Fair Review Of MMSD Cleans Up Sensenbrenner Rant

PolitiFact dumps a well-deserved "False" rating on Cong. Jim Sensenbrenner for an attack he delivered in Whitefish Bay against the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District - - the kind of unsubstantiated, demagoguery you'd expect to hear in the fact-free world of conservative talk radio, but not at a public event uttered by a veteran Member of Congress.

Semsenbrenner claimed the MMSD is one of the worse polluters in the country, an allegation that PolitiFact calmly dismisses - - and also puts MMSD's operations and track record into a comparative prospective that shows it to be better-performing than peer, and even larger agencies

Sensenbrenner's staff offered explanations that PolitiFact found wanting, adding more evidence that Sensenbrenner's claim was false

Sensenbrenner's staff claimed that the MMSD pollutes local beaches: PolitiFact reports data and findings available for years that show the sources of beach pollution arise elsewhere, and not with the MMSD.

I've been writing about this since early 2005, and in helping report that Milwaukee County pipes, and not MMSD operations were responsible for harming Bradford Beach. And I also reported that it was the MMSD that paid for beach grooming that helped bring the beach back for safe public use.

Finally, PolitFact takes Sensenbrenner's operation to task for having said the MMSD's overflow pollution, by gallon, was larger than BP's pollution of the Gulf of Mexico.

PolitiFact points out the obvious - - what MMSD puts into the water is primarily water that contains some contaminants, but what BP put into the Gulf was oil.

Conservatives have been using the MMSD as a scapegoat for decades, whipping up the suburbs against the District and its urban center as if it were running a dozen light rail trains a day.

The PolitiFact report is a welcome fact-and-science based antidote to the political and rhetorical pollution the Right regularly dumps into Southeastern Wisconsin.