Waukesha Delays Lake Michigan Water Diversion Application
Bill McClenahan, the public relations contractor for the Waukesha Water Utility, sent me the following email this morning:
"Waukesha has decided to postpone our release of a draft application for Great Lakes water, which was tentatively scheduled for December 8. It is still compiling information and drafting the document.
"The utility expects to release a draft application for public review early in 2010, with subsequent meetings for public questions and comments. "
My only response is that this underscores that the entire process will proceed in fits and starts, and demonstrates the need for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to have written its administrative rules governing the application construction and review - - and now there is more time for the DNR to have done just that.
Which the DNR has not done.
1 comment:
Everything in this development has to do with Horses.
Yes, horses. (And a few orzisazzes at the Waukesha Water Utility Commission).
At the last commission meeting of the Waukesha Water Utility, Dan Duchniak revealed this in a Nov. 16 memo to the Commission:
"We have been working with MSA and GeoSyntec to finalize the application for Great lakes water and move forward through the approval process. In September Geosyntec went through a reorganization and decided to eliminate the position held by Jeff Edstrom, our main contact. Jeff has [since] been employed by Environmental Consulting and Technology, Inc.(ECT) and has a sub-contract with GeoSyntec to work on our application; however I am not comfortable with the arrangement or his new company's ability to complete the work.
"Therefore I have asked CH2M Hill for a proposal to move from support to the lead on the contract and have asked them for a proposal to finalize the proposal...."
Duchniak went on--at comical length--invoking "horses" a total of eleven times. "ECT doesn't have the horses...we need to get somebody with the horses to complete the application in time for our Dec. 8 presentation ...CH2M Hill has the horses to back up the lead agency in producing the final proposal."
He pushed the Commissioners to expand the contract, pay an additional we-gotcha-by-the-short-hairs $15 thousand to get the quick-and-dirty horsepower from the new contractor".
The Waukesha Water Utility operation is starting to dissolve into a spectacle that reminds me of the famous old "I Love Lucy" bit, so often played in the retrospectives--the one where she's working on a cake-decorating assembly line. It is all chaos and goo and messy piles of ruined stuff, with lots of tears and wailing and Dezi Arnaz rolling his eyes.
Dan Warren, Commission President, has been caught (by this observer) several times in recent meetings muttering his unhappiness about inept staff follow-up and interminable delays. He is on the record--at least once in the most recent meeting--saying to staff "I'm really unhappy with this outcome" about a four-month delay in beginning to use a new water tower, "because of a bunch of bozos" who didn't complete their promised contribution to the project.
This mess is probably being driven by Water Utility Commissioner/Mayor Larry Nelson's apparent plan to pin his re-election hopes on a triumphalist boast that he has solved Waukesha's water problem.
Stay tuned; the un-raveling of the scheme to get Lake Michigan water in Waukesha pipes is just beginning.
WaterBlogged predicts:
O Warren will resign his position sometime in the next twelve months, and turn his attention to his other spectacular recent fiascos--Pabst Farms and the way he screwed up the Waukesha School Board's finances with a crazy investment in CDOs (those dopey investments that promised untold riches and delivered untold misery).
O Nelson will be beaten (nay, clobbered) in his February primary for re-election.
O The diversion plan for Lake Michigan water will get thumbs-down from at least three Compact members (after a kissy-face approval by DNR).
O The Waukesha Council will reorganize the Water Utility Commission with a larger and more diverse group of commissioners with TERM LIMITS for those commissioners.
Stay tuned to "Water Blogged in Waukesha" for the continuing saga of "Our quest for Lake Michigan water".
If it wasn't so costly...and pitiable...and doomed... it'd be funny.
Post a Comment