Last August, the rain just kept coming.
Over about 21 hours, some parts of Milwaukee saw up to 14 inches of rain. Streets turned into rivers. Water poured into homes and businesses. And Milwaukee’s sewer and wastewater systems were pushed beyond their limits.
For residents, the flooding was immediate and personal: basements filled with water, belongings were damaged, and some homes were left unlivable.
For local officials, the storm exposed a much bigger question: What can Milwaukee do before the next major storm arrives?
More than a year later, local governments are trying to answer that question through a regional Flood Mitigation Task Force.
The group brings together the City of Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, or MMSD.
The goal isn't to find one project that will stop flooding.
Instead, officials say they are looking for ways to coordinate the work already happening across the region and find new ways to reduce the damage when another extreme storm hits.
The August 2025 storm overwhelmed parts of Milwaukee's flood-control infrastructure.
Milwaukee City Engineer Kevin Muhs says the amount of water coming down at once was simply more than the system was designed to handle.
“There's basically no human-designed system that is ready to handle that degree of stormwater at once,” Muhs says.
MMSD received more than 1,100 reports of water backing up into basements after the storm. The district estimates the flooding caused more than $200 million in damage to private property.
And the problem didn't end with the August storm.
Heavy rain caused additional flooding in April 2026, reminding officials that extreme rainfall can create problems even as the region recovers from the previous event.
That's part of why MMSD Executive Director Kevin Shafer says government agencies need to approach flooding as a regional problem.
"Just trying to bring together some of the different entities — that we could put our heads together and see if there's anything through an integrated approach across government entities that would help alleviate some of flood problems that we've had,” says Shafer.
Sometimes the first solution is better information
One of the task force's early priorities isn't a massive construction project.
It's figuring out where flooding is happening.
Shafer says agencies are working on a centralized database where residents can report wet or flooded basements. The idea is to bring information from different communities and government agencies into one place.
That could help officials see where flooding is happening repeatedly and identify areas that may need additional attention.
“We identified the need to have a centralized database where people can report wet basements, so that all the governments can bring that data together," Shafer says. "So that's something that we're working on right now.”
For residents, officials are also emphasizing steps they can take before a major storm.
MMSD already operates its Water Drop Alert system, which warns residents when heavy rain could put significant pressure on the wastewater system.
During an alert, residents are encouraged to temporarily reduce water use: things like waiting to run the dishwasher or washing machine.
The goal is to give the wastewater system more capacity while it's dealing with large amounts of stormwater. Shafer says residents can also use the alerts as a warning to prepare their basements by moving belongings off the floor before the rain arrives.
Making room for water
Some of the biggest changes will take much longer.
One strategy is giving stormwater somewhere to go before it reaches people's homes.
Muhs points to Dineen Park as an example.
Most of the time, the park looks like an ordinary green space. But during a major storm, it can temporarily hold a large amount of water.
“Dineen Park is...dry most of the time, but it fills up with a lot of water when we get a storm," says Muhs. "That type of system is what we're trying to build to be ready for these larger storms.”
Projects like that are part of a broader effort by Milwaukee-area governments and MMSD to use parks, green spaces and stormwater basins to hold water during heavy rainfall.
MMSD is also accelerating work on projects included in its flood-management capital plan.
Some of those projects could add hundreds of millions of gallons of additional stormwater storage across the region.
But that work takes time and money.
And officials say there's a limit to how much infrastructure can realistically be built to withstand an extremely rare storm.
Preparing for a different climate
The August 2025 storm was a reminder of that limit.
Officials say Milwaukee's flood-control infrastructure can reduce the effects of heavy rain, but it can't guarantee that homes and businesses won't flood during an extreme event.
That means the task force is also looking beyond the next few years.
Shafer says officials need to think about what Milwaukee's infrastructure will have to handle decades from now, as extreme weather changes.
“We need to look at a longer timeline for the bigger-scale work that's gonna come, because climate change has already started and we need to be addressing that," says Shafer.
Officials aren't promising that Milwaukee can prevent another historic flood.
Instead, they're trying to make sure the region is better prepared when the next one comes.
That could mean more places for water to collect, better information about where flooding is happening, closer coordination between government agencies and more warning for residents before the rain arrives.
The work has just started. But officials say protecting Milwaukee from major storms could take decades.
