Waukesha Water Opponents are Making Waves

WAUKESHA -- The Great Lakes Council may have approved Waukesha's Great Lakes water diversion plan, but that isn't stopping one group from continuing to fight its approval.

The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative - a group of about 120 public officials from around the Great Lakes - wants to call a hearing, urging the council to reconsider their June ruling.

Waukesha Mayor Shawn Reilly fired back almost immediately upon learning of the announcement.

“A cities group is asking for a new hearing on the approval by the eight states of the Great Lakes Council in June. That Council unanimously approved our request to borrow and return Lake Michigan water under the Great Lakes Compact,” Reilly said in a statement from the Mayor's office Monday. “The claims by the cities group were thoroughly reviewed during that rigorous approval process. There is nothing new in the request by the cities that hasn’t already been considered by the Great Lakes states and provinces.”

Speaking for the Cities Initiative, Mayor Sandra Cooper of Collingwood, Ontario, said “We are taking this step to launch a legal challenge to the Compact Council’s decision regarding the Waukesha water taking application because we do not feel that Waukesha met the rigorous standard set in the Compact to qualify for an exception to the ban on water diversions to communities outside of the basin.”

Reilly said his city’s application underwent six years of review by teams of experts in the state of
Wisconsin, seven other Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces. “This was a scientific, legal and non-partisan review, as required by the Compact, by the states and provinces that wrote the law. I don’t see any reason to think the Compact Council will change its determination that we meet the legal requirements, and will actually benefit a Great Lakes tributary and the
watershed,” he said.

“It is hard to understand why other cities – that certainly know the importance of safe drinking
water – would choose to challenge a project that will provide safe, sustainable drinking water to
our city’s citizens without causing harm to the Great Lakes,” Reilly added. “If there is a threat to
the Compact’s protection of the Great Lakes, it would be forcing the Great Lakes states to
needlessly defend against a legal challenge, if the cities decide to pursue such a challenge.”

The Great Lakes Compact, which became law in 2008, generally prohibits water from being
pumped beyond the surface divide of the Great Lakes. However, communities in counties that
straddle the divide, like Waukesha, can apply for water under the Compact. A community only
qualifies if it shows it has no other reasonable water supply alternative and recycles the water
back to the Great Lakes after use and treatment.

Waukesha needs a new water supply because the recharge of its aquifer by rain and snow is limited by a layer of rock above the watershed. Waukesha’s water is also contaminated with naturally-occurring radium, a carcinogen.

“Waukesha will not harm the Great Lakes. We will borrow less than 1/1,000,000th of 1% of
Great Lakes water. We will return approximately 100% of the volume of water that we
withdraw,” the mayor said.

Reilly encouraged people to review the findings contained in the unanimous approval by the
Compact Council at
http://www.waukeshadiversion.o... including the findings that Waukesha has no reasonable water
supply alternative, on the benefits to the Root River and the limited precedent of Waukesha’s
approval.