Is the City of Waukesha violating the Civil Rights Act by seeking federal funding to pipe in Lake Michigan water under the Great Lakes Compact?
Critics of Waukesha’s water request allege that any use of federal funds for the project would violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because it would discriminate against Milwaukee’s racial or ethnic minorities. The law prohibits federal funds from paying for projects that have a discriminatory impact, intentional or not.
Waukesha Mayor Shawn Reilly and Water Utility General Manager Dan Duchniak went to Washington, D.C., in May 2014 to discuss federal funding for the project, which is estimated to cost around $200 million. According to a June BizTimes report, Waukesha would like to use “a combination of federal and state grants and loans and city borrowing” to pay for the project.
Waukesha wants to pump Lake Michigan water from Oak Creek through Franklin for its residents and eventually expand to Waukesha County’s suburban and rural areas, expanding its water service area 17 square miles. The Lake Michigan water would allow Waukesha’s communities to expand and prosper at the expense of Milwaukee’s minority residents, argue the NAACP Milwaukee Branch, the Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH), the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, the Sierra Club Great Waters Group and attorney Dennis Grzezinski.
“All this would do is continue and even increase the drawing of better-off white folks to the outer suburbs, along with sprawl and the job migration and the hollowing out of jobs and economic activity from where folks can actually get to the jobs,” Grzezinski told the Shepherd.
Waukesha County is 95% White
The City of Waukesha, located outside of the Great Lakes basin but in a county that is partially in it, is requesting Lake Michigan water under the Great Lakes Compact because it says it cannot rely on its current water sources in the Mississippi River basin. It faces a 2018 deadline to find a solution to its high levels of radium in its water. Waukesha must get the unanimous approval of the governors of the eight Great Lakes states to pipe in Lake Michigan water. Its request, the first of its kind under the compact, is currently in the hands of the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
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In comments sent to the DNR in August, the coalition notes that there’s a history of pervasive racial discrimination and segregation in the region, resulting in a high concentration of minority residents in Milwaukee and whites outside of Milwaukee. According to data cited by the groups, as of 2010, just 1.3% of Waukesha County’s population was African American and 4% was Latino. The communities Waukesha wants to include in its water service area with Lake Michigan water—the towns of Delafield, Genesse and Waukesha and the City of Pewaukee—are home to an even smaller number of black and Latino residents. In contrast, in 2010 the City of Milwaukee’s population was 45% white, 40% African American and 17% Hispanic. Milwaukee County was 60% white, 27% African American and 13% Latino in 2010.
The groups say that transportation and housing policies have created this regional ethnic and economic hyper-segregation, with white, affluent residents living in the suburbs and disadvantaged minority residents concentrated in Milwaukee. Waukesha’s Lake Michigan water request would exacerbate this segregation by fostering more development outside of Milwaukee, they say, and therefore federal funds cannot be used for it.
“The benefits of suburban job expansion and the burdens of urban job loss have not been evenly distributed,” the groups wrote to the DNR. “For decades, jobs have migrated from the city of Milwaukee—where disproportionate numbers of persons of color live and work—to disproportionately white suburban communities that have excluded them.”
Waukesha’s request is getting pushback from environmental groups who say that the city can rely on local sources of water to reduce its levels of radium and that expanding its service territory to communities that don’t need the water is a violation of the Great Lakes compact.
Waukesha’s Duchniak didn’t respond to the Shepherd’s request to comment, but in July he defended the expansion of the utility’s service territory, saying, “We’re looking out for the long term. We don’t want to build something and then come back in 20 years and say it wasn’t enough.”
