Important Public Meeting Today On Water And Social Justice

There will be a presentation and discussion this afternoon about the relationship in the region between water and social justice.

Consultants from the UWM will present a progress report on their investigation into draft recommendations by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission that include diverting Lake Michigan water to the City of Waukesha.

The meeting will be at 4 p.m., at IndenpendenceFirst, 540 S. 1st. Street, Milwaukee.

Though it has been misreported more than once by advocates of the Lake Michigan diversion plan, SEWRPC's recommendations are in preliminary form only because the group hearing today's presentation - - the SEWRPC task force on environmental justice - - has yet finish its work on the relationship of water to social justice matters, such as regional housing, transportation and other issues.

Remember that Milwaukee, Waukesha's preferred water seller should a diversion be approved by all eight Great Lakes states, has in official city policy the requirement that a buyer like Waukesha cooperate on a range of regional economic and planning issues.

SEWRPC has yet to decide what, if anything, it will do with the social justice report, which is why SEWRPC's water advisory committee and full commission board have yet to take up a full and final water plan for the region.

Today's meeting will shed light on what the UWM consultants are finding, and perhaps on a schedule for the end of their work and the beginning of its consideration by the justice task force, SEWRPC water advisory committee and full commission.

I would estimate that the task force and consultants' work might be wrapped up by December - - months later than first anticipated - - though the timetable could be shortened if SEWRPC chooses to footnote, discount or otherwise water down the findings or their place in the final report.

Such an outcome, while politically damaging for SEWPC, is not altogether out of questions because SEWPC was basically forced by federal evaluators and the ACLU to establish the task force, with whom it has had a rocky relationship, at times, since it was created in 2007.