More Fallout Over Waukesha's Great Lakes Diversion Plan

Another day, another backlash against the City of Waukesha's plan to seek permission to divert water from Lake Michigan.

This week alone, there has been:

* A demand from a majority of City of Milwaukee alderman that the new Mayor Waukesha explain rather volatile campaign remarks suggesting Waukesha should avoid Milwaukee as a potential water supplier, and not meet Milwaukee's financial and policy conditions for such a sale.

*The 13-3 vote by the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors objecting to Waukesha's proposed diversion scheme because Waukesha intends to return its diversion, as treated waste water, through Milwaukee waterways. The Board was echoing the infamous remark by State Rep. Cory Mason, (R-Caledonia), when he said the Root River through Racine County should not become "Waukesha's toilet."

*The Town of Waukesha, the less-populated and more-rural City of Waukesha neighbor, is moving towards a tough set of regulations designed to limit the larger City's access to new wells in the Town should the Lake Michigan diversion plan get shot down by one or more of the Great Lakes states.

Has the City of Waukesha become The Village of the Damned?

Why are so many other units of government so down on the diversion plan?

Could it be that Waukesha's approach to its neighbors has been over-bearing, and that its approach to Great Lakes water is laden with misplaced entitlement?

Let's not forget a basic rul of governance: Officials, like Milwaukee County supervisors, don't want to be left out of the process, or, like their constituents, be taken for granted.

Milwaukee County communities and residents have put a lot of effort and money into river and stream clean-up: being asked to absorb, on average, about 11 million gallons of another community's waste water, without any say in writing the plan or choosing the outcome, will get you a 13-3 spanking.

And its an action sure to catch the eye of regulators in Madison, and the other Great Lakes states, too.

As for Milwaukee's aldermen: they can read the papers, and didn't like the rhetoric coming out of the Waukesha mayor's race. If Waukesha really wants to buy Milwaukee water - - a key premise of Waukesha's diversion planning - - it's a bad strategy to kick around that potential business partner, especially if they have the best and least expensive product around.

And the border and well-drilling war with the Town of Waukesha?

More Bad Politics 101, as the City is in the midst a condemnation of land within the Town for a new well field.

Additionally, the City intends to expand the reach of its water utility's service territory into the Town if the diversion is won - - imperiously extending City influence into the Town.

And perhaps, through fresh annexations, transferring property wealth and political power from the Town to the bigger City.

It's an extension of service and influence by the same City water utility whose staff and consultants put together the diversion plan - - under the recently-defeated Mayor, to be fair.

So should anyone be surprised that the Town is striking back by using what public powers it still command?

The City is committed to its diversion plan, though it has yet to transmit it to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for the first in a long series of environmental and legal reviews.

You have to wonder, however, whether the pitfalls were minimized at Waukesha's City Hall before the Lake Michigan diversion course was chosen.

And whether the City will be open to options, or has it closed them all off and dug in for the fight, come what may?