This spring, whistleblowers called out Veolia for alleged mismanagement of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District's wastewater treatment plants.
Critics of Veolia and the MMSD demanded a third-party audit.
On Monday, the MMSD commission will choose the firm to conduct the audit.
Chair Corey Zetts says the commission will also announce who will serve on the independent advisory committee.
"The role of that committee is to give advice to the commission, to help us ask really good questions, and really to be another independent source to take the findings of the audit back to the community we serve. We're really focusing on transparency, openness, objectivity and what we can learn throughout this process,” she says.
Zetts says the mandate that the firm carrying out the audit not have any connection to MMSD, the commission, or Veolia has been met.
“The firm chosen has no prior relationship with MMSD. They had had some prior contracts with both Veolia and CH2M Hill, the predecessor of Jacobs, but we reviewed those and saw that those had — they were small contracts and did not see them as disqualifying them or their ability to be objective,” Zetts says.
EMA, Inc. is the recommended firm.
“They're based out of Minnesota. They have many decades of experience working with municipal utilities in the water space," says Zetts. "They came recommended to us from NACWA, the National Association of Clean Water Agencies. We did throw reference checks on them. They've done this type of work for other municipal utilities throughout the country."
Zetts says the commission has confidence in the firm.
“They had a team who had worked on systems like this, with issues like this, and could bring the necessary expertise, sensitivity to doing interviews with current and past employees of both Veolia and MMSD, including those who came forward with complaints, and manage that with objectivity to inform the commission and give us advice on how to proceed from here,” Zetts says.
A five-member committee chaired by Tom Sigmund will advise on the audit and report the findings to a full commission. Sigmund led New Water, Green Bay's municipal wastewater treatment system.
“He has decades of experience in understanding the technical aspects of wastewater management, as well as Wisconsin regulatory compliance issues,” Zetts says.
A public policy expert from the UW La Follete School of Public Affairs will also serve on the committee.
“The rest of the committee is rounded out by community leaders who we're really asking to bring the questions the community is hearing, help us make sure we're addressing those in the audit and then take the findings back out to the community that MMSD serves,” Zetts says.
Common Ground, the group that originally raised mismanagement concerns, will not be represented on the committee.
“The commission wanted to be sure that everyone involved in this advisory committee really had no stake, no existing relationships — so neither Common Ground nor MMSD nor Veolia was allowed to give recommendations to the commission,” Zetts says. “We chose people who were totally outside and objective and could bring some good third-party independent perspective to us in this audit.”
Zetts says soon after the July 13 meeting, she’ll be sending EMA, Inc. a contract.
“[MMSD] Commissioner Jeff Stone is the commission's liaison to the audit. He and I will be participating in meetings along with the advisory committee. And we are hoping that this can really hit the ground running in the next week or two, just given summer schedules. And then our first piece will be connecting the auditor to people for interviews,” she says.
Zetts anticipates the preliminary audit report will be completed by September.
In the meantime, an hoc committee has been reviewing the two proposals for the next 10-year contract for the management of MMSD’s two wastewater treatment facilities.
“They are anticipated to bring their recommendation of the firm to hire for the next 10-year contract to the commission in September, at which time we're also anticipating to have the preliminary audit results made public,” Zetts says.
She says moving forward, transparency is essential, “And we're open to learning from what this audit process reveals and ensuring that MMSD remains a trusted community partner, that we trust that our water is cared for and that this is an institution that is transparent with the public it serves."
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