in Charge of Deportees Pierre Wilner Casseus said only that deportees exhibiting symptoms of illness are released immediately.

“We don’t give them any medicine,” Casseus said, adding that the International Organization for Migration, which works to improve living conditions in Haiti, attends to the health needs of jailed deportees. But an IOM spokesperson said Haitian officials do not allow access to the deportees once they are in jail.

Medical care denied

Sometimes, jailhouse conditions in Haiti complicate existing medical problems, as they did for Jeff Dorne, a longtime Boston resident from Haiti diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Dorne served six years in prison for a 2003 rape conviction in New Jersey, after which he was ordered deported by an immigration judge because his felony violated his legal permanent residency, which had also expired while he was in prison.

An Aug. 12, 2011, photo of the Petionville jail cell where some deportees are detained upon their arrival in Haiti. Jacob Kushner/Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

After he was deported in April, Haitian authorities immediately imprisoned him — without charge — in the same Petionville cell where Durand would later be held. Dorne’s illness required him to take four medications daily, so U.S. immigration officers sent a one-month supply of those prescriptions to Haiti’s judicial police. But jails in Haiti do not have medical personnel and Haitian police are not trained in basic medical care.

On Dorne’s first night in the Petionville jail in Port-au-Prince, the municipal police gave him the medication, and then, according to Dorne, held onto — or lost — the remaining pills.

“The prescription said every night. So Saturday night I asked the chief officer, ‘Can you get my medication for me?’ ” Dorne said. “They told me they can’t find it. Every day I asked them for it. After two, three days, I stopped asking.”

During his next few days in jail, Dorne said some of the symptoms that had subsided after he began psychiatric treatment in the New Jersey prison returned.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “My hands started shaking.”

May, the doctor at Health Through Walls, said mentally ill inmates face grave risks because they are often unable to negotiate for themselves.

“A person who requires antipsychotic medications … could rapidly deteriorate without having them,” May said.

The police officer in charge of that jail said he was not familiar with Dorne’s case.

An FCIR review of statements made by federal immigration authorities after deportations resumed in January found evidence that ICE sometimes fails to abide by its policy involving Haitians with medical problems. An April 1 ICE memorandum explaining the decision to resume deportations said alternatives would be considered for medical and humanitarian purposes. Yet Haitians with documented medical problems continue to be deported from the United States.

The U.S. government deported Dorne, for example, three days after the Department of Justice documented his paranoid schizophrenia and the four psychiatric medications prescribed to him.

Ralph Celestin, 51, was deported to Haiti in April even though he suffers from numerous health ailements including asthma, diabetes and hypertension. He has not been convicted of a crime in the United States since a burglary convction in 1978. Jacob Kushner/Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Deportee Ralph Celestin, 51, suffered from so many health problems that a list of his conditions and medications filled six pages of a New Jersey prison document. Despite his having asthma, hypertension and diabetes, ICE deported Celestin to Haiti on the same April flight as Dorne.

Immigration attorneys in the United States are fighting deportations of individual Haitian clients under the 1984 U.N. Convention Against Torture, which forbids governments from deporting people to countries where they will undergo “severe pain or suffering.” In April, a mentally ill Haitian immigrant in Miami had his deportation deferred on the grounds that the conditions in a Haitian jail could meet that standard in his case.

Deportee detentions in Haiti are well-documented, dating back to at least 1998, when deportees were placed in the dangerous National Penitentiary sometimes for months. In some instances, deportees bribed their way out of jail, though FCIR found no evidence that suggested corruption influences deportee detentions today.

The 2010 earthquake destroyed all but one of the government ministry buildings and killed an estimated 20 to 40 percent of civil servants. Today, Haiti’s judicial police must process hundreds of U.S. deportees annually with drastically fewer resources. Each time a deportee flight arrives, for example, routine identification procedures at the judicial police station stop, so the only functioning digital camera can be used to photograph the deportees.

Freedom roulette

On the morning a deportee flight arrives in Haiti, members of Haiti’s Commission in Charge of Deportees arrive at the airport grounds. They mingle with Haitian police officers, U.S. immigration officials and deportee advocates.

The commission includes representatives from four government ministries and the independent Office of Citizen Protection. Once the deportees have been transferred to the judicial police holding station, commission members decide who will go free — and who will be incarcerated.

The process is largely ad hoc. No written policy exists, and there is little consensus among members of the deportee commission about the primary purpose of the detentions.

Secretary of State for the Ministry of Public Security Aramick Louis said detentions are meant for deportees’ protection during the “vulnerable” transition to Haiti.

Frederic Leconte, the commissioner of Haiti’s judicial police, said the detentions allow the state time to understand each individual’s situation — even though the U.S. government provides detailed files on each deportee two weeks prior to arrival, and FCIR was unable to document any instances in which detained deportees were interviewed or even observed directly by officials.

Head of Haiti's Citizen Protection ministry, Florence Elie serves as an adjunct member of the Haitian comission that decides which arriving deportees will be freed and which will be detained. Jacob Kushner/Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Haiti’s Citizen Protection chief Florence Elie, an adjunct member of the commission, said the detentions are meant to allow authorities “to get to know” the deportees.

“Whenever I have to make a choice between the welfare of the community against the welfare of one person, I have to be very careful,” Elie said. “These people who come to Haiti are a threat to the society.”

But Haitian law does not allow someone to be jailed based on the possibility he may commit a crime in the future. “This is what I fought against,” said Privat Precil, the director general of Haiti’s Ministry of Justice from 2002 to 2004. “It is just a police policy that is not legal under Haitian law.”

Length of the deportee detentions varies. The deportees who were incarcerated after arriving Aug. 9 spent seven days in jail. After FCIR questioned government officials about the length of the detentions later that month, the head of the deportee commission was replaced, and deportees on the following flight were released after three days – still plenty of time to risk exposure to cholera.

According to an April memo from ICE, deportees are prioritized “through the consideration of adverse factors, such as the severity, number of convictions, and dates since convictions, and balance these against any equities of the Haitian national, such as duration of residence in the United States, family ties, or significant medical issues.”

Barbara Gonzalez, ICE’s press secretary, said in an email that the agency would “prioritize those who pose the greatest threat to the community.”

But an FCIR review of ICE data shows the agency deported at least 2,684 non-criminal immigrants to Haiti from 2007 to 2010, and FCIR found three deportees who arrived in August and September whose criminal records included only non-violent offenses.

The Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and the White House did not respond to questions about FCIR’s findings.

Total deportations have risen over the past decade, with the Obama administration deporting 387,000 immigrants worldwide in the year beginning October 2009 — more than twice the number deported under President George W. Bush at the beginning of his term in the year starting October 2001.

As recently as 2008, 74 percent of all Haitian deportees did not have criminal convictions, according to ICE data. In the three months leading up to Haiti’s earthquake, 67 percent of deportees were non-criminals.

In August, Gonzalez was asked to provide a list of post-earthquake deportees’ convictions to support the agency’s claim that those deported since the earthquake would have posed a threat if released in the United States. After nearly four weeks without a response, a follow-up elicited this answer from Gonzalez: “We have nothing to add. Regards.”

Deportations came as surprise

Whatever conditions the United States used to justify halting deportations to Haiti had not changed by the time ICE sent the first flight in January, said Laura Raymond, international human rights associate for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting constitutional rights.

“You look at what they said right after the earthquake when they suspended deportations; it cited conditions. The only thing that changed in Haiti between then and when they reinstated deportations was a cholera epidemic — things got much worse,” Raymond said.

Today, approximately 587,000 Haitians live in the United States. Although only 426 of them are estimated to live in Wisconsin, an additional 4,439 reside in Illinois, giving it the eighth largest Haitian population in the country.

For Bernadette Durand, the September deportation of her son, Samuel Durand, is nothing short of tragedy.

“Haiti isn’t good for people to live. They have sicknesses, cholera. People who leave here have gone back and gotten sick from the water. All bad things happen in Haiti,” Bernadette, 56, said in Creole from her Chicago home. She said her husband died in 2002 from an unknown cause, leaving her job as a hotel maid as the family’s primary source of income. She also cares part-time for her son’s five children.

“They’re growing up without their daddy,” said Durand’s brother, Jean Marc, 34. “He was a good father. He had a part-time job. Now sometime they cry that they want to see their daddy. It’s painful.”

The nonprofit and nonpartisan Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Under legal pressure, Wisconsin coal-fired power plants curb emissions

WisconsinWatch — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 06:01:53 +0000

Janis Schreiber, 72, lives about a half-mile from Dairyland Cooperative's two coal-fired power plants in Alma, Wis. Her nonsmoker husband suffered from emphysema, a lung disease, before dying in 2006 at age 80. Schreiber, who has breast cancer and knows many neighbors with cancer, said she wonders if the plants' emissions have affected Alma residents' health. Marianne English/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Two decades ago, Democrats and Republicans together sought to protect Americans from nearly 200 dangerous chemicals in the air they breathe. That goal remains unfulfilled. Today, hundreds of communities are still exposed to the pollutants, which can cause cancer, birth defects and other serious health issues. A secret government “watch list” underscores how much government knows about the threat — and how little it has done to address it.

The Center and other Investigative News Network members produced reports for this nationwide collaborative investigation, led by the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News and National Public Radio.

Interactive graphic: Lawsuits, emissions and the dirtiest burners

Click the image to explore particulates and smog emitted by seven big Wisconsin coal plants, and to learn which ones release the most pollution per ton of coal.

Photo gallery: Coal-fired power plants in Wisconsin

By Sarah Karon and Lauren Hasler
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

ALMA — In 1956, 17-year-old Janis Schreiber moved to this tiny city on the Mississippi River, married and settled downtown to raise a family. Several times a week she drove her three children to the countryside to escape what she called the “dirty mess” — the coal-fired power plant in Alma and the black soot that hung over Main Street like fog.

Now, half a century later, the sky is clearer. Schreiber and other residents can hang laundry outside without it turning black. Dairyland Power Cooperative, which owns Alma’s two coal-fired plants, is investing $400 million in pollution controls.

Dairyland and other Wisconsin coal-fired plants have begun lowering emissions, but not necessarily in response to demands by regulators at the federal Environmental Protection Agency or state Department of Natural Resources.

Many of the changes have resulted from pressure and lawsuits brought by the nonprofit Sierra Club, which has campaigned for a decade to cut emissions from coal combustion.

Some polluters in Wisconsin and nationwide have violated clean-air laws for years but faced no enforcement from state or federal agencies, according to a collaborative investigation by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News, National Public Radio and other nonprofit investigative news organizations across the country.

In addition, enforcement actions are inconsistent. The Wisconsin Center found three coal-fired plants in Wisconsin at which federal regulators allege violations of the Clean Air Act but state regulators do not.

The EPA lists nine coal-fired power plants in Wisconsin as being “high-priority violators” of the Clean Air Act — sites that regulators believe are in urgent need of attention, where violations may have continued for years. But the DNR and EPA have yet to take formal enforcement action against five of these plants, records show.

An EPA spokeswoman said the agency is involved in enforcement actions at nine coal-fired plants in Wisconsin for alleged violations but declined to name them.

“There is a pattern of companies ignoring this (clean air) law,” said Kim Bro, a Washburn, Wis., environmental scientist and former state health official. “They’re trying to stay under the radar, and if the DNR and EPA are failing to enforce, the public suffers.”

Dairyland is not on the EPA high-priority violators list. In its most recent inspection, the DNR found no violations at the Alma facilities.

Yet in 2010, the Sierra Club sued the La Crosse-based company for alleged Clean Air Act violations. The suit charged that Dairyland failed to install modern pollution controls required by federal law when it made a series of major changes between 1993 and 2009 to its plants at Alma and Genoa, about 70 miles south of Alma on the Mississippi River. As a result, the suit said, Dairyland released unlawful amounts of pollution into the air.

The complaint also alleged Dairyland did not conduct required monitoring or get permits from the DNR during the upgrades.

When the lawsuit was filed in June 2010, the Sierra Club noted that the state agency still had taken no enforcement action for the alleged violations.

In an interview last month, Marty Sellers, the DNR engineer who inspects the plant, echoed the sentiments of other DNR officials in saying his agency lacks the staff and funding to fully enforce air-pollution laws. He said the DNR couldn’t afford to install an air-quality monitor in Alma, which one resident requested in 2006.

Dairyland spokeswoman Deb Mirasola defended the company’s actions, saying in a statement, “We remain firm in our belief that we operated our plants in compliance with state and federal regulations, including the provisions of the Clean Air Act.”

The utility company, the EPA and the Sierra Club are now negotiating a possible out-of-court settlement, said Bruce Nilles, senior director of the national Sierra Club anti-coal campaign.

In recent years, according to DNR data, emissions of some pollutants from the two Alma plants 190 miles northwest of Madison have fallen by 73 percent. Mirasola said this was due to pollution controls, adding that the upgrades will help the plants comply with state and federal environmental laws. Dairyland, she said, began retrofitting its plants with pollution controls in 2007, three years prior to the Sierra Club lawsuit.

So why did the group sue Dairyland, which already was spending hundreds of millions to clean up? In part, said the Sierra Club’s Jennifer Feyerherm, it’s to make up for years when the air around Alma should have been cleaner.

“It’s not like we’re singling out Dairyland,” said Feyerherm, an organizing representative with the Sierra Club’s Wisconsin chapter. “They didn’t put on pollution controls when they should have … It’s part of the pattern of noncompliance that we see at coal plants across the state.”

Anti-coal campaign

In 2001, frustrated with the lack of action from state and federal regulators, the Sierra Club launched its national Beyond Coal Campaign to reduce emissions and halt new coal-burning plants, which the group cites as the single largest source of global warming and mercury pollution in the United States. The Sierra Club says it has worked with activists and other organizations to prevent the construction of 154 proposed coal-fired plants nationwide.

The effort has had dramatic effects in Wisconsin. The Sierra Club has filed lawsuits against about half of the state’s coal-burning electrical generating stations to force them to reduce harmful emissions. Two plants and two coal-fired boilers were shut down, the University of Wisconsin-Madison was persuaded not to build a new coal boiler and one proposed plant was blocked, Nilles said.

The latter was a bid by Madison-based Alliant Energy to build a $1.26 billion coal-fired facility in Cassville. The Wisconsin Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities operating in the state, rejected the proposal in 2008.

A 2007 Sierra Club federal lawsuit against the state also compelled Wisconsin to reduce emissions or convert the UW-Madison’s Charter Street Power Plant and the state’s century-old Capitol Heat and Power Plant to cleaner options, such as natural gas. Former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration promised to study ways to lower emissions at the state’s 15 coal-burning plants at UW campuses, prisons and other state buildings, resulting in the retrofit or shuttering of some of the facilities.

But Nilles said that effort “has ground to a halt” under Republican Gov. Scott Walker. He said the Sierra Club plans to return to U.S. District Court in Madison to seek enforcement of the settlement that called for the state to study its coal-burning facilities, and to close plants in violation or convert them to cleaner burning fuels.

A spokesman for the Department of Administration, which operates the state’s coal-fired plants, said the agency believes it is in full compliance with the requirements of the settlement.

“Sierra Club recently contacted the department and requested that we engage in discussions about the lawsuit,” Tim Lundquist said. “We are doing so.”

William Skewes, executive director of the Wisconsin Utilities Association, a nonprofit that lobbies on behalf of the state’s investor-owned utilities, said he couldn’t comment on the Sierra Club’s lawsuits against Wisconsin power plants. “We try to let the companies speak for themselves,” he said.

Interactive graphic: Lawsuits, emissions and the dirtiest burn

Click the image to explore particulates and smog emitted by seven big Wisconsin coal plants, and to learn which ones are the dirtiest.

Harmful emissions

The state DNR lists coal-fired facilities as the state’s top emitters of mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter — hazardous chemicals that major studies have linked to increased mortality and maladies ranging from lung cancer to birth defects. They also are the leading source of the mercury that contaminates fish in every lake in the state, according to the DNR.

Coal-fired power plants also emit particulates, a mixture of dust, soot, smoke and droplets that contains several known carcinogens, including arsenic and radium. The smallest particles, called PM 2.5, are less than one-thirtieth the width of a human hair — so tiny that they can embed in lungs and pass through the bloodstream, causing asthma, chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, heart attacks and strokes.

According to a 2010 study by the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force, every year in the United States, emissions from Wisconsin power plants cause about 268 deaths, 201 hospital admissions and 456 heart attacks. Other studies suggest pollution from coal combustion can cause serious health problems even in areas like Alma that meet federal air-quality standards.

In interviews, residents of this Buffalo County city of 781 named several long-time neighbors who, although they had never smoked, had developed lung cancer or emphysema, a lung disease that causes coughing and shortness of breath.

“There are a lot of medical issues for a little town like Alma,” said Schreiber, 72, who has breast cancer. Her husband, a nonsmoker, suffered from emphysema before dying in 2006 at age 80.

Janis Schreiber, 72, has lived in Alma, Wis. for more than 50 years. In 2008 she contacted the state Department of Natural Resources about coal ash from Dairyland's power plants blowing onto her property. The ash and pollution have improved since then, she said, but she still wonders if emissions from the plants have affected Alma residents' health. Marianne English/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Schreiber and others in Alma said they couldn’t prove the Dairyland plants had caused their health problems. But as they ticked off the types of cancers afflicting their neighbors — uterine, cervical, colon, prostate, ovarian, kidney — they wondered.

“I think some people have gotten sick over it, and probably died sooner than they should have, because of the smoke and the air quality,” Schreiber said.

Dairyland’s Mirasola said the company hasn’t been informed of any specific health issues of Alma residents, and isn’t aware of health effects in the city related to its operations.

Janice Nolen, a vice president at the American Lung Association in Washington, D.C., said the health concerns of residents living near coal-fired plants are well-founded.

“We have very good evidence that this kind of pollution really does shorten lives,” Nolen said. She cited a landmark 1993 study, in which Harvard University researchers observed pollution patterns and death rates in six U.S. cities for 13 years. Even after controlling for other risk factors, such as smoking, the study found that mortality rates were higher in cities with more particulate pollution.

“There are real health harms that come from these emissions,” Nolen said. “They affect lots of downwind communities, including places you might not think would be affected.”

Carolyn Dry, 69, lives in Winona, Minn., 34 miles south of Alma. She said she’s surrounded by neighbors who have cancer and wonders if Dairyland pollution is partly to blame.

In 2006, Dry emailed the DNR about Dairyland’s visible emissions, describing a layer of dust on her house. “I am aware that this fly ash has heavy metals (and) mercury, another toxin,” she wrote. “We request that all possible pressure and measures be applied to improve and remedy this situation.”

A week later, a DNR engineer who oversees Dairyland’s compliance with state air pollution rules emailed her information about plans for future pollution control upgrades.

He noted that although the Alma facilities were compliant with state regulations, “(they) do emit a relatively large amount of some pollutants to the ambient air.”

In 2008, Schreiber contacted the DNR about black ash blowing from Dairyland’s coal pile onto her porch. An agency official visited and told her the company was already upgrading its pollution controls. Since then, Schreiber said, the air has been better.

Dry and Schreiber’s complaints against Dairyland are two of eight filed with the DNR since 2002, according to agency records. Schreiber and others in Alma said few people publicly voice their concerns about the city’s air quality, since many Alma residents are or were Dairyland employees.

In the past three years, Schreiber has noticed less black ash on her house and car. In Winona, however, Dry said the air quality remains poor.

“It did improve slightly,” she said. “But that was like going from awful to not quite as awful.”

Dairyland's two power plants in Alma, Wis. burned a combined 1.4 million tons of coal in 2010. According the Wisconsin DNR, coal-fired power plants are the state’s top emitters of mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter — hazardous chemicals that major studies have linked to increased mortality and maladies ranging from lung cancer to birth defects. Marianne English/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Old plants, new pollution controls

Old coal-fired plants like Dairyland’s Alma Station, which dates to 1947, are among the leading contributors to hazardous airborne chemicals in Wisconsin, according to 2010 DNR emissions data. The agency reports that these facilities, even when retrofitted with more modern pollution controls, pump thousands of tons of heavy metals including mercury, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide into the air every year.

Pollution controls do help curb emissions, and some Wisconsin utilities are spending hundreds of millions to upgrade decades-old power plants. Dairyland and Madison-based Alliant Energy are retrofitting their facilities with several types of pollution controls, including coal ash filters, called “baghouses,” which reduce particulate matter, as well as scrubbers, systems that reduce sulfur dioxide emissions.

Upgrades at Dairyland’s facilities will reduce sulfur dioxide pollution by more than 90 percent, said Mirasola, the company spokeswoman.

But some Wisconsin environmental groups say these companies aren’t doing enough. In the past five years, the Sierra Club has sued Dairyland, Alliant and the Green Bay utility Wisconsin Public Service Corp., alleging the companies have been repairing old equipment and increasing emissions for years without installing the most up-to-date pollution controls, as required by a 1977 Clean Air Act amendment.

“Older plants tend to have the fewest pollution controls, and as a result have more emissions per amount of electricity generated than a newer plant,” said David MacIntosh, a Harvard University adjunct associate professor of environmental health. “That’s one reason, from a public health perspective, why it’s important to focus on these older plants.”

But utilities don’t always notify regulators — as required by law — about projects that warrant pollution control upgrades. To avoid paying millions for baghouses or scrubbers, companies sometimes try to pass off a major renovation as a small tweak, said George Meyer, former DNR secretary. Meyer is now executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation.

“You don’t build a power plant in 1970 and then, 25 years later, when you’ve exchanged all the parts, call that ‘maintenance,’ ” he said.

Even when retrofitted plants don’t violate regulations, many still emit what some scientists say are unhealthy amounts of air pollution.

Nitrogen oxide emissions from coal combustion contribute to ground-level ozone, the main component of smog, which studies have linked to respiratory illness and premature death. In 2008, the EPA’s scientific advisory panel recommended the agency strengthen federal limits for ground-level ozone to reduce smog. Doing so, the EPA said, would save up to 12,000 lives every year and prevent 58,000 asthma attacks and 21,000 hospital visits.

The new limits would have forced some coal-fired power plants to curb emissions. But in September of this year, President Obama announced he would wait until 2013 to review the EPA’s recommendation, saying lowering smog standards now would introduce too much “regulatory uncertainty.”

The Columbia Energy Center in Pardeeville, Wis., is Wisconsin's biggest mercury emitter, according to Department of Natural Resources data. Coal-fired power plants are the largest human-caused source of mercury emissions to the air in the U.S. Mercury exposure in the womb can adversely affect the development of an infant's brain and nervous system. Lauren Hasler/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Who’s right — Sierra Club or regulators?

Noncompliance with environmental regulations is often a matter of interpretation.

Cases in point: The Columbia Energy Center in Pardeeville, the Nelson Dewey Generating Station in Cassville and the Edgewater Generating Station in Sheboygan, all owned by Wisconsin Power & Light, a subsidiary of Alliant.

In September 2010, Sierra Club sued Alliant, alleging it modified the Columbia and Nelson Dewey plants without installing the best available pollution controls. In a separate suit, Sierra Club alleged the company violated visible emissions limits at its Edgewater plant. Alliant has denied the allegations.

“We maintain that we are in compliance with our permits, and any work we have done has been properly permitted,” company spokesman Steven Schultz said.

Schultz added that Alliant is currently installing controls at Edgewater that will reduce nitrogen oxides emissions and plans to begin retrofitting the Columbia plant with pollution controls in 2012 to comply with stricter mercury and sulfur dioxide limits. Alliant, the Sierra Club and the EPA are in settlement talks, Nilles of the Sierra Club said. Schultz said Alliant doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

The Columbia, Nelson Dewey and Edgewater plants also appear on the EPA’s list of high-priority violators of the Clean Air Act. Yet the DNR has found all three facilities fully compliant in its two most recent inspections.

“EPA seems to be looking at a specific issue in more depth than what DNR would normally be able to do during our inspections,” said Bill Baumann, acting director of the DNR air management bureau, when asked to explain why the EPA would list the plants as violators when the DNR does not.

Underfunded, DNR triages oversight

In Wisconsin, the DNR and EPA are supposed to enforce state and federal air pollution laws. The DNR issues air pollution permits, inspects facilities and is responsible for discovering violations. The agency refers enforcement cases to the state Department of Justice for litigation. The EPA, meanwhile, conducts its own inspections and enforcement, often in response to chronic or more serious violations.

Baumann said although the two agencies may share information about inspections and enforcement, they rarely do, and he doesn’t recall ever asking the EPA for data about Wisconsin facilities.

That might help explain the discrepancies between the EPA and DNR’s inspections. Records and interviews also indicate that dwindling resources are undermining the DNR’s ability to enforce regulations and prosecute air pollution violators.

Wisconsin doesn’t receive federal funding to enforce air pollution laws. To fund enforcement, it relies on fees collected based on a permit holder’s level of emissions, Baumann said.

As the economy falters, he said, production and emissions decline, and the fees DNR collects decrease. Baumann said a shrinking budget and a record number of retirements mean less oversight.

“We’re doing the best that we can,” Baumann added, noting that the statewide air management program has more than a 25 percent staff vacancy rate. “We don’t have the wherewithal to go after every single violation we find. We try and focus on what has the most environmental impact.”

Sellers, the DNR engineer who inspects Dairyland’s Alma plants, put it more bluntly: “We’re just broke, even though everyone at DNR is retiring.”

But problems at the DNR predate the recession. In 2004, the Legislative Audit Bureau evaluated DNR’s air management programs and found that the agency had a backlog of more than 1,000 facilities awaiting operation permits.

What’s more, 15 percent of facilities had never been inspected. The bureau reported that the DNR did not “consistently follow federal policy in taking enforcement actions for high-priority violations.”

Baumann said the problems have been corrected, noting that the EPA now approves an annual DNR list of which plants are in compliance.

Baumann estimated that about 20 percent of Wisconsin’s air pollution permit holders aren’t complying with state laws. He said, however, that few of these violators are coal-fired plants, and most aren’t committing emissions violations, but are noncompliant for other reasons, such as filing a report late.

“It’s like the police,” Baumann said. “They don’t have the resources to stop every speeder on the road. If somebody is a mile or two over the limit for a short distance, well, there are bigger issues to deal with.”

Editor’s note: The Madison law firm of McGillivray Westerberg & Bender LLC, which provides pro bono legal services to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, represents the Sierra Club in lawsuits against owners of coal-fired power plants and agencies that perform permitting for coal-fired power plants. The law firm did not provide the Center with legal services or participate in the writing or editing of this report.

Sarah Karon and Lauren Hasler are reporters for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Marianne English, a graduate journalism student at UW-Madison, contributed to this report. The nonprofit and nonpartisan Center (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Wisconsin milk board removes weight loss claims from website

WisconsinWatch — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:06:56 +0000

Experts had called claims ‘deceptive’ and ‘discredited’

The Wisconsin milk board removed claims that dairy consumption could aid weight loss after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism began publishing stories examining the board’s nutritional advice to consumers.

Reaction Piece to Two-Day Series

What do scientists say about the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board’s health claims about dairy? A two-day series produced in collaboration with a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism class taught by Professor Deborah Blum.

Sunday, Oct. 16: Marketing dairy to children
Monday, Oct. 17: A claim that dairy aids weight loss
Today: The milk board retreats from claims that consuming dairy products could aid weight loss

Fact-checking the milk board’s health claims

Some statements checked out. But the Center also found some claims unsupported by science, and some where most evidence came from industry-funded studies. Click the image above to view a pop-up gallery.

Table: Nature’s sports drink?

See the Center’s review of findings and funding sources from eight studies on milk as a sports beverage.

By Amy Karon
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board has retreated from claims that consuming dairy products could aid weight loss after some experts branded the statements “deceptive” and “discredited.”

The state-supervised board, which is funded by dairy farmers, removed multiple claims about dairy’s role in weight loss and weight maintenance from its website early this week after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism began publishing stories examining the board’s nutritional advice to consumers.

“Over the past few weeks we have reviewed some of the nutrition messages and have made some changes to closer align our weight control message with the healthy diet message,” Patrick Geoghegan, the board’s senior vice president for communications, wrote Tuesday night in an email interview.

The board’s weight loss claims had been on the website for at least eight months, since a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism class began investigating the milk board in collaboration with the Center.

State law prohibits Wisconsin’s seven nonprofit agricultural marketing boards from making “false or unwarranted claims” about their products. The state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection supervises the boards, and has not filed a complaint about them with the state Department of Justice in at least 15 years, as the Center reported Monday.

In an earlier email interview, department of agriculture employee Noel Favia, who works with the boards, said the milk board had “never made claims that weren’t substantiated with scientific evidence.”

But Stephen Gardner, litigation director for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, had reviewed the board’s weight loss claims at the Center’s request, along with 17 recent studies on dairy products and body weight. Gardner concluded the claims were “deceptive under Wisconsin law.”

The Center also interviewed nutrition experts at Harvard University and the Mayo Clinic, who pointed to limitations in the studies supporting the milk board’s claims. Dr. Walter Willett, chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, said any tie between dairy consumption and enhanced weight loss “has been totally discredited by research not funded by the National Dairy Council.”

National dairy marketing groups halted similar claims four years ago, after the Federal Trade Commission intervened.

And the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2010 dietary guidelines state that “strong evidence in adults and moderate evidence in children and adolescents demonstrates that consumption of milk and milk products does not play a special role in weight management.”

But as of Saturday, the Wisconsin milk board, whose annual budget exceeds $30 million, still claimed on its website that “emerging research indicates consuming three servings of low-fat dairy products as part of a healthy diet and exercise plan will help with weight loss and weight maintenance.”

By Monday at 6:30 p.m., this and most similar claims were gone. One Web page still stated that low-fat dairy products “can play a role in better weight management.”

Geoghegan and Laura Wilford, a registered dietitian with the milk board, said in previous interviews that they didn’t know the board’s website included claims about dairy and weight loss.

But Geoghegan added that the board’s consumer messages were based on “sound, often peer-reviewed research that is continuously updated.”

In the email interview Tuesday, Geoghegan would not say whether the milk board planned other changes to its consumer messages, but wrote: “We constantly review all of our programs in an effort to improve them.”

Amy Karon is a reporter for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. The nonprofit and nonpartisan Center (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Wisconsin milk board claims dairy aids weight loss

WisconsinWatch — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 05:01:47 +0000

Some experts call claim ‘deceptive’ and ‘discredited’

Part Two of Two

Sunday: Marketing dairy to children
Today: A claim that dairy aids weight loss
Tuesday: Milk board retreats from weight loss claim

Fact-checking the milk board’s health claims

Table: Nature’s sports drink?

See the Center’s review of findings and funding sources from eight studies on milk as a sports beverage.

By Amy Karon
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

A major Wisconsin dairy group continues to promote dairy products for weight loss, four years after two national groups, under pressure from the Federal Trade Commission, agreed to stop.

The state-supervised, nonprofit Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, whose annual budget exceeds $30 million, claims at least three times on its consumer website that dairy products can help people lose weight, and at least twice that the foods can aid weight management.

“Emerging research indicates consuming three servings of low-fat dairy products as part of a healthy diet and exercise plan will help with weight loss and weight maintenance,” claims a board Web page on dairy’s health benefits.

Leading nutrition experts from Harvard University and the Mayo Clinic contradict such claims. So do the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2010 dietary guidelines, which state that “strong evidence in adults and moderate evidence in children and adolescents demonstrates that consumption of milk and milk products does not play a special role in weight management.”

“There has been some back and forth on that particular issue,” said Laura Wilford, registered dietitian with the milk board. “You can’t say that any single food is a weight-loss aid, but you can say that a healthy diet that includes dairy products will help you to maintain or lose some weight.”

State law prohibits Wisconsin’s seven agricultural marketing boards from making “false or unwarranted claims” about their products. The state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection supervises the boards.

A nationally recognized consumer protection attorney told the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism that the Wisconsin milk board’s claim that dairy can enhance weight loss is “unsubstantiated” by the bulk of scientific research and therefore “deceptive under Wisconsin law.”

Stephen Gardner, litigation director for the Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, reached that conclusion after reviewing recent studies, including research cited by dairy groups.

In subsequent phone interviews, Wilford and Patrick Geoghegan, the board’s senior vice president of communications, said they weren’t aware of the board website’s claims about weight loss.

Geogeghan said the board’s consumer messages are “based on sound, often peer-review research that is continually updated.”

Controversial research

In 2007, the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board and the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board agreed to halt two national campaigns promoting dairy for weight loss after the Federal Trade Commission intervened.

SIDEBAR

‘A working relationship’

Wisconsin first passed its law creating and regulating marketing boards in 1957. A revised version passed the Assembly 92-0 and the Senate 30-1 in 1981. Records show no discussion of how to define a “false or unwarranted” claim.

Besides milk, other agricultural boards promote corn, soybeans, potatoes, cranberries, cherries and ginseng.

Though the law grants the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection the power to petition a court to stop a board from making false claims, it has not done so since at least 1996, when the state Department of Justice implemented its current records system, said former justice spokesman Bill Cosh, who now works for the state Department of Natural Resources.

In one case, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection asked another board to stop making a claim, and it complied, according to Dennis Fay, the department’s assistant legal counsel. Fay declined to name the board.

“There are penalties we can impose on the marketing orders themselves, although we never do,” said Noel Favia, who serves as the department’s liaison with the agricultural boards. “We try to keep this a working relationship between the government and a particular marketing board. So far, we’ve done very well.”

—Amy Karon

The agency acted two years after the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a petition arguing that most research didn’t support the weight-loss claims.

The Washington, D.C.-based physicians group promotes veganism and sponsored the recent controversial Grim Reaper billboard near Green Bay, which warned that eating cheese can be unhealthy. The group reviewed more than 30 studies on dairy and weight loss, concluding that only Michael Zemel’s work identified a link.

Zemel, a nutrition professor at the University of Tennessee and author of the book The Calcium Key: the Revolutionary Diet Discovery That Will Help You Lose Weight Faster, said his research shows consuming more calcium helps suppress a hormone that promotes fat storage. Since 1998, he has received $3.5 million in funds from the National Dairy Council, the nutrition communications arm of a national dairy marketing group called Dairy Management Inc.

A recent analysis of funding sources for 206 nutritional studies on soda, juice and milk found a significant association between funding source and results. But Zemel said the National Dairy Council hasn’t tried to influence his findings.

“I will take research money from anybody,” he said, “as long as they do not try to control the outcome or my right to publish.”

Zemel received degrees in nutritional sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1970s and 1980s. He and Dale Schoeller, a UW-Madison nutrition and obesity expert, have co-authored studies reporting that dairy-rich diets can increase fat loss and fat burning.

Studies on whether consuming more dairy can enhance weight loss have reported mixed results, Schoeller said, adding that the strongest effect was found for people who also cut calories and whose diets were previously low in calcium.

Schoeller said he has received about $40,000 from Dairy Management Inc. since 2000, with about half that money funding research on dairy and weight loss.

“The evidence is not strong,” said Jennifer Nelson, director of clinical dietetics at the Mayo Clinic. “Studies were narrow and quite limited, so we can’t make that strong a connection between dairy products and weight management at this time.”

Dale Schoeller.

Dr. Walter Willett, chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, co-authored a 2005 Harvard study of more than 12,000 adolescents that found those who consumed more than three daily servings of milk gained weight over three years, even when drinking skim or 1-percent.

In an email interview, Willett said any tie between weight loss and dairy consumption “has been totally discredited by research not funded by the National Dairy Council.”

Claim called ‘deceptive’

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism asked Gardner to review 17 recent studies the Wisconsin Center selected that either supported or refuted a link between dairy and weight loss.

Walter Willett.

Gardner also reviewed relevant research listed on the National Dairy Council’s website. The milk board’s website links to the council’s.

“The Center for Science in the Public Interest reviewed these weight-loss claims several years ago, prior to the Federal Trade Commission’s May 3, 2007 letter, and concluded that claims of this nature were unsubstantiated and thus deceptive under both Federal Trade Commission law and state consumer protections laws in general,” Gardner responded in an email interview.

“Based on our review of Wisconsin law, it is clear that a deceptive claim about calcium (or dairy products) and weight loss is deceptive under Wisconsin law in specific.”

Under Wisconsin law, violating the statutes governing agricultural boards can lead to a fine of up to $10,000 and imprisonment of up to nine months.

“The department (of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection) could exercise its discretion not to enforce the law in this instance, but it is insupportable for it to encourage or sanction any deceptive claims,” Gardner wrote.

Noel Favia, who serves as the department’s liaison for the agricultural boards, said in an email interview that the milk board “has never made claims that weren’t substantiated with scientific evidence.”

The department has not filed a complaint against any of the marketing boards with the state Department of Justice in at least 15 years, said former justice spokesman Bill Cosh, who now works for the state Department of Natural Resources.

Amy Karon is a reporter for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Catherine Martin, Jessica Gressa, Andrew Golden and Eric Skvirsky contributed to this report in a UW-Madison journalism class taught by Professor Deborah Blum, in collaboration with the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center (www.wisconsinwatch.org). The Center also collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and other news media.

All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

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Wisconsin milk board removes weight loss claims from website

Experts had called claims ‘deceptive’ and ‘discredited’

Reaction Piece to Two-Day Series

Fact-checking the milk board’s health claims

Table: Nature’s sports drink?

Wisconsin milk board claims dairy aids weight loss

Some experts call claim ‘deceptive’ and ‘discredited’

Part Two of Two

Fact-checking the milk board’s health claims

Table: Nature’s sports drink?

SIDEBAR

‘A working relationship’