Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Decision on Waukesha's Great Lakes diversion may come Thursday

[4:48 p.m. Thursday update] The Governors rejected the petition, thus affirming the diversion approval. Petitioners have 90 days to contest the ruling in court.

You may remember that a coalition of US and Canadian municipalities appealed the decision to allow the City of Waukesha to divert water from Lake Michigan, and the Great Lakes Governors Compact Council which approved the diversion and have had the appeal under consideration could release its decision tomorrow:
The challenge to last year's ruling comes from the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Cities Initiative, made up of 127 United States and Canadian communities...
The Compact Council, including Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Secretary Cathy Stepp, voted to take the matter under advisement. The council may decide during a conference call set for Thursday, April 20, whether to let the appeal of last year's decision continue.
Parties in the case say the current challenge may be a prelude to a federal lawsuit from critics of the diversion plan. 
A coalition of Wisconsin conservation and water advocates monitors issues around the Great Lakes Compact, here.

Background, cost projects and more, here.

Side note: that 127-member US and Canadian municipalities' coalition's new executive director will soon be former Racine Mayor John Dickert.

Racine Democratic State Rep. Cory Mason, an opponent of the diversion because its wastewater return is ticketed for the Root River and Racine harbor, has already announced he will be a Racine Mayoral candidate.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If this decision is reconsidered and overturned and then heads to Federal court, the Walker Administration will be exposed.

Let it be so.

Anonymous said...

And so it shall be.

Anonymous said...

This whole mess has been a long time in the making. Waukesha officials and the developers were well aware of water quality problems with their wells all the way back to the late '70's and early '80's. However they chose to dramatically downplay any concerns so that they could continue on their massive sprawling expansion. That expansion was the great cash cow that could be fed by the continued fear-mongering that went along with the planned causation of "white flight" that had been started in the late '50's and early '60's. So now we are all supposed to just "forget" about all of this conniving and ignorance and not hold any of these folks/entities accountable. So Waukesha can't supply itself with water from Waukesha county but they sure as hell won't accept any limits being imposed on development. It is similar to when the desegregation busing program ended. The officials responsible for drawing up the plan publicly admitted that they had purposely designed the plan to fail. So they admitted to purposely sabotaging a court order but nobody has had the desire to ask for penalties for all of the millions of dollars and students' lives that should have been improved. The DNR file on Waukesha's contaminated wells goes back a long way. I've seen it with my own eyes. Don't let them tell you it doesn't exist. Yes there needs to be a federal suit if for no other purpose than to force development restrictions if the diversion is approved along with conservation measures. I'm tired of paying tax money for well to do folks from Waukesha to endlessly water their lawns while they bad mouth every aspect of their neighbors in Milwaukee County.