Bennet Goldstein
Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk
DANBURY, Wis. – When Denny Blodgett learned his northwest-Wisconsin county intended to burn wood harvested during a road-widening project near his home, he thought it would be unthinkable for that fuel to go to waste. He offered some of the harvested wood to an elderly man from his church, he said. Word soon spread around his community of Danbury that he had firewood to give.
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Bennet Goldstein is with Wisconsin Watch. This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
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