Friday, April 29, 2011

$109.8 Million For A Return-Flow Pipe From Waukesha-To-Lake Michigan?

That's the number in the City of Waukesha's new Lake Michigan diversion application information (p. 8) provided to the Department of Natural Resources to help justify Waukesha's continuing argument in favor of returning diverted, treated water to the Lake via Underwood Creek for about half ($56.1 million) that $109.8 million pipeline cost.

Some people who know something about this sort of thing are telling me that they find the pipeline-to-the-Lake-estimate on the high side.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you have the link to the entire report?

Northern Illinois supports the diversion. If Waukesha is able to eliminate it's dependence on the aquifers we can continue to develop our property tax base.

Thank you Governor Walker.

James Rowen said...

The information is in four sections at the top of the water utility website:

http://www.ci.waukesha.wi.us/web/guest/futurewatersupplyinfo

Anonymous said...

After reading the DNR response to the Water Supply questions and responses from the Waukesha Water Utility, WS1 has encouraged some people in the water service area to expose this response to the council of great lakes governors.

Anonymous said...

It appears to me that all of the cost estimates are suspect and that the "solution" was arrived at first, then the cost estimates were designed to support that solution. It is interesting that Waukesha is not pursuing other options in case the Lake water option is not available. If they do, maybe they would prove there are other options, cheaper and environmentally sustainable, but that would hurt their quest for Lake Michigan water and they don't want that. Just saying...........