After Racine was beaten out of a water deal with Waukesha, two local officials expressed concerns Wednesday about the possibility that the inland city would send its treated wastewater through the Root River...OK - - Anyone else?
While the route that will be taken has yet to be chosen, Democratic state Rep. Cory Mason and Mayor John Dickert saw issues with any plan that would call for Waukesha to send treated wastewater through the Root.
“There’s a lot of unanswered questions for Racine,” said Mason, who represents Racine. “It might be a good deal for Waukesha, it might be a good deal for Oak Creek, but it’s a bad deal for Racine and the Root River.
Not Milwaukee, and apparently, not Waukesha.
And the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors weighed in with a negative opinion:Waukesha...is pitching the effluent it wants to pour into Underwood Creek as an asset.If so, why hasn't Waukesha re-engineered its wastewater treatment system and moved the discharge point that is now below the city on the Fox River to a point above the city so the asset could flow right through downtown Waukesha?
The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors convincingly overrode on Thursday County Executive Scott Walker's veto of a Board resolution opposing Waukesha's plan to discharge, on average, 10.9 million gallons of effluent into Underwood Creek in Wauwatosa...
I think the Waukesha County Board of Supervisors would have responded the same way to a proposal, say, from Wauwatosa, to discharge its effluent into the Fox River and let it flow through downtown Waukesha...Board members also know that both Underwood Creek, and the Menonomee River into which the creek empties have had flooding and pollution issues that continue to be addressed at great cost.
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ReplyDelete- “It is a very high water quality that would be returned, adding base flow, that we all know this summer was needed desparately,” Duchniak said.
ReplyDeleteHe added that Waukesha, which currently sends its treated wastewater to the Fox River, has some of the highest quality treated water in the state.-
Let's first start by observing that all sewerage from Wisconsin municipal waste water treatment plants must meet DNR standards. The standards are very high.
That brings us to an obvious question after our very hot and dry summer. If the standards are so high, what's to keep Waukesha from implementing aquifer recharge by discharging to known recharge wetland zones rather than pumping water from the ground, treating the effluent and sending to the Fox River where it eventually goes to the Mississippi then to the Gulf of Mexico?
Isn't that a system of return flow?
The Waukesha wastewater treatment plant continually exceeds DNR standards for mercury and arsenic. The DNR gives them a variance on mercury and arsenic annually, when the permit comes up for renewal.
ReplyDeleteWaukesha's wastewater also exceeds the new phosphorous standards, and chloride and fecal coliform standards. By dumping this less-than-stellar water into either Underwood Creek or the Root River, both bodies of water already impaired, it causes something called 'loading' which is essentially the cumulative effect of adding Waukesha's pollutants to UC's or RR's pollutants and making the receiving stream worse than before.
For Waukesha and its PR machinists to pretend they're 'gifting' Underwood or the Root with a very high quality water is a laugh-and-a-half, or a full-on hoot, depending on your mood.
Pay no attention to the PR hucksters behind the curtain.