Water Outsourcing Project Receives Cross-Border Criticism
By Peak Johnson
Officials in Waukesha, WI, are hearing from concerned citizens as they continue with plans to pipe in drinking water from Lake Michigan. The city would be the first community outside of the Great Lakes Basin to get lake water under terms of an agreement that was approved in 2008 known as the Great Lakes Compact.
The agreement, according to Wisconsin Public Radio, allows cities in counties that use the basin to apply for Great Lakes water.
The Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Cities Initiative, a group of U.S. and Canadian mayors, has asked the Great Lakes Compact Council for a rehearing over its decision to allow the Milwaukee suburb to tap into the lake, per WisContext.
The council approved the diversion last June. Racine Mayor John Dickert, a member of the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Cities Initiative, is not a fan of Waukesha's plan to return treated wastewater to the lake by the Root River.
"It's kind of disturbing when you're the fifth-largest city in Wisconsin, and people are saying, 'Well, I'm going to dump this down here, and hey, good luck,'" Dickert told Wisconsin Public Radio.
The Compact Council, Dickert added, “needs to take a second, and better look at the plan.”
The initiative’s executive director David Ullrich said that “the coalition's concerns center around the substance of the Compact Council's decision, the procedures used, and the standards applied in making the decision.”
Lawyers are already in the process of filing arguments on the rehearing request, with more documents expected soon.
Waukesha Mayor Shawn Reilly said he is not worried about a reversal.
"When you have a body that makes a decision after spending a significant amount of time and doing it in depth and thoroughly, and your request is, 'Well, make a different, decision,' that doesn't happen," Reilly told Wisconsin Public Radio.
The planned pipe to Waukesha will start in Oak Creek, in Milwaukee County, branching out from the community's water system. “Though a final contract has not been signed between the two cities, Waukesha says it plans to buy its lake water from Oak Creek.”