Water Issues Flow At Waukesha's Council Meeting Tuesday Night

If water is your issue, the place to be Tuesday night is the City of Waukesha Common Council meeting, where water-related political and policy matters are on tap.

The Council will vote on Mayor Jeff Scrima's veto of an all-bureaucrat City water purchase negotiating committee.

The Council wants its side of likely discussions about water supplies with Milwaukee, Racine and Oak Creek handled by three non-elected staffers who back Waukesha's Lake Michigan diversion plan the Council has endorsed; Scrima has been skeptical of the plan, so the electeds' exclusion limits Scrima's role and influence - - though he is the Mayor.

Also, officials from the neighboring, more-rural Town of Waukesha involved in several disputes over water with the City will bring to the meeting a letter about water planning and cooperation to the meeting.

To date, the City has not persuaded the Town to agree to be included in the proposed Lake Michigan water diversion service territory, and both the City and Town want to control a parcel in the Town beneath which is an accessible water supply.

Much of this is preliminary, as all eight Great Lakes states must approve the Waukesha plan, and Wisconsin's DNR has yet to accept the diversion proposal for a formal review after a year of discussions and edits.

Background to the city/town disagreements, here.

The Waukesha Patch reports that the Council, with that land-and-water access issue in mind, will go into closed session for:

"discussion about a strategy to be adopted for potential litigation because the Town of Waukesha’s passage of a resolution of public necessity related to 13 acres of property on the Lather’s Farm. The city is looking to build five shallow wells on the site and the town has been fighting the purchase.

The meeting in the Council chambers begins at 7:30 p.m., at 201 Delafield St.

In a posting here I have collected links to multiple websites which contain documentation of these issues.