Though today's lead story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the continuing drop in Lake Michigan water levels is not an entirely new development, it should set off some alarm bells in Waukesha, where city officials have downplayed the impact a Waukesha diversion would have on the lake's health.
As lake levels fall, so does Waukesha's chance of winning a diversion, given media like today's front-page Journal Sentinel piece.
Yet imagine how embarrassed state officials would be if they had approved last year the secret appeal Waukesha made twice in writing for 24 million gallons of Lake Michigan water diverted daily and without a drop being returned ?
Governor Doyle made the right call when he sent those requests to bureaucratic limbo.
The likelihood that communities like Waukesha, or others in Ohio, for example, might stick their pipes and pumps into the Great Lakes without regard to the bigger picture is the very reason that negotiators from the US and Canada took four years to draft the pending Great Lakes Compact.
That is a cooperative plan to better manage the Great Lakes, establish conservation requirements and make diversion-seeking cities and new large users demonstrate both need, and return-flow procedures.
Anything less is bad stewardship and will contribute to the lakes' quantity and quality problems.
Wisconsin needs to approve the Compact, with some changes that will close bottled-water sales' loopholes and clearly require that diverted water - - in the rare cases that a diversion is approved - - be returned close to the source of its removal,, and in the largest amount feasible.
That mans, for instance, that diverted water can't be discharged after treatment onto an open field somewhere technically in the Great Lakes basin, but inappropriately far away from the lake where it originated.
As the Great Lakes levels fall, and the air temperatures continue to cause more lake evaporation, conservation and water recycling in all the region's communities becomes even more important.
The priority has to be on water management, not water acquisition, and planners need to integrate this mindset when they are looking at land-use and transportation issues, too.
The regional planning commission is more than half finished with its area-wide water supply study, and it seems to be headed towards the creation of a regional water authority that would seek water supplies that reinforce the existing regional land use plan.
That plan has enabled movement of people, jobs and transportation assets away from the region's biggest city - - Milwaukee - - where lake water access is simpler, legal and available.
Until the regional planning commissions tackles this major contradiction, much of which is ts own making, the region is poised to recommend diverting water far from Lake Michigan, turning falling lake levels into a continuing, self-fulfilling prophecy.
As you know (but ignore), and as has been repeatedly stated publicly, Waukesha is committed to return flow. A "diversion" to Waukesha would have no impact on lake levels. It would recycle the water back to the lake. That is a more sustainable and environmentally responsible use than the current use of groundwater. If, to follow your logic, the use of Great Lakes water with return flow was really a threat to lake levels, then Milwaukee's use would be the greatest threat.
ReplyDeleteSubstantial progress has recently been made toward adopting the Compact. Your continued attempts to raise non-issues (by implying that Waukesha's use of water would impact lake levels) only serves to increase regional animosity and to threaten the Compact.
The Compact allows communities in straddling counties to apply for water. If you support the Compact, you need to support that essential provision, as well.
Umm Waukesha has offered to return untreated water back via the root river I believe. Hardly an acceptable solution.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Bill, for the comment. As a paid publicist for the Waukesha Water Utility, I would expect you to say the very things in your comment.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, Waukesha has not firmly committed to 100% return flow of diverted water.
My sources tell me that the city is still considering partial return flow, with some discharged away from the lake towards the Mississippi River.
Please do not shift the responsibiity for blocking the Compact's passage to Waukesha's critics, especially to a blogger.
You know that the strongest resistance comes from politicians and businesses in Waukesha County, not to mention the damage done to the process by the Utility's confidential diversion applications and lack of leadership at the Kedzie Committee for a strong Compact.
The Compact allows for applications under procedures laid out in the draft - - procedures the Utility circumvented with its two confidential 2006 applications.
The Utility and Common Council continue to meet and discuss these issues in repeated closed meetings, so please do not lecture the rest of us about open procedures.
Thanks for initiating the discussion on water diversions and effects on our plummeting lake levels. In addition to problems that diversions pose to water lake levels, there are also potentially significant issues that return flow poses to water quality, which are seldom talked about.
ReplyDeleteThe rivers being considered to help "return the flow" from Waukesha (either the Root or Menomonee) are already impaired in many ways by stormwater pollution and will not benefit from increased discharges of wastewater, which even if well treated, increases the likely biological oxygen demand in the stream or essentially removes the amount of oxygen that is available in the stream for wildlife and aquatic life.
In addition, many of the urban areas adjacent to these rivers (the Menomonee in particular) are undergoing significant flood management projects to manage the increasingly high river flows created by upstream development. Increasing flows into these rivers from Waukesha has the potential to compound these flooding problems as the return flow makes its way back to the lake.
As far as our surface water is concerned, its not only the destination that counts but the journey so to speak.
As the Waukesha Water Utility, Mayor, and Bill know (but continue to ignore), the "need" for a Lake Michigan water diversion is not driven by Waukesha's need for radium compliant water (through treatment and conservation, the Utility is nearly compliant with the DNR order), but an unlimited water source to fuel unlimited--and grotesque--development in Waukesha County. The idea that you, Jim, and others supporting a strong Compact are threatening the Compact is laughable. Bill and his friends have been working behind the scene to kill it from the beginning, even though--as Bill himself points out--the Compact as written allows straddling communities to apply for water diversions, a provision almost certainly inserted into the Compact for Waukesha's benefit. The ability to apply for diversion does not mean that one will be automatically granted, however, which explains why they'd rather have no Compact--and thus no rules--at all.
ReplyDeleteWhat anti-Compact special interests continue to ignore is that both open space and freshwater are finite resources. When these resources are gone--paved over or shipped away, there's no way of recreating new ones, or of maintaining the resource as it is today. Developers are long gone too, with profits in hand.
The bottom line is that diversion outside the basin sets a dangerous precedent that other states and countries could well use to force the supply of Great Lakes water to the arid southwest (and now southeast also). With the Lakes containing 20% of the world's fresh water supply, they'll be an tempting target.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then YOU WIN."
ReplyDeleteThe Mahatma's four stages of resistance have proceeded to number 3. They are feeling the pressure of pushback on all the b.s. they've been spreading around. You can be sure that Bill McClenehan had his little time-keeping machinery ticking (DOLLARS FOR BULLSHIT)as he composed this big-time put-down. Wonder what he thinks this is worth per hour (even better--what I really mean is worse), what the Water Utility thinks it is worth).
McClenahan says "substantial progress has been made toward adopting the compact". Which compact is he referring to? The one that emerges from the retrograde half of Wisconsin's legislature is probably going to be a Mary Lazich / Brian Nemoir/ Neil Kedzie "improved" version, not the one that we need and want.
I really hate the idea of my payments to the Water Utility funding this. But it IS a weathervane. They're clearly no longer ignoring, and it doesn't look like they're laughing. I think they're beginning to sweat.
Plummeting? Really?? That's a pretty strong word to use for a basin comprised of trillions of gallons of water. Even Peter Annin says that variant and significant drops in lake levels are a part of a natural lake cycle.
ReplyDeleteYou're starting to sound like the boy who cried wolf - or in this case - the boy who cried, "Waukesha!"
Point of interest:
ReplyDeleteSellinger said her research showed a similar situation in the 1930s and the 1960s when the lakes also shrank dramatically. They also rebounded quickly.
Okay? Feel better?? Cheese and rice, people...calm down.
to the Anon who is questioning "Plummeting:"
ReplyDeleteRecord record lows, perhaps? Trends all in that direction?
There needs to be some urgency about these issues.
Umm...the same thing happened in the 1930s and 1960s and everything returned to normal. Thus, why the "urgency"?
ReplyDeleteSee, the problem with most people is they think in "human" terms and not "global" terms. For example, 50 years is a big deal for humans. But to the Earth, 50 years is nothing. Heck, to the Earth, 50,000 years is nothing.
So urgency for who? Yourself and the rest of the hand-wringers, or Mother Earth? I can assure you, she could care less about a few lake level drops, as they're sure to rebound.
To the last Anon:
ReplyDeleteFunny that you think you are the one thinking globally, but when people like me write about global warming, that gets denied and ridiculed, too.
I would suggest that to be more credible, you come out into full view, stop hiding behind anonymity, blog or write openly and put your theories to that more intensive scrutiny.
And by the way, the lake levels are more than a few drops short. Ask the shipping companies who left full loads on the docks this shipping season.
And when the converse happens and a few extra drops wash away coastal villages in poorer, ocean-front nations, tell me what your global analysis offers them.
"I would suggest that to be more credible, you come out into full view, stop hiding behind anonymity, blog or write openly and put your theories to that more intensive scrutiny."
ReplyDeleteUmmmm....no.
To Anon:
ReplyDeleteFigures.