WUWM Covers SWAN

Environmental Reporter Susan Bence recently hopped aboard our Senior Water Advocacy Network (SWAN) bus for a tour of Waukesha's Water Issues.  Her story covers the multi-faceted issue of Waukesha's request for Lake Michigan Water.

To listen to the story click here, otherwise you can read the story pasted below.

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There might be a pinprick of light at the end of Waukesha’s acute need of sustainable, safe water.

The city’s underground source is shrinking and increasingly contaminated with cancer-causing radium.

Last week, the DNR sent word that it will “begin the initial process” of reviewing Waukesha’s application to purchase Lake Michigan water.

The request, however, will ultimately fall under the scrutiny of the Great Lakes Compact. It prohibits water diversions outside the Great Lakes basin except in specified situations.

Waukesha can apply because it’s located in a county that straddles the basin.

WUWM Environmental Reporter Susan Bence joined a busload of interested citizens seeking a first-hand understanding of the Waukesha water situation.

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Laurie Longtine grabs the microphone as we clamber on to the bus.

A couple dozen adults, mostly retirees from nearby communities, signed up for the tour that the Senior Water Advocates Network arranged. We swing through downtown Waukesha

“We’re crossing over the Prairie Avenue Bridge,” Longtine says.

Laurie Longtine serves on the Waukesha Environmental Action League.

“The river kind of runs back there that tree line,” Longtine says.

We meander out of downtown Waukesha, dipping southwest of the city limits.

Longtine identifies nearly every bird and bush along the way.

“Off to your right is Pebble Creek, a very high-quality wetland That is one of the roads is sadly slated for “quote-end-quote” improvement. Improvements being four-lanes rather than two,” Longtine says.

She directs our attention to a pumping station. It’s part of Waukesha’s interim water supply system, while it figures out a permanent strategy.

“They have put in some additional wells, some shallow aquifer wells, pulling water out of those shallow aquifer wells and blending it with some of the water from the deep aquifer. They dilute the radium,” Longtine says.

Longtine is concerned about preserving these pristine ecosystems.

She also thinks the city has pushed through its application for Lake Michigan, with precious little input from residents.

We’re driven back to the city where Mayor Jeff Scrima meets us inside the Rotary Club building along the Fox River.

As it happens, he has news to share.

“We just received word that the DNR is going to proceed with our application,” Scrima says.

Since before winning the office of mayor last spring, Scrima has unabashedly expressed his view that drawing Lake Michigan water is not Waukesha’s best water solution.

He does not believe his predecessor or the city have adequately explored other options, such as purifying its underground supply.

“It’s no surprise that I’ve had questions and the DNR in the letter that they just sent us recognizes the questions that I’ve asked and they said they’ll be asking the same question,” Scrima says.

Scrima says his concerns boil down to economics and politics, the latter related to purchasing lake water via the City of Milwaukee.

“The city of Milwaukee has a history that they’ve developed as far as how they treat the suburbs. .More recently they’ve been seeking these high water rate increases, so should we connect to the city of Milwaukee we could possibly be subject to similar rate increases," Scrima says.

Waukesha’s Water Utility Director Dan Duchniak responds that water is simply becoming more expensive.

As he flies through charts and graphs projected on the wall behind him, Duchniak says the city has explored all viable water options.

“I had a question asked of me by a council member, if the shallow wells were cheaper and the Lake Michigan was more expensive, which one would you be recommending? I said Lake Michigan because it’s sustainable for the long term,” Duchniak says.

Duchniak says Waukesha’s future water needs must be included in its strategy.

On a map, he points to the city’s current 22-square mile service area. Waukesha’s water application folds in 17 additional miles, primarily situated beyond the city’s southern and western perimeter.

Duchniak says because there could be growth in that area, Waukesha is requesting in its Great Lakes application, more than twice as much water as the eight million gallons it currently uses each day.

“I’m not here to dictate whether someone can or cannot dev their property – that’s not my job. My job is to plan for the future and what could potentially happen and then we’ll let the leaders of the city determine how and what develops,” Duchniak says.

Folding “growth” into the application worries Peter McAvoy. He says its not in keeping with the Great Lakes Compact..

“The compact says we’ll listen to your compelling case, but future growth, new growth outside your existing service area that doesn’t have the problem, you may have a more difficult set of arguments to make,” McAvoy says.

McAvoy belongs to a coalition of environmental conservation organizations determined to see the Great Lakes Compact implemented “to the letter” in Wisconsin.

He hopes the DNR review process fills in what he calls fundamental gaps in the application.

“What we’re asking for is a side-by-side comparison between all the alternatives to that we, you all, can reasonably make a decision about what is reasonable and what isn’t,” McAvoy says.

“That word “reasonable” is all over the place.”

That’s Jodi Habusch Sinykin – another member of the coalition.

She’s almost teary-eyed when telling the tour that Wisconsin has the opportunity to be a leader in the way it handles Waukesha’s application. It’s the first submitted since the compact was enacted in the Great Lakes states and Canadian provinces.

Sinykin predicts the process will fall short without citizen input, so she walks the group through the basics of Waukesha’s application and its review process.

“Giving you the information to come up with your own opinion. Going to public hearings, asking those questions, deciding for yourselves what you want for your community,” Sinykin says.

The group, brains already stuffed with data, climbs back on the bus, to meet up with Cheryl Nenn along Underwood Creek off Bluemound & 124th Street. .

“The reason why we’re standing here is basically what we have heard, Waukesha was going to a be returning their waste water through Underwood Creek,” Nenn says.

The Milwaukee Riverkeeper biologist describes the creek as one of the “flashiest” in the state.

“Meaning that there are huge fluctuations in the flows of water that come down. Normally this time of year, late summer, somewhere between three to five CFS, or cubic feet per second, which is a pretty slow moving stream,” Nenn says.

Nenn says it’s a different story when heavy rain hits. Water then rushes into Underwood Creek because its surroundings have become highly urbanized - a shopping mall to the west, a four-lane road system a step to the south.

“And the creek as been known to get up well over 2,000 CFS during certain flood events; sometimes double of what the Menomonee River is carrying at that same time and this is a very small creek that feeds into the Menomonee River. So it has a lot of issues with flooding, which we’re concerned about,” Nenn says.

When heavy rains fall, Waukesha’s proposal calls for shutting off the flow to the Underwood Creek and diverting its used water to the Fox River.

Nenn tells the group it’s important however, to consider what’s living in that waterway.

“If you do create a higher wetted parameter as we call it, or more wet areas, and then you turn off the tap, you could really have a scenario where you can have fish could be trapped in pools that can get out of that,” Nenn says.

As the program ends, we return to a meeting room. I sit down with one of the people who participated in the tour.

Mary Olen says her head is swimming after all the information she’s absorbed.

She just bought a house and became a Waukesha resident three months ago, and says water quality was brought to her attention almost immediately.

“When we had our inspection of our house, the inspector brought it up. We checked to make sure we had filtered water and even then I didn’t understand quite what all that was about,” Olen says.

Olen says she arrived with a basic understanding of the Great Lakes Compact and Waukesha’s hopes to divert water from Lake Michigan.

“But I didn’t understand anything about the ground water in Waukesha or the wetlands and the relationship between that and the wells, the aquifers and what the real problems were,” Olen says.

Bill Moore signed up for the tour with a different set of expectations.

The New Berlin alderman and was a part of his community’s move to purchase water from Milwaukee.

Moore deems the arrangement to be environmentally sound, yet he wishes New Berlin would have followed Waukesha’s lead and implemented aggressive water conservation practices. He prefers a rate structure that encourages residents to use less water.

“I also suggested no watering between 9 am and 5 pm. They didn’t buy that,” Moore says.

Moore thinks that if the Waukesha water diversion plan does go through, it would establish best practices for communities facing water challenges

"We have to get together as a community, and I use that in a larger sense, to plan. We really need to work on preserving land - farmland, wetland, forests. That’s the biggest problem,” Moore says.

Moore sees the Great Lakes Compact as a tool that could help the region plan, rather than simply react.

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Citizens can contact the DNR to share their opinions on Waukesha’s request to buy Lake Michigan water. A public hearing process will be set in motion when the DNR has completed the environmental impact process.