It's official: Waukesha will get Great Lakes water pumped to it even though it lies just outside the natural Great Lakes watershed, a decision that could potentially open the door for more near-basin diversions.
The eight-state council in charge of the landmark 2008 agreement known as the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact unanimously upheld its 2016 decision to grant an exemption on Thursday, once again stating that Waukesha has made its case to receive 8.2 million gallons a day of treated Lake Michigan water from the nearby community of Oak Creek, Wis.
Waukesha, which lies 20 miles west of Milwaukee and just beyond the Great Lakes watershed boundary, has naturally occurring radium in its groundwater, as well as salts and minerals and a potentially toxic stew of arsenic, fly ash, chloride, and other pollutants.
It also has had a gradual decline in its aquifer. The situation's manageable in the short-term, but the city is under orders from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to resolve uncertainty over its future water supply.
Waukesha Mayor Shawn N. Reilly making a presentation earlier this year. THE BLADE/TOM HENRY
The compact is designed to prevent large-scale diversions and bulk exports of Great Lakes water to the Southwest or even more faraway places in the world, such as China.
In some very selective cases, though, it allows communities in counties that straddle the Great Lakes basin to be exempt - if and only if they have extenuating circumstances.
The compact council's latest action was really more of a housekeeping matter, because the council last month rejected a request for a hearing.
That challenge was brought by the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, which represents 128 cities around the region.
The Chicago-based group was acting on behalf of Racine, Wis., a city 30 miles south of Milwaukee that's not too amused by the situation because it will be sent Waukesha's sewage effluent via the Root River. Racine also has one of North America's best freshwater beaches.
Waukesha promises that whatever it sends downstream will be of a better quality than what's already in the river.
In his statement to the media Thursday, Waukesha Mayor Shawn N. Reilly said he hopes the Cities Initiative "will now join us in creating a world-class water program that will not only serve our community well into the next century but also be the standard for sustainability and protecting our Great Lakes and the Root River.”
The compact council said in its ruling that day the agreement's "high barrier to diversions cannot be transformed into an absolute prohibition."
The eight Great Lakes states collectively agreed to hold tighter to regional water supplies in response a highly controversial 1998 case in which a Canadian firm called the Nova Group secured a permit to ship Lake Superior water to Asia.
The Nova Group eventually relinquished the permit after an international uproar ensued. But that case inspired the states to pass the regional water-withdrawal compact, which was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush in 2008.
Waukesha will return the same volume of water to the lakes via a tributary. Discharging to rivers is the norm in WI and other Great Lakes states. 94% of municipalities discharge to rivers in WI. The only thing unusual is that Waukesha's high quality of wastewater treatment is matched by only a handful of communities in WI. For more info, see www.GreatWaterAlliance.com.
Posted by: Bill McClenahan | 05/05/2017 at 11:21 AM