City of Waukesha officials are attending Thursday morning’s Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors meeting.
Their appearance has to do with Waukesha's years-long effort to use Lake Michigan as its source of drinking water instead of the city's radium-tainted supply.
Waukesha has been building a pipeline and hopes to lay a portion of it on parkland in Franklin. But last week, the city faced an unanticipated challenge. That's when the Milwaukee County parks committee rejected the amount of money Waukesha offered in exchange for the use of the land.
Waukesha is in the process of laying down 35 miles of pipeline to convey Lake Michigan water to the city. The water will be returned to the lake via the Root River. Part of it runs through Franklin.
That’s where I met Dan Duchniak, general manager of the Waukesha water utility. We stood within eyeshot of the river.
“This is the reaeration facility. It’s the last step before it goes through the pipe and gets discharged into the Root River,” Duchniak says.
The facility strangely resembles a church from the outside.
Underground pipes are already attached to either end of the 30 by 50 foot building. It’s filled with a series of weirs, that look like supersized metal combs with their teeth facing up.
“The water comes up and over the edge and goes over a series weirs to add oxygen to the water,” Duchniak says.
Duchniak says it just another step in returning the cleanest water possible to the river, which empties into Lake Michigan in Racine.
He says it’s part of Waukesha’s commitment to improve the river’s quality. “We made that commitment to the Great Lakes governors,” Duchniak says.
For years, Waukesha faced a dilemma. Its existing drinking water supply is tainted with cancer-causing radium.
The city is under a court order to come up with a sustainable drinking water source.
All eight Great Lakes governors had to unanimously approve the diversion of Lake Michigan water to Waukesha.
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Its “win” was the first test of the Great Lakes Compact, which restricts diversions. Waukesha was allowed to apply because it’s a city in a county that straddles the Great Lakes basin.
“And so as part of our approval, they put in that we have to monitor the water quality for a minimum of 10 years,” Duchniak says.
The entire pipeline system cuts through seven cities, towns and villages.
Duchniak says that has meant some delicate negotiations. “Because now you’re impacting people’s everyday lives, whether it’s going to work, going to school, the bus routes, just going to the grocery, just getting out of your subdivision,” he explains.
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And things haven’t always gone according to plan. In recent months, well into construction, Waukesha officials learned they needed to lay the pipeline over a different patch of land near the end of the return route, because they needed to avoid an interceptor sewer.
“We looked at the best alternative that would have the minimum impact on the land,” Duchniak says.
The city’s solution is to shift the pipeline slightly onto Milwaukee County parkland in Franklin.
Duchniak thought Waukesha and Milwaukee County could easily come to an agreement. The city offered the county $100,000 in return for a 100 year easement.
“The parks board did not like the agreement that came forth, so we went back to the drawing table and that’s where we’re at now,” Duchniak says.
He couldn’t share any details, but at Thursday’s Milwaukee County Board meeting, he’s hoping supervisors will be persuaded when Waukesha increases the size of the payment offer.
Waukesha is in a bit of a pickle. It’s still under court order to complete construction and activate the diversion switch. The deadline clock is ticking ever louder.
“September 1, [2023] is our deadline,” Duchniak says.
Still he’s optimistic.
Seven crews are at work at various spots along the pipeline, including on the supply line about a mile and a half from two newly constructed reservoirs—each will hold 8.6 million gallons of water.
“The backhoe is digging a trench and the dump trucks we saw lined up pick up the dirt,” Duchniak explains.
There are still some gaps in the supply line as well, one at about 92nd and Oklahoma to make way for a holiday tradition in the Milwaukee area.
“We weren’t going to disrupt Candy Cane Lane. It’s a huge issue for West Allis making sure Candy Cane Lane was not disrupted, it’s a huge fundraiser for the MACC fund,” Duchniak says.
They forged an agreement to stall construction there until spring.
Duchniak is hoping Waukesha will strike a similar amicable agreement with Milwaukee County.
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