Last week, the City of Waukesha won a precedent-setting diversion of Great Lakes water to relieve its threatened supply of locally pumped water. But not everyone is cheering the decision.
“We are not done,” said Racine Mayor John Dickert, who opposed Waukesha’s water request. “My job is to protect my people and I am going to do that with my last breath.”
The diversion, the first of its kind under the Great Lakes Water Compact, means that Waukesha can begin implementing its plans to purchase Lake Michigan water from Oak Creek and build a pipeline to Waukesha so that it will no longer need to rely on its locally pumped water, which has high levels of radium. Waukesha will send its treated wastewater back to Lake Michigan via the Root River.
The compact was enacted to prevent Great Lakes water from being sent outside of the basin and, potentially, across the country and beyond. But it allows some exemptions to that ban, including the one under which Waukesha won its diversion. Although the City of Waukesha is in the Mississippi River basin, the eastern part of Waukesha County is in the Lake Michigan basin, so the city could ask for Lake Michigan water under the compact exemption.
The city faces a 2018 deadline to resolve its radium problem, either through a new source of water or by using new ways to rid its local water source of radium. Over the past decade, Waukesha has chosen to pursue Lake Michigan water, saying that it doesn’t have enough local sources of water for its residents. But environmental groups argued that the city could rely on local sources and avoid a diversion.
Waukesha needed unanimous approval from the governors of the eight states bordering the Great Lakes, which it obtained last week. The final decision, however, limits the service area that Waukesha can supply with water—the city wanted to include surrounding towns, even though they hadn’t demonstrated a need for water—and affirmed the right of outside parties to monitor Waukesha’s handling of its new source of water.
And that’s exactly what the diversion’s critics say they’ll do.
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Monitoring the Root River
Waukesha still needs to jump through a few hoops before it receives Lake Michigan water. According to Waukesha Water Utility General Manager Dan Duchniak, it will first need to hire consultants to oversee the $206 million project, which will be paid by Waukesha’s water customers and potentially financed by grants, bonds and loans. Waukesha has a letter of intent with Oak Creek for water, but needs to finalize an agreement. It also needs to obtain various permits from the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and approval from the state Public Service Commission for its pipeline and to discharge wastewater into the Root River.
He said Waukesha would likely miss its 2018 radium deadline, since the project will take about four to five years to complete.
Duchniak said he was “pretty comfortable” that last week’s decision would withstand any challenges to come.
“It already went through a rigorous review,” he said.
But the diversion’s critics say they’ll be watching the permitting process and implementation carefully. A primary concern is the condition of the Root River, which will receive Waukesha’s treated wastewater and flow it into Lake Michigan at Racine.
The Root River has low water volumes, and the diversion’s supporters argue that increasing its flow with Waukesha’s treated wastewater will help the river.
“The Root River has needed additional flow since the 1950s,” Duchniak said. “This is a way to accomplish that.”
But critics say that last week’s decision glosses over the harm this poses to the river.
Cheryl Nenn, the riverkeeper for Milwaukee Riverkeeper, said that the compact decision-makers didn’t give enough attention to Waukesha’s plan to send its treated wastewater down the Root River. During the dry summer months, the majority of water in the Root River will come from Waukesha’s treated wastewater, which Nenn says will include pollutants.
“I’m not saying it won’t be treated,” said Nenn. “But it will have a bacterial load and a viral load. From a public health perspective, that’s a very big issue.”
Racine Mayor John Dickert told the Shepherd the compact decision-makers completely ignored his city’s opposition to the diversion. Waukesha’s wastewater will flow into Lake Michigan near Racine’s North Beach, which is a certified Blue Wave beach and is lauded for its water quality.
“That waste stream is now coming down my river,” Dickert said. “I have a river that is not only one of the hottest fishing places in the country but is also part of our entire fabric of our community, where our kids swim, they fish, they ride canoes and kayaks, and it empties out right next to North Beach.”
He said the compact decision-makers overlooked Racine’s concerns when allowing the diversion.
“They ignored Racine not only in the decision but throughout the entire process,” he said.
But Duchniak, who had worked in Racine, denied that Waukesha’s wastewater will harm that community.
“It will have absolutely no impact on the beach,” he said.
Dickert said that he’s still convinced that Waukesha didn’t meet the high standards for a diversion under the compact and warned that other communities in the region will see an opportunity to tap into the Great Lakes.
“If there is one thing that we know is coming down the pike it is the sheer need and the importance of protecting our water,” Dickert said. “So why would we just allow this to happen so quickly and open the door to this happening everywhere? It pretty much throws out the compact and everything will be thrown into court because they’ve cracked the egg. And everybody will say, well the Waukesha water [request] didn’t necessarily meet all of the compact diversion issues so we’ll take that as a precedent so we can get it too.”
