Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 61. Sunrise is 6:33 and sunset is 4:43 for 10 hours 10 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1979, a group of Iranian college students overruns the U.S. embassy in Tehran and takes 90 hostages.
Remarks About a Failed Business Prospect. On October 13th, a former member of Whitewater’s old Community Development Authority spoke in a public meeting about a recycling business that the CDA recruited during the previous decade. Those remarks from October (to the Whitewater Planning Commission) appear below.
October 13th, 2025:
A couple things. I actually was on the CDA, and there was a company that was going to build on this site with recycling clay tiles. It was a unique process, and they did have approval for a rail spur on that site.
From these remarks, one would be forgiven for thinking that this business was a near-success for Whitewater, a great-opportunity-that-might-have-been. No and no again. It was nothing of the kind.
(Of the location, itself — it was certainly never an attractive location for a rail spur. Claims that it was a good spot are false. See Claims About the Location of a Rail Spur Prove Unfounded (Predictably) and Study Evaluating Rail Spur Locations for Whitewater.)
The Truth About that Recycling Business Prospect. This gentleman was describing a business that was called DP Recycling.
The business claimed that it would grind cathode ray tubes (the ones in old-style television sets) into ceramic tiles. People would then buy the tiles. In 2013, when the old CDA was touting this venture, this libertarian blogger wrote that
It should be a universal truth that Whitewater and Wisconsin deserve a far higher standard of diligence and review than whatever our CDA chairman believes his “gut” tells him would be good for our city and nearby area.
In fact, that kind of intestinally-based level of judgment has failed this city time and again, and is beneath the level of care that any well-organized, reasonable American city deserves.
You’ll see another example of this sort of serial mediocrity in a breathless story at Whitewater’s news site that a recycling company, unable to get a permit to mix toxic substances into (supposedly safe) floor tile, was denied (so far) permitting in Wisconsin. The company now insists it will build in Arkansas.
See Yet Another Exercise in Standards Beneath Whitewater, FREE WHITEWATER, August 13, 2013. (Emphasis in original.)
(At the time, DP Recycling was arguing that if it didn’t get what it wanted from Whitewater, it would move to Arkansas. Stop. Don’t. Come Back.)
The History of that Business in Whitewater Appears Below.
1. April 2013, the Whitewater CDA extends loans to DP Recycling amounting to tens of thousands. (See Item 5, below).
2. February 25, 2015, the Whitewater CDA makes a motion to “Motion to authorize the Chairperson of the CDA and the Executive Director to sign the Development Agreement with DP Electronic recycling Inc. for the construction of a new facility to be located in the Technology Park.” See Whitewater Community Development Authority, Meeting Minutes, February 25, 2015.
3. February 2016, the Whitewater Common Council approves a development agreement with DP Recycling. Here’s a news story from the time:
DP Electronic Recycling Inc. has signed a development agreement with the City of Whitewater for construction of its new state-of-the-art recycling complex in the Whitewater University Technology Park
The Elkhorn company’s facility and world headquarters will be valued at more than $12.5 million. It is expected to create more than 100 new positions working multiple shifts.
With the worldwide surplus of over 1 billion pounds of CRT tubes in storage that DP Electronic knows about, this new technology is designed to reuse discarded CRT tubes by encapsulating the materials into an environmentally safe, consumer-grade product.
In essence, the facility will turn old electronic equipment glass into new tiling….
Community Development Authority Chairperson Jeffery Knight said his organization is very pleased with the agreement.
“We have been working with DP Electronic Recycling for a number of years while they worked through the regulatory process to secure financing,” Knight said.
“This project is truly an example of an individual demonstrating an entrepreneurial spirit at its best,” he added. “The City of Whitewater is extremely pleased that Dale has chosen Whitewater for their new plant and especially pleased that this is will be their world headquarters.”
Construction of the new facility is slated to begin this spring. The company plans to be fully operational within 18 months after breaking ground.
Last year, the CDA approved selling the nearly 11-acre lot in the WUTP to the company for $1. Construction of the 100,000-square-foot facility will include new multi-use trails to connect to the city’s existing path system.
DP Electronic Recycling reportedly was courted by other regions, including the City of Watertown and a city in Arkansas. Company officials previously have said one of the reasons the company chose the City of Whitewater was due to its willingness to work with the company through loans during that state- and federal-level permitting process.
See Staff, Recycler signs pact for Whitewater site, Daily Jefferson County Union, February 25, 2016.
4. April 2019, Whitewater approves an updated memorandum of understanding with recycler. Three years later, the recycler still had not set up shop in Whitewater, as a newspaper account from that time reported:
In February 2016, the common council originally approved a developer’s agreement with DP Electronic Recycling that called for the Elkhorn-based company to build a state-of-the-art recycling complex and new headquarters in the Whitewater University Technology Park. As stated at the time, the facility and headquarters would be valued at more than $12.5 million and expected to create more than 90 new positions working multiple shifts.
As part of the developer’s agreement, the City of Whitewater, through its Community Development Authority (CDA), would sell a parcel, just under 11 acres, in the Tech Park for just $1. That sale was contingent on DP Electronic Recycling repaying two outstanding loans with the CDA prior to closing on the property,
According to City Manager Cameron Clapper and CDA executive director Dave Carlson, however, the development did not happen.
“Due to unexpected delays, this project did not proceed and the deadlines for performance in the development agreement have all since passed,” Carlson said.
See Chris Welch, Council inks revised MOU with recycler, Daily Jefferson County Union, April 4, 2019.
5. May 28, 2020, the city’s finance director at the time reports that nothing came of the project except bad debt:
Secondly, we became aware that DP Electronics is one of the borrowers here in this group of capital catalyst loans. They also have a UDAG loan or an action fund loan in the bottom grouping. So, these orange highlighted blocks, this is DP Electronics.
That’s the full value of the loan. They have not made payments over its history, and many of you in this body are aware of kind of their long-pending development within the southern end of the Business Park, Tech Park, that ended up not coming to fruition. So, there’s two amounts here.
There’s a $51,000 in the capital catalyst, and I apologize I can’t display the whole line and still make it legible without being an eye chart. This block, this 51 above, is DP Electronics’ capital catalyst royalty loan, originated in 2013. And then, there’s another $34,600 in the lower group.
Again, that loan was originated also in 2013, April 13th. So, as we get right now, this is a specific reserve, so it’s specifically earmarked for those loans. At some point in the future, as we’ve had to recognize in the past and actually take the next step, which would be a write-off, we’ll do that as we get documentation of their insolvency and then take that formal next steps as we’re certain there is no prospect of recovery.
So, right now, we’re aware, have been made aware that they’re not reachable, that they’ve become insolvent. We’ve not yet had documentation of that. So, we will seek that before we go any further and actually take the next step as a write-off.
A Few Remarks. I’m not sure why anyone would admit to being on the old CDA, any more than one would readily admit to slipping intentionally on a banana peel.
By October 13th, it should have been clear to anyone that the rail site on the east side of town was the worst possible rail spur location.
Yet, it’s always been clear to anyone who followed the DP Recycling story in Whitewater a decade ago that that business was not going to use a rail spur for any purpose. Their plan wasn’t ‘unique’ — it was the sort of sketchy idea that only an unserious, scrounging development team would embrace. Rail spur, mule train, or sled dogs: DP Recycling wasn’t going to use any of them.
You don’t need transportation in Whitewater for what you’re never going to make in Whitewater.
DP Recycling wasn’t a near-miss for Whitewater — it was a total failure. It was and remains illustrative of the incompetence of the old CDA. Rail spur access didn’t make the difference here. Poor judgment made the difference here.
Medieval tower in Rome partially collapses during renovations: