After Four Years, DNR Still Has Not Written Water Diversion Rules

The DNR today has said Milwaukee cannot negotiate a water sale only with Waukesha if four neighboring communities that did not ask to be in the Waukesha application are not in the negotiations.

This is a fine time for the DNR to be laying out the rules for diversion application proceedings - - as I pointed out in 2009, the DNR failed to write the rules for application consideration called for when the state approved the governing Great Lakes Compact and implementing state law in May, 2008.

This rule-making absence was also pointed out to the DNR last year by a coalition of organizations that raised a variety of long-standing questions when the DNR began to review Waukesha's application:

Additionally, we would like to know a timeline for when the Department will formally review and approve this plan, as well as adopt the necessary rules that Act 227 call for under these provisions.

The DNR delayed the rule-making under the Doyle administration and it has continued under Walker, so this is not a partisan matter.

It's a matter of the DNR following through on a legislative mandate so there would not be a dispute over rules and parameters in diversion applications - - which is where we are today.