City Of Franklin Kept In Dark On Waukesha Water Deal

Remember that when the City of Waukesha submitted its Lake Michigan diversion application it included sending water - - and perhaps costs and additional obligations - - to portions of the City of Pewaukee and the Towns of Delafield, Genesee and Waukesha without asking those municipalities if they wanted to be in the plan?

There's some regional cooperation imperialism for you.

Well, add the City of Franklin to that list of Communities Kept Clueless - - as it is not happy having been left out of water diversion planning that its Mayor says has direct impacts on its lands and budgets.

Mayor Tom Taylor[s']...concern is that no one... formally approached his city's elected officials with a proposal. After all, he said, the proposed transmission of water from Oak Creek to Waukesha would require construction of a pipeline through at least the western part of the municipality...
 
Oak Creek and Waukesha were set to form an agreement last week that would have begun the process of Oak Creek's Water Utility selling water wholesale to Waukesha...

"You have two communities working on a water deal that potentially will be very disruptive to Franklin and then you add to that the fact that our water rates would increase," Taylor said. He also noted that there may be opposition about the possibility of return wastewater being discharged into the Root River.

The water sale agreement is now on hold, thus further tying up the diversion application in which it is a mandatory component.

After fits and starts, Waukesha sent its application 30 months ago to the Wisconsin DNR for only the first of man in-state and multi-state reviews required by law and an interstate Compact, but the DNR has yet to even issue its environmental impact statement on the application.

And with the water sale arrangement still incomplete, Waukesha has yet to nail down who is selling it the water it wants and where and how the mandatory water return to the lake will be achieved.

What it has done is to step on the collective toes of Milwaukee, Franklin, and Racine.

Some call this escalating fiasco a model of regional cooperation.

Seriously?