The TV report used some context provided by the Center’s number-crunching: As Walker’s fame has grown, so has his out-of-state donor base.

We’ve posted the WISC report and our interactive visualizations below it.

Lawmakers cited the Center’s reporting as a factor.

In the series Losing Track, 13 offenders told the Center that Wisconsin’s GPS tracking system repeatedly fails, registering false alerts and landing the offenders in jail although they had done nothing wrong.

Read the State Journal story: State budget committee rejects GPS monitoring expansion

The Center was honored with two gold awards, four silver and two bronze in the club’s Awards for Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism, the state’s premiere all-media journalism competition.

Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism staff and guests gather at the Milwaukee Press Club's annual awards banquet on May 17, 2013.

Since 2010, the Center has received 17 awards in the contest.

“These awards demonstrate that our hard-working staff and interns, in collaboration with UW-Madison journalism classes and professional news organizations, are providing an important service to the people of Wisconsin,” said Andy Hall, the Center’s founder and executive director.

Hall noted that the award-winning work cast a light on key issues facing the state, such as rural population loss, the historic recall election survived by Gov. Scott Walker, veterans’ difficulties in finding jobs, slow cleanup of tainted industrial sites, opposition to a United Nation resolution that’s viewed as a threat to freedom, and gaps in campus mental health services.

One of the awards, a silver for best investigative story or series, was for Bennet Goldstein’s story on veterans’ employment difficulties. Goldstein reported the story for a class taught by journalism professor Deborah Blum, in collaboration with the Center. The Capital Times assisted in the editing, published the report and shared in the award for the story.

A team of journalism students led by former Center intern Amy Karon won a silver award for best multi-story coverage of a single feature topic or event — an investigation of gaps in mental health services at University of Wisconsin campuses.

Former Center intern Lukas Keapproth received a gold for best photo essay or series for his examination of rural population loss, and bronze for best news photograph, while intern Kate Prengaman received a silver for her role in the campus mental health investigation and bronze for best innovative feature.

The students won in professional, not student, contest categories.

“Students,” Hall said, “are producing some of the best investigative journalism in Wisconsin.”

Details:

GOLD:

Best Photo Essay or Series
Lukas Keapproth
Rural Slide

Best Innovative Feature
Kate Golden
The Walker Calendar Files

SILVER:

Best Innovative Feature
Kate Golden
Brownfields

Best Investigative Story or Series
Bennet Goldstein
Bill Lueders
Chris Murphy
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
The Capital Times Staff
Service Stigma: Disabled or not, veterans face job challenges
The Capital Times

Best Multi-Story Coverage of a Single Feature Topic or Event
Amy Karon
Kate Prengaman
Jenny Peek
Anna Bukowski
Gayle Cottrill
Monica Hickey
Gaps persist in campus mental health services

Best Public Service Feature Story
Bill Lueders
Green schemes make activists see red

BRONZE:

Best Innovative Feature
Kate Prengaman
Rural Slide

Best News Photograph
Lukas Keapproth
Walker Recall Kiss

A Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism report on problems regarding the use of GPS devices to monitor convicted offenders was a factor in the decision of state lawmakers to delay approval of some funding sought by the state Department of Corrections for program expansion, and seek a study on the program’s effectiveness.

“People are concerned with the accuracy of the GPS monitoring devices,” said state Rep. Jon Richards, D-Milwaukee, citing the Center’s report.

State Rep. Jon Richards: "We’re potentially wasting thousands of dollars.”

The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, of which Richards is a member, on May 13 voted unanimously to delay approving nearly $700,000 in supplemental funding for GPS tracking. Committee co-chair Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, told the Associated Press that the money was being withheld to make the DOC provide a detailed plan as to how it will be spent.

The GOP-controlled committee also requested a Legislative Council study committee on the use of GPS tracking, most likely in the next legislative session.

Richards said the purpose of the study is to discover the extent to which “the system is registering false positives, punishing people when they’re not breaking the law.”

He said committee members question whether the GPS tracking program as currently operated makes efficient use of taxpayer dollars or sufficiently protects the public.

“It’s a public safety issue,” Richards said. “Every minute we have police or parole agents chasing their tails, arresting people for false positives, we might be missing the people who are committing new crimes. And we’re potentially wasting thousands of dollars.”

The Center interviewed more than a dozen offenders on GPS monitoring who said problems with the technology, ranging from lost signals to false alerts, resulted in jail stays and other disruptions that made it harder for them to hold jobs and reintegrate into society.

Currently, the technology is used primarily to monitor about 600 offenders, most convicted of sex crimes. Walker’s budget calls for expanding the use of tracking for individuals who violate a temporary restraining order or injunction.

The Joint Finance Committee approved $5.5 million over the next two years to pay for GPS expansion. But it withheld a supplemental appropriation of about $667,000 pending further information from the DOC.

DOC spokeswoman Jackie Guthrie said this supplemental funding is for GPS monitoring of sex offenders and violators of domestic violence restraining orders. “The Department will monitor these populations based on actions by the courts and submit a request to Joint Finance when needed,” she said.

At a meeting of the Assembly Committee on Corrections in early April, DOC officials were grilled about the problems with the monitoring devices highlighted in the Center’s report.

“I guess my concern is that our equipment is accurate so that we know it’s working and we’re protecting the public,” committee chairman Garey Bies, R-Sister Bay, said at that meeting.

Another committee member, Rep. Michael Schraa, R-Oshkosh, raised a concern about occasions in which the GPS tracking devices send an alert even though the offender is in compliance.

“I’m just not sure, fiscally, that it’s responsible for us to be putting that kind of money into a program that is, at best, not accurate,” Schraa said.

And while Schraa acknowledged there is not much sympathy for sex offenders, he said: “I have the opinion that if they serve their time, they’re afforded the same dignity as anyone else.”

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, 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.

Two decades since a parasite in Milwaukee drinking water killed 69 people and sickened 400,000, the city has become a national leader in testing for unregulated contaminants. Kate Golden/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

By Marion Ceraso
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

For the public officials who safeguard Milwaukee’s water, Cryptosporidium changed everything.

Two decades ago, the parasite passed through the city’s Howard Avenue water treatment plant and reached city taps. The outbreak resulted in an estimated 400,000 cases of gastrointestinal illness and at least 69 deaths.

It was the largest waterborne outbreak recorded in U.S. history.

Since the outbreak, the city’s water utility, which draws its supply from Lake Michigan, has invested $417 million in improvements to infrastructure, monitoring and treatment.

Beginning in 2004, Milwaukee Water Works launched an aggressive program to monitor for a new potential public health threat: the largely unregulated group of chemicals known as “emerging contaminants,” including estrogen and testosterone, flame retardants, pesticides, explosives and pharmaceuticals.

Some of these chemicals are endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with hormones and derail human and animal growth and development, even at extremely low doses.

“Our testing is a legacy from Cryptosporidium,” said Carrie Lewis, Milwaukee Water Works superintendent. The outbreak “made us realize that we were in the public health protection business.”

Contaminants get into water through storm runoff, industrial and agricultural discharges and sewage from homes, including medications that are flushed down the toilet or carried along in human waste.

Lots of tests, few finds

Milwaukee Water Works tests for more than 500 chemicals annually, and posts its monitoring results online. The 2011 report shows trace amounts of a few emerging contaminants, including DEET, the mosquito repellent; sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic; and perfluorooctane sulfonate, a persistent, man-made industrial chemical.

In 2012, none of these chemicals was detected. Both years, chloroform and other regulated byproducts of the water disinfection process were found well below allowable concentrations.

“I don’t think there’s any documented public health significance or importance that has been tied to the detection of these compounds,” said Lon Couillard, Milwaukee Water Works’ water quality manager, of the unregulated chemicals.

The utility’s website echoes that view: “Science has not demonstrated any impact on human health at the trace levels these contaminants are being discovered.”

Couillard said year-to-year shifts in emerging contaminant levels are not likely to be significant, given the potential for errors while testing at the very low concentrations their laboratories must use.

Establishing a baseline and monitoring the data over many years is important to understanding which contaminants might be considered a risk, Couillard said.

Lee Boushon, chief of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ public water supply section, said the vast majority of water systems focus only on a standard list of 91 contaminants regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“It’s certainly forward-looking for Milwaukee to monitor for additional contaminants beyond that list,” Boushon said.

Lake Michigan water is treated at the Milwaukee Water Works’ Linnwood treatment plant. The utility’s other plant, at Howard Avenue, was shut down during the 1993 Cryptosporidium outbreak when the parasite passed through its treatment system. Courtesy of Milwaukee Water Works

Since the Cryptosporidium outbreak of 1993, Milwaukee has made numerous improvements to its drinking water treatment. An $11 million project extended the Howard Avenue water intake 4,200 feet to a distance of two miles off Lake Michigan’s shoreline, beyond the path of contamination from the city’s industrial harbor.

As the lake water rushes into the plant, it enters a nine-step treatment process that includes disinfection with bubbling ozone gas, sedimentation and filtration. It is then deemed “pure, safe and delicious” by Water Works.

At the other end of the city’s water system, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District tested a state-of-the-art sewage filtration system. The goal was to catch emerging contaminants resistant to removal by conventional wastewater treatment along with phosphorus, a nutrient that contributes to algae blooms and fish kills.

A science in its infancy

But while technology has evolved to detect emerging contaminants in water at increasingly tiny concentrations, water managers across the nation still do not have good answers for the public on how much risk they pose to human health or the environment.

Most of the 80,000 chemicals in commercial use have not been tested for safety, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

“There is mounting concern across the U.S. about the impact of trace organics, such as hormones and pharmaceuticals, in our water systems and the potential threats they pose to human health, wildlife and the environment,” said Rebecca Klaper, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences, in a press release on the sewerage district’s filtration study.

Exposure to these chemicals has been associated with changes in sexual behavior, population declines, early or late puberty and malformed reproductive organs in animals.

But the explosive growth in production of endocrine disruptors, their almost universal presence in air, water and soil, and the variety and complexity of potential impacts, make studying health effects in humans an overwhelming challenge.

“If you listed every chemical that binds to hormone receptors and can cause an effect, there would be hundreds of them,” said Jocelyn Hemming, an environmental toxicologist with the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene. “It’s unbelievable how many compounds act that way.”

Tim Bate, the sewerage district’s director of sustainability and planning, said most wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to handle endocrine disruptors, pharmaceuticals and other chemicals of emerging concern.

They generally pass “right through into the aquatic environment, and it affects aquatic organisms,” Bate said.  “I think that’s going to be bigger and bigger going forward.”

Better sewage filtration

The sewerage district’s pilot study found that the new filtration system could remove an average of 75 percent of the 10 emerging contaminants examined, while also reducing concentrations of phosphorus.

The study was released last fall by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and Veolia, the French company that operates and maintains Milwaukee’s sewage treatment facilities.

Using its activated charcoal filtration system, known as Actiflo Carb, the company tested for the removal of chemicals including mood stabilizing drugs, disinfectants, antibiotics and blood pressure medications. They were chosen based on previous research showing they were difficult to remove with conventional sewage treatment.

Among those chemicals was triclosan, a germ-killing compound used in hand soaps, toothpastes, and detergents. The chemical, currently under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is known to disrupt hormones in fish, frogs and rats and potentially create widespread resistance to antibiotics. And when combined with chlorinated water and sunlight, triclosan may break down into dioxins, which can be highly toxic.

The new filtration process was able to remove around 90 percent of triclosan from wastewater.

Jim Hurst, chief technical officer of Veolia Water North America, said the new treatment system “will give wastewater facilities a way to stretch their treatment dollars while dramatically reducing pollution levels and achieving better water quality.”

Sewerage district officials said that while the pilot system is promising, they are not ready to invest in scaling it up, especially for the removal of unregulated contaminants.

“We need to be careful that we check out all the emerging technologies,” said Bill Graffin, public information officer for the Milwaukee sewerage district.  “Sure we got great results, but what if something better comes out tomorrow?”

Carrie Lewis, superintendent of Milwaukee Water Works, said the city tests its drinking water “for everything within reason” and releases the results to the public. Courtesy of Milwaukee Water Works

Few answers on risks

At Milwaukee’s Water Works,  Lewis worries about how to communicate with the public about emerging contaminants, given the uncertain science regarding the trace levels being detected.

“It’s hard for people to understand when we have to say the science isn’t there to tell us what this means,” she said. “The hope is that the data we’ve collected will help in figuring this out.”

Some argue the science is already pointing toward real risk.

Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, testified before a 2010 congressional committee that scientists are observing a growing list of endocrine-sensitive health outcomes. Increases in breast and prostate cancer, ectopic pregnancy, undescended testicles and early puberty are all reasons to be concerned about exposure to endocrine disruptors, she said.

In her testimony, Birnbaum also cautioned that small disruptions of the endocrine system — which is responsive to subtle changes in hormones — by low-level chemical exposures like those in water, may have negative health effects.

Other experts agreed the chemicals are worrisome, but said drinking water is not likely a big risk.

“From the data that I am aware of, I have seen no evidence of risk from the concentrations of pharmaceuticals occurring in drinking water,” Shane Snyder, professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the University of Arizona, said in an interview.

Snyder, like Klaper, said people probably get more exposure to these chemicals from common household products like perfumes, shampoos and flame retardants.

“Consider that the highest concentration of any pharmaceutical we detected in U.S. drinking waters is approximately 5 million times lower than the therapeutic dose,” Snyder told a Senate committee in 2008, representing the American Water Works Association, a professional organization that includes water treatment plant managers.

In the interview, Snyder noted that current scientific evidence is limited in part because studies don’t assess the mixtures of chemicals that occur in water.

“The vast majority of our regulations are based upon assessment of one chemical in isolation,” Snyder said. “We need a better way to look at water from a mixture perspective.”

Kevin Shafer, executive director of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, said that changing, growing pharmaceutical use will force his industry to adapt. “We’re going to have to do that eventually, so we might as well get started now,” he says. Kate Golden/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Prevention is better than cure

Kevin Shafer, executive director of Milwaukee’s sewerage district, agreed that filtering out bad stuff from the water supply is important. But even better, he said, is to keep it out of the water system in the first place.

He noted the city’s success at creating a prescription medication disposal program to avoid water contamination. “We’ve collected tons and tons of medicines and gotten them out of the environment,” Shafer said.

Klaper said she is encouraged by the trend toward green chemistry, in which potential health or environmental consequences are accounted for during chemical design.

Calls for increased regulation

Twenty years ago, state and federal regulations in place at the time were not sufficient to stop the Cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee. Now, scientific organizations and advocacy groups are calling for taking a more precautionary approach to contaminants like endocrine disruptors.

Organizations such as the Endocrine Society have called for more research, and stronger regulation to reduce exposures to endocrine disruptors.

Some are pushing to update and strengthen chemical legislation.

In the meantime, Lewis, the Milwaukee Water Works superintendent, said the city will continue its aggressive monitoring of unregulated contaminants.

“We think it’s our public health responsibility to know what’s in the water,” she said.

Marion Ceraso is an independent journalist and a graduate of the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism reporter Kate Golden contributed to this report. This project was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Fund for Environmental Journalism and The Joyce Foundation.

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

Main story

20 years after fatal outbreak, Milwaukee leads on water testing
Beginning in 2004, Milwaukee Water Works launched an aggressive program to monitor for a new potential public health threat: the largely unregulated group of chemicals known as “emerging contaminants,” including estrogen and testosterone, flame retardants, pesticides, explosives and pharmaceuticals.

Project page

Read more stories in the Center’s investigation of endocrine disruptors in the environment.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have found that low doses of a chemical mixture of an herbicide and a plasticizer can lower testosterone levels in fathead minnows.

Testosterone plays a key role in male human health, regulating everything from the development of reproductive tissue to the building of bone and muscle.

The researchers exposed the fish to a blend of linuron, an herbicide used to control grasses and weeds, and DEHP, a plasticizer used to make medical products.

The chemicals are each known as potent disruptors of testosterone at high levels. But less is known about the effects of low doses and mixtures of chemicals, which is how humans and wildlife are usually exposed.

Fathead minnows are common in Wisconsin’s waters, and are sold in bait shops. They’re also an important species for research on toxic substances.

“Fish provide a good model for human biology,” said Rebecca Klaper, an ecologist with the UW-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences who coauthored the study. “They can help us test what might happen when humans come in contact with a compound.”

— Marion Ceraso

Bill Lueders, Money and Politics Project director

Wisconsin has long played a pivotal role in the national movement to redirect taxpayer dollars to private, often parochial schools. And money — much of it from out-of-state — has played a huge part in that process.

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog, recently reported that “wealthy campaign contributors and shadowy electioneering groups” spent nearly $10 million in Wisconsin over the past decade to back parental school choice.

Choice supporters gave $2.8 million in donations to state candidates and spent another $7 million on electioneering activities such as ads and mailings during political campaigns, the group said. Nearly two-thirds of the direct donations came from other states.

Leading the pack was Gov. Scott Walker with $2.3 million in support, mostly during last year’s recall election. This included $1.1 million in outside spending by the national American Federation for Children.

Walker’s first biennial budget expanded school choice from Milwaukee to Racine. His current budget, for 2013-15, would increase state voucher spending by $94 million over the next two years, and potentially allow nine new districts to participate.

The changes face strong opposition, especially since new data show that choice students in Milwaukee and Racine lag behind their public school counterparts in math and reading scores.

Some GOP lawmakers oppose expanding the voucher program; others tie their support for the budget to its inclusion. Among the latter is state Sen. Rick Gudex, R-Fond du Lac, who won a tight race last fall to oust Democratic incumbent Jessica King.

The American Federation for Children, in a recent report titled “2012 Election Impact Report,” said it spent more than $325,000 to help Gudex topple King. Gudex has conceded that the group’s efforts “didn’t hurt” his chances.

In fact, the AFC’s report (later removed from its website) said it spent $2.4 million in Wisconsin last year, a third of its national total, to “elect candidates … who will work to enact, expand and strengthen educational choice.” It “invested heavily” in Wisconsin “to ensure educational choice majorities in both chambers of the Legislature.”

But AFC, in filings with the state, reported spending just $145,000 on the Gudex-King race and $345,000 on all Wisconsin elections last year. The Democracy Campaign has filed a complaint with the state Government Accountability Board, saying the group underreported its electioneering spending by at least $2 million.

“They told their funders one thing and state election authorities a totally different story,” said Democracy Campaign executive director Mike McCabe. “Judging from the content of this outfit’s ads, they told their funders the truth and lied to election officials.”

Former state Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, now a lobbyist for AFC (in the 2011-12 legislative session, he and his firm were reportedly paid $76,000 for 77 hours of lobbying), referred a request for comment to other group officials. That yielded a statement in which AFC attorney James Bopp contended, “Our report to donors (includes election-related) activity that is not required to be reported in Wisconsin.”

McCabe calls for enforcement of an existing state rule regarding disclosure of election activity that is “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.”

But Jonathan Becker, ethics division administrator for the Government Accountability Board, says the agency has applied the rule in past cases and determined that other election-related spending “did not meet the definition” that it set forth. In 2012, for instance, it ruled that an advocacy group’s online “Voter Guide” could be reasonably interpreted as an effort to provide information.

Moreover, Becker notes, the U.S. Supreme Court has directed regulators to focus on “the communication’s substance, rather than on amorphous considerations of intent and effect.”

So even a group’s public admission that it set out to win elections and dominate legislatures may not be a factor that regulators could consider.

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by The Joyce Foundation.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, 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.

From bottom right, a conveyor carries sand from the crushing area to a wash plant tower to be washed and sorted by grain size at the Preferred Sands plant in Blair, Wis., on June 20, 2012. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

While you’re at it, check out — and bookmark — our newly designed frac sand project page.

There, you’ll find a much-requested new update to our frac sand map, along with a downloadable list of sites, produced by Prengaman.

It also has links to all of our frac sand coverage, explainers, reports, videos and photos.

Got a frac sand lead? Send tips to Kate Prengaman: kprengaman@wisconsinwatch.org. Or tweet @kprengaman.