People in southeastern Wisconsin continue to deal with the aftermath of a brutal storm that hit over the weekend. The record-setting rain flooded many homes and roadways.
It also caused the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, or MMSD, to use its last-resort overflow option.
That means the agency had to release untreated water into Milwaukee's rivers and Lake Michigan to help prevent water from backing up into people’s homes.
MMSD Executive Director Kevin Shafer says he’s never experienced anything like this storm in his 28-year career.
“The storm that we’ve always heard as the ‘storm of record’ was in 1986 — that’s when County Stadium flooded, you know that whole area in the (Menomonee) Valley,” Shafer says. “When this storm hit Saturday night into Sunday morning, I thought we might be getting close to that. We think this is the second-largest storm we’ve had in this region since records were started. And it’s worse than the 2009 and 2010 storms, which I did live through. This storm is much bigger.”
But he says, MMSD was much better prepared for this storm than it was 15 years ago.
“The green infrastructure — although a lot of it was underwater during this storm — did help in some capacity to keep water out of the system,” Shafer says. “The inflow and infiltration work we’re doing keeps water from leaking into the separate sewers in the region. So we have a lot of programs that really reduced the impact.”
Still, thousands of people have reported structural damage caused by the storms, including flooded basements.
“It’s terrible. It’s not something we want to happen, but I think the extent of the river flooding was much less than it would have been if we had not had those projects in place,” Shafer says.
As for MMSD’s system of pipes delivering sewage and stormwater to its two treatment plants, and the deep tunnel designed to hold 526 million gallons of water that can be pumped and treated before returning to Lake Michigan — this weekend the tunnel filled up very quickly.
“I think it was at 9:55 on Saturday night. I ordered a combined sewer overflow to occur. And so it’s stormwater at this point. We discharge that water into area — we discharged that water into rivers and try to relieve the system so that we don’t have basement backups,” Shafer says.
Shafer believes the storm and the devastation it caused should be a wake-up call for all of us, especially in Milwaukee’s heavily developed, asphalt- and cement-covered environment.
“I mean, it’s going to happen again. It may be another 25 (or) 30 years — I don’t know — but we need to make sure that we prioritize good stormwater management and good flood management, and we need partners to help us with that. And we need to find the funding to pay for this work,” Shafer says.
MMSD has projects in motion. It's naturalizing areas along the Kinnickinnic River where 660 high-risk homes are located within the floodplain.
“Anything we can do to accelerate the Kinnickinnic River is vitally important for that urban southwest side of Milwaukee and the region. We have work going on right now in the Menomonee River,” Shafer says. “But we really need people to pull together and say this is what we hope for in the future."
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