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More than half a billion dollars have evaporated from the Wisconsin landscape like dew on a summer morning. That’s the amount of wages lost to the Wisconsin economy in 2007 based on the number of paper industry jobs lost in the last decade.

As I listened to the information on Joy Cardin’s Wisconsin Public Radio talk show on a recent dewy summer morning, I could almost see the dollars fluttering up and away like cranes lifting off from the marshy central Wisconsin lands that are home to much of the state’s paper industry.

At the time, Gretchen and I were driving almost within sniffing distance of Wisconsin Rapids mills on our way to the Marshfield Clinic, where I was going to have one of those unpleasant preventive care procedures (the VA contracts for some services rather than provide them at Tomah).

After the procedure, I learned even more about the job losses. Still groggy from the anesthetic, I was seated in a wheelchair waiting at the clinic exit for Gretchen to fetch the car. The nurse beside me in his green scrubs wore a salt and pepper beard. While we waited, I asked him what he had heard about the effects of paper mill job losses in the area.

His was one of them, he said. He had worked at the mill in nearby Port Edwards. When it closed, he received the retraining that led to his job in Marshfield. For him, the change has been a good one. He loves his work.

Not so fortunate was the displaced worker we met at Gretchen’s class reunion in Brillion just a week later. He had been forced out of a job as an electrical engineer at a Fox Valley mill. At the age of 60, he had to sign a noncompete agreement to be eligible for continued health insurance. Finding another job was impossible, he said, and he has been volunteering at Katrina reconstruction projects.

Brillion is close enough to Kimberly and the Fox River to be able to smell the hydrogen sulfide stench that is a byproduct of the paper making business — also known as the smell of money to those who benefit directly from the industry. Unfortunately, the smell of money will no longer waft from the Kimberly mill, which will become the third mill to close in Wisconsin this year. The mill was to close this month, displacing some 475 workers that were left after 125 were let go in May.

The closings have come in the wake of a series of takeovers and consolidations that have changed the shape of Wisconsin’s key industry in recent years, according to news accounts and information on the Wisconsin Paper Council’s Web site.

Earlier this year, NewPage Corp., the owner of the Kimberly plant, closed its Niagra mill, costing the tiny northern community 319 jobs and its only industry. The Port Edwards mill was operated by Montreal-based Domtar Inc., which purchased mills in 2001 from Georgia Pacific, which acquired them from Great Northern Nekoosa in 1990. NewPage bought its string of mills from European-based Stora Enso. Stora Enso acquired them from Wisconsin Rapids-based Consolidated Paper in 2000.

These mills were the building blocks of their communities — the Kimberly High School teams are known as the Papermakers, for example.

NewPage cited a slowdown in demand for its products, the uncertain economy including the reduction in print advertising and the surge in energy prices as reasons for the plant closing.

Frank Emspak, University of Wisconsin emeritus professor, says cheaper imports have also been cited. He blames a lack of investment by owners and more attention to stock price performance than making paper. Emspak, the guest on Joy Cardin’s talk show, said the job losses in the industry should be viewed “as disasters.”

According to the paper council, the employment in the industry has fallen from 51,784 in 1997 to 35,445 in 2007, a drop of nearly a third.

Our recent visits in paper mill territory have produced two health reports. Mine is good, but not so the health of the paper industry. It’s still a major force in the state’s economy with wages of $2.55 billion annually, but the mill closings are a grim reminder of what may yet happen.

We are reminded that the state needs to push hard to develop new directions for its economy. Personally, I’d like to see an economy built on the free energy from the same source that evaporates that summer morning dew. Meanwhile, I hope for the best for those Wisconsinites still employed in paper making.