Waukesha Water Utility Experiences 3rd Well Failing This Year

A third radium-compliant well has failed this year at the which has forced the city to continue using water that currently does not meet the EPA’s mandated radium levels.

The Waukesha Water Commission will be discussing that have been at well nos. 3, 8 and 10 at its meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Waukesha Water Utility, 115 Delafield St.

Well No. 8 was put back online May 2 and work on , with the well going back online in June. Well No. 3 failed on Mother’s Day on May 8.

The Waukesha Water Commission will be asked to approve emergency repairs to Well No. 3 at its meeting Thursday.

“Actually we had an issue with our filter,” Waukesha Water Utility General Manager Dan Duchniak said. “We made the repairs to our filter. We brought the well back on and the well pump failed.”

The repairs on Well No. 3 will begin “as soon as possible, so that we can get back to providing fully compliant water from that facility,” Duchniak said.

Well No. 3 provides a little over one million gallons of water a day. Well No. 8 blends water from two shallow wells to provide 3.7 million gallons of water a day. Well No. 10 provides 3.5 million gallons of water a day.

While the city currently doess not meet the EPA’s standards for maximum radium levels allowed in the water supply, the EPA has said that people drinking the non-compliant water would need to drink two liters of it over a period of 70 years for a one in a million chance to develop bone cancer from drinking the non-complaint water, Duchniak explained.

“Doing so for the short term is not considered a health risk,” Duchniak said.

The city won’t be fined by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for turning on the non-compliant wells because the Waukesha Water Utility is still under a June 2018 deadline to be able to provide water that is compliant with the radium levels.

It is more than just providing that water, though. The Waukesha Water Utility is being ordered to be able to provide radium-compliant water on its maximum service day with its largest well out of order.

The Waukesha Water Utility is still in compliance with its interim consent order that expires June 2018. That order allows the city to use flow-weighted averaging during a period of 12 months to meet specific radium levels. The compliance order allows the city to use non-compliant wells through a forced measure clause when events to the well are outside of the utility’s control.

The timely repairs and getting the wells back into action means “we will be in compliance with our agreement for flow-weighted averaging even though we have run into these outages,” Duchniak said.

The city is applying through the Great Lakes Compact to divert water past the Subcontinental Divide and to return the water to Lake Michigan in order to meet the deadline. The city has identified possible water suppliers as Milwaukee, Oak Creek or Racine.

The Waukesha Water Utility’s application has been in limbo since it originally was approved for submission by the Common Council a year ago. The Waukesha Water Utility to move the application forward to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Waukesha is the first community to apply for this type of a diversion under the terms of the Great Lakes Compact. In order to pipe water from Lake Michigan, the application has to be approved by all governors of the Great Lakes.

The city is applying for the water because its current deep well source is prevented from refilling by a shale layer that keeps water from re-entering the groundwater, leaving a declining water source. The city is also needs to meet the EPA’s mandate to reduce radium levels in its water supply or face stiff, recurring penalties and fines.

Duchniak said the three well failures show why it is “critical” to find a new water source for Waukesha residents.

“It just shows why there is a need to develop a new water supply, because these deep aquifer wells are not as reliable as we think they are,” Duchniak said.