Waukesha Plan to Receive Lake Michigan Water Advances →

Waukesha Plan to Receive Lake Michigan Water Advances - WUWM, December 9, 2015
Author: Susan Bence

The Wisconsin DNR announced Tuesday that it is pushing Waukesha’s water application forward.

The City’s deep wells are increasingly tainted by cancer-causing radium, so the utility wants to start drawing water from Lake Michigan.

The DNR has now signed off on the diversion plan and will forward it to the other Great Lakes states. Final approval requires yes votes from all eight governors.

Peter Annin attended all three DNR public hearings last August as the agency carried out its charge to scrutinize every facet of Waukesha’s application.

Annin believes the other Great Lakes states will do the same. He wrote The Great Lakes Water Wars and understands the significance of the issue.

Waukesha’s application for Lake Michigan water is the first to test the Great Lakes Compact. It’s designed to protect the massive source of freshwater.

“Taking the water out from Oak Creek and then sending it back through the Root River, for those of us who attended the public hearing in Racine on the return flow, that was really the most contentious public hearing of all of them the DNR held last summer because there’s a lot of consternation in the Racine area about the return flow plan,” Annin says.

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