Waukesha officials and over 100 guests gathered inside the new booster pumping station Thursday for the Lake Michigan Water Supply Celebration.
The city is on the verge of delivering lake water to residents who have been — for years — drinking water from radium-tainted wells.
It’s been a long road to revelry.
In 2016, Waukesha applied to use Lake Michigan water in the first test of the Great Lakes Compact. That’s a basin-wide agreement created to protect the huge freshwater resource. The city had to gain the approval of all eight Great Lakes governors and adhere to rules, including water returned to the basin must be properly treated and the community must implement a water conservation plan.
A court order required the city to complete construction and start delivering water by September 1 of this year.
"We met, technically we met the deadline," says general manager of the Waukesha water utility Dan Duchniak.
He says the Wisconsin Department of Justice understands the city is now in the commissioning phase. That includes the flushing and disinfection of the eleven miles of water main carrying Lake Michigan water to Waukesha and the booster station.
Duchniak expects customers will turn on their taps to their new water source sometime around September 18.
"It will take five days to get it to 90% of our customers and then it will take two to three weeks to finish the rest," Duchniak says.
Waukesha has faced a barrage of environmental concerns along the way. One is how clean will the water be when Waukesha returns it to Lake Michigan via the Root River. Waukesha is obligated to monitor the river for at least 10 years.
"We’re convinced we’re going to improve the Root River," Duchniak says.
Cheryl Nenn of Milwaukee Riverkeeper says that remains to be seen.
"We held them to a very high standard during the application process and we’re going to continue to hold them to a very high standard because this is really setting the example for the rest of the Great Lakes," she says.
Nenn says the impacts of climate change underscore the importance of the resource she calls a “one time gift from the glaciers.”
"Only 1% of the lakes is renewed by rain and snow melt. So, we need to make sure we’re being good stewards of them, so this water will be here in the future. We have 40 million drinking from the Great Lakes," Nenn says.
Later this month, 72,000 Waukesha residents will join them.
People around the Great Lakes and the world will likely be watching.
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