Person and Planet Podcast

This episode features both authors of the new book, Paper Valley: The Fight For The Fox River Cleanup, on the $1.3 billion cleanup of the Fox River in northeast Wisconsin, the world’s largest environmental river cleanup of PCB contamination. You can visit their site here.

David Allen is an award-winning scientist and author. He directed the natural resource damage assessment of the Lower Fox River and the Bay of Green Bay from 1992 through 2001 as the assessment manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. His team led the $10 million effort to collect and organize the information that was used to launch Superfund at the site, and they published one of the most comprehensive and public natural resource damage assessments in U.S. history during 1998-2000. He was the leader and public face of the assessment for federal, state, and tribal agencies. That assessment eventually led to the $1.3 billion dollar cleanup and restoration, paid by the polluters. It was among the largest Superfund efforts since the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and the effort led to the largest PCB cleanup in history.

Susan Campbell is an award-winning environmental journalist and author. As an environmental reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1995-2000, she covered the scientific and political controversy leading to the landmark $1.3 billion dollar cleanup of PCBs from Wisconsin’s Fox River, and the implications for the bay of Green Bay and Great Lakes beyond. Her extensive reporting on the issue won her national and state honors, including a national “Best of Gannett” award for specialty reporting, an enterprise reporting award from the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, and a spot news award from the Milwaukee Press Club. Campbell is also co-author of “Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise,” with the late Earth Day founder, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (University of Wisconsin Press, 2002)

The Person & Planet theme song is an original song by singer/songwriter Barbara Stephan. Click ⁠here ⁠to listen to “Gonna Be There.”

Jeff Lux, Ph.D. served in the public, private and academic sectors for nearly 40 years teaching, researching and managing projects in sustainable design and environmental planning, water resources, land use, and dispute resolution. He served as Town Manager for Truckee and Planning Director for the cities of Davis and Truckee, as well as an environmental planning consultant with two prestigious Bay Area firms. Dr. Lux also served 20 years as an Associate Dean/Professor at UC Davis where he directed professional education programs offering 5,000 trainings annually often focused on community engagement/dispute resolution and courses in planning and design on campus. His summer abroad course, Sustainable Cities of Northern Europe has become one of the most popular and valuable in UC Davis’ global learning program. Dr. Lux has conducted research nationally and internationally and written numerous publications including two books, Water and Land Use and the Land Conservation Handbook. In addition, he has mediated over 150 cases encompassing complex water resource and environmental disputes.

The Person & Planet theme song is an original song by singer/songwriter Barbara Stephan. Click ⁠here ⁠to listen to “Gonna Be There.”

Christian Stoll is the CEO & Co-founder of Joystik. He has a degree in psychology and has been in the behavioral health space for over 14 years. Joystik helps you harness the power of your mind and control your response to stress with a simple and easy mind-body medicine technique through autogenics. The meaning of autogenics is self-generated, where Joystik helps people harness that tech to help you find control within your mind and body attain your goals, be happier, or have more joy in your life. It can also help you control stress and quiet your mind, focus, and sleep better.

The Person & Planet theme song is an original song by singer/songwriter Barbara Stephan. Click ⁠here ⁠to listen to “Gonna Be There.”

Pauline is an Energy Engineer at Ampaire Ltd. and specializes in charging infrastructure. She joined the company in January 2021 and has worked on determining optimal charging solutions for the electric aviation industry ever since. Pauline has supported three government backed projects, two Future Flight Projects on behalf of Ampaire, the 2ZERO project (Towards Zero Emissions in Regional aircraft Operations) and the SATE project in which Ampaire’s hybrid-electric EEL flew route proving flights in the Scottish Highlands and the south-west of England. She was responsible for ensuring that the charging infrastructure was in place for the 9PAX hybrid-electric demonstrator. The third project was a charging infrastructure feasibility study funded by the Transport Research and Innovation Grant for Zero Emission Flight. Currently, Pauline is working the commercial operations modeling for Ampaire’s latest product.

The Person & Planet theme song is an original song by singer/songwriter Barbara Stephan. Click ⁠here ⁠to listen to “Gonna Be There.”

Elyse-Krista Mische is a mixed-media artist who contemplates mortality, memory, and time through both independent and collaborative work. She embraces make-believe and craft processes from her childhood in combination with fine art practices to address individual and collective existential issues. Elyse-Krista has been awarded multiple artist residencies throughout the United States and continues to show her work both nationally and internationally. She uses her personal art practice at Life Propaganda and Worry Birds business alongside community-wide creative engagement to advocate death education, mental health, and support of older adults.  Ongoing partnerships with the Fox Valley Memory Project, SPARK!, and senior caregiving facilitate this engagement and art programming opportunities for the elderly in her community. Recently, she was an artist in residence with PioneerCare and the Kaddatz (Caaadetz) Gallery of Fergus Falls, MN residing in an assisted-living community while providing art education to older adults. Elyse-Krista is currently the Artist in Residence at the Trout Museum of Art in Appleton, WI and serves as the Chair of the Appleton Public Art Committee where she advocates for inclusive and diverse public art opportunities.

The Person & Planet theme song is an original song by singer/songwriter Barbara Stephan. Click ⁠here ⁠to listen to “Gonna Be There.”

There is one simple thing that you can do to your home or building to reduce energy costs by 10-30%! You can learn this, more about the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act), what you can do to improve energy efficiency in your home, and more in this episode with Kevin Kane, the Chief Economist and co-founder at Green Homeowners United, a business that makes it easy for people to do one of the most important steps to fight climate change and save money in the process by cutting carbon emissions at home.

The Person & Planet theme song is an original song by singer/songwriter Barbara Stephan. Click ⁠here ⁠to listen to “Gonna Be There.”

Jennifer Bolger Breceda is the Executive Director of Milwaukee Riverkeeper, a science-based advocacy organization working for swimmable, fishable rivers throughout the Milwaukee River Basin. In this episode we discuss clean water advocacy, environmental law, road salt water monitoring, phosphorus runoff, the adopt-a-river program and more!

After 15 years of practicing environmental law at several reputable firms in Milwaukee, including being Shareholder and Co-Chair of a successful and busy environmental legal department, Bolger Breceda decided to change course and leave her private practice to start a new chapter in her career as the Executive Director of Milwaukee Riverkeeper.

Over the past 8 years, Bolger Breceda has served as a “chief executive officer,” including chief ambassador, fundraiser, and leader, of this highly-respected science-based environmental advocacy organization. She has grown the Board of Directors from a reporting entity to strategic think-tank, and believes strongly that working collaboratively with local, state, regional and national partners in advancement of mission is critical to its success. During her tenure, Milwaukee Riverkeeper’s annual budget and the staff have both doubled, all while meeting financial and organizational goals.

For the last 8 years, Jennifer has worked to coordinate and push forward a generational opportunity aimed at removing legacy contamination in Milwaukee area waterways called the Area of Concern. She also led a statewide and regional coalition focused on ensuring that the implementation of the Great Lakes Compact is in keeping with sound management principles, conservation mandates, public engagement, best available science and the spirit and intent of the law. A strategic thinker, she worked tirelessly toward the successful removal of the Estabrook Dam, not only saving taxpayer dollars, but also taking a generational opportunity to improve an important area of the Milwaukee River.

Jennifer’s expertise in environmental law has brought her before many governmental agencies, to speak on a variety of environmental and water related matters. Jennifer has been active in environmental, charitable and service organizations since before her undergraduate days and has always strived to be an advocate for the environment. She has an avid interest in many different water activities including swimming, kayaking, canoeing, boating, and water skiing. She wants to see Milwaukee thrive and truly become a water centric and healthy community.

The Person & Planet theme song is an original song by singer/songwriter Barbara Stephan. Click ⁠here ⁠to listen to “Gonna Be There.”

Danielle is an artist, entrepreneur and wellness educator. Her company Soundwave Wellness helps people find more rhythm, balance and harmony in their lives through sound. She specializes in the use of tuning forks for healing.

The Person & Planet theme song is an original song by singer/songwriter Barbara Stephan. Click ⁠here ⁠to listen to “Gonna Be There.”

Jolyon Collier is a philanthropist, artist, and President & Founder of Counting Coral, a nonprofit dedicated to coral reef restoration through sculptures that house coral nurseries to grow more resilient coral.

You can watch the video about the Counting Coral - Project Fiji installation here. 

Counting Coral is a 501-(c)(3) certified nonprofit dedicated to reef restoration. Counting Coral designs, builds, donates, and installs stainless steel sculptural coral nurseries specifically designed to grow climate resilient coral. These intricately designed sculptures create both an underwater park and a coral nursery, where fragile reef systems can be rebuilt and protected amongst the awe and attention from tourists.

Counting Coral is working towards diminishing the massive and devastating effects of coral loss by changing the way coral gardener’s garden coral. Our new approach to reef restoration is to harvest climate resilient coral and place them on our sculptures that are specifically designed to protect coral from predators. These precious and valuable corals will be kept safe and allowed to grow to spawning maturity, this coral will then naturally propagate valuable ecosystems.

Counting Coral is leading the development of Sculptural Coral Banks, a new and advanced method to aid coral growth. Sculptural coral banks are designed with coral propagation in mind. These beautiful structures are multi-functional, tackling previous issues in restoration and tourism.  Their sculptures are planted out with climate-resilient coral, developing into a coral bank over time. Their coral banks will naturally propagate reef systems, whilst maintaining a healthy coral supply for harvesting when needed.

The Person & Planet theme song is an original song by singer/songwriter Barbara Stephan. Click ⁠here ⁠to listen to “Gonna Be There.”

Learn more about sustainable investments and 401k from Greg Wait of Riverwater Partners, and how ESG data is used during the investment process.

The Person & Planet theme song is an original song by singer/songwriter Barbara Stephan. Click ⁠here ⁠to listen to “Gonna Be There.”