Water Utilization in the Greater Waukesha Area (Prompt B)

        If you do not live in Waukesha, in fact even if you do, you may not know that Waukesha is not just the City of Waukesha. Just to the south of the city, there is a town, formerly known as the Town of Prairieville, now named the Village of Waukesha. This name change makes sense as the dividing line barely registers. Sure the homes get slightly closer together and you are more likely to see sidewalks and street lights, but the border was only noticeable to those looking. This border prior to this year was most significant for the lesser taxes required of the inhabitants of the village (A goal stated in the official Village of Waukesha mission statement may I add (1)). However, now that the diversion of Lake Michigan water is nearly complete, the dividing line will be that of where we source our water: private wells or the Great Lakes. 

Work on the diversion on Les Paul HWY/164/59. This stretch of road was the most visible area of the construction to me as this is the road I use to drive home from work when back in Waukesha (2)

        Unlike most urban/suburban places in the USA, I would imagine nearly every Waukesha resident knows where their water is coming from. This is due to the discovery of unsafe levels of radon in the pumped aquifer water some years ago, and a subsequent requirement that the City of Waukesha find a new source of water. After several years of research by both local Waukesha researchers and a regional committee for South East Wisconsin, there was only one source of water that could sufficiently meet the demands of the city of 70,000+ inhabitants, the Great Lakes (3). 

        The biggest issue getting in the way of making this necessity a reality was that of the passage of US legislation and adoption of multilateral agreements between the US great lake states and the Canadian great lake provinces restricting the use of lake water to only entities within the Great Lakes watershed. Despite being just 20 miles from the great lakes, Waukesha sits in the Greater Mississippi watershed with its position on the Fox River. The Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, a compact carrying the weight of federal law due to its approval by congress and the president during the George W. Bush Administration, is the legislation that prevents the movement of Great Lakes water outside of the Great Lakes basin (3, 4, 5). However, this legislation has two exceptions: 1) border cities (Cities with part, but not all, of their land in the Great Lakes River Basin) are allowed to pump water freely to all parts of their city with the consent of the governor and 2) border counties could ask for permission to pump water into their cities only with the consent of all 8 state governors who signed the compact (3). 

        The eastern most communities of Waukesha County have territory in the Great Lakes Basin, so as a result, Waukesha was able to apply for Great Lakes water through this law to all other signatories of the compact (6). However, while other communities have bandied around requesting water through this 2nd exception, Waukesha was the first to formally request Great Lakes water access, thus despite this request being one which was fully justified for both legal and moral reasons, there was still much conversion over the new precedent this would cause (6, 7). Additionally, this second exception was only meant to be used in cases of great necessity, thus the requirements for approval were incredibly strict, requiring that Great Lakes water be the last possible water source that any border bounty community could request, which seems the case in Waukesha's case (3). 

        As a result of the admittedly valid concerns of the Great Lakes bordering states, Waukesha, in its original application for 10.9 million gallons of water a day stated that it would return all water diverted back into the great lakes basin via the Root River, with the water being cleaned so as to be at a higher quality than the water originally brought into the city, despite the amount of water being taken generally seen as having a hardly notable effect on the overall Great Lakes water system (7). While the signatories of the compact did end up approving the diversion project, with the project now expected to be done this year, the volume of water permitted was reduced to 8.2 million gallons a day. The reason for the reduction in the amount from what was requested was a result of Waukesha, in its original application, estimating a yearly increase in demand of 1.5% as a result of natural expansion, with the signatories not consenting to potential urban sprawl in the region. In addition, the original plans requested enough water to cover an expansion of the City of Waukesha water supply into the village, an expansion that has since been postponed indefinitely (8). 

In this map of the Greater Waukesha Area, the area encircled by the black dotted line shows the original proposal for where the lake water would be delivered to. The area encircled by the red line shows the area to be served by the approved lake water diversion (8)

        As a Village of Wisconsin resident whose family bought our house here in the midst of the application process, it's hard to not have conflicted feelings about these developments we have been left out of. When first moving in, we needed to have our well tested for radon, and with higher-than-safe amounts being found, radon abatement was required to be done. While well water is both the cheapest and best water that I have ever had from the tap (Waukesha did not use to have the name "Spring City" for no reason), it is worrying that with potential further depletion of the aquifers beneath us, we may eventually get to a level of radon in the water that cannot be abated to be kept safe. Perhaps we will have further contamination with pesticides or "forever chemicals" or anything of the like. Given the rural-urban interface that is present through much of this area, there is both a high density of farms and a high density of people living whose water could turn into runoff into the Fox River, the main water source which replenishes our local groundwater (7), there is ample opportunity for contamination. It's because of these concerns and the immense, more than a decade-long effort that the City of Waukesha needed to undertake to fix its issue with radon that water conservation in my family is quite important. Being off the water mains means that ecological disasters involving our groundwater do not have quick easy solutions and thus we do have to take care of our local lakes, rivers, and groundwater like it's the only resources we have. I could only hope that it would take us less than 13 years to fix a potential water disaster here in the village. 

Citations: 

1. http://www.townofwaukesha.us/read_more_about_waukesha.php 

2. https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/waukesha/2022/11/11/waukesha-lake-michigan-pipeline-project-on-schedule-for-2023-deadline/69620183007/

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekg8Bt8mzFk

4. https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/WaterUse/Compact.html

5. https://www.glslcompactcouncil.org/ - General Great Lakes data 

6. https://www.glslcompactcouncil.org/program-areas/water-diversions/

7. https://archive.jsonline.com/news/waukesha/11th-hour-effort-aims-to-kill-waukesha-water-plan-b99746218z1-383562971.html/

8. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2016/05/15/waukeshas-price-of-lake-water-no-expansion-of-borders/84958374/