Canadian Criticism of Waukesha's Great Lakes Diversion Plan Unfounded, Says Local Water Official

Concerns raised by a Canadian mayor that Waukesha’s plans to purchase Lake Michigan water would harm water levels in the Great Lakes are unfounded, said Waukesha Water Utility General Manager Dan Duchniak in a letter this week.

“As the first community in a straddling county to apply for Great Lakes water, Waukesha will set a positive precedent for any future applications,” Duchniak said in the letter, which is attached to this article. “For instance, the (Great Lakes Compact) requires that Waukesha returns approximately 85 percent of the water it withdraws. Although Waukesha’s daily withdrawal would be only about 1/1 millionth of 1 percent of the water from the Great Lakes, Waukesha is proposing to exceed the compact’s requirement and to return 100 percent of the volume of water it withdraws, resulting a zero change to water levels.”

Thunder Bay, Ontario, borders Lake Superior. The city’s mayor, Keith Hobbs, raised concerns last week about Waukesha’s application to divert Lake Michigan water past the Great Lakes Basin. The Great Lakes Compact allows for water diversions for communities in counties that straddle the Great Lakes Basin.

Waukesha’s water currently runs off to the Mississippi River. If the diversion request is approved, the city would pipe water from Oak Creek and return it via Underwood Creek.

But Hobbs says he is going to fight Waukesha’s water request.

“Where do you draw the line,” Hobbs told CBC News. “You know, the next municipality over from Waukesha or ... municipalities in Canada that aren't on the Great Lakes ... I could see water wars coming if that's the case."

The city needs approval from all Great Lakes states because it is just outside the Subcontinental Divide where water flows naturally to Lake Michigan before it can receive Great Lakes water. In addition to being under a June 2018 deadline to remove radium from the city’s water supplies, Waukesha has declining water quality and quantity in its eight deep wells and three shallow wells.

“Any threat to Great Lakes levels is not from Waukesha’s application,” Duchniak said in the letter to Hobbs. “The threat to the lakes would be to ignore the agreement and the compact. Waukesha provides the opportunity to show that this historic cooperation among governments to protect resources is actually working.”

In addition to radium, the deep wells have problems with total dissolved solids and temperature. At times, water pulled from the wells have reached as high as 98 degrees, according to a 2012 Waukesha Water Utility presentation. The shallow wells have issues with iron and manganese. Additionally, arsenic has been found on a property in the Town of Waukesha where the city could build shallow wells, which would require more treatment.

Even if the city is unsuccessful in obtaining water from Lake Michigan, the city would still have to pay capital expenditures to fix the city’s water supply. Under any scenario, water bills are projected to at least double. However, the sanitary sewer portion of the bill would remain the same.

Waukesha plans to receive Lake Michigan water from Oak Creek.