Waukesha sets Jan. 28 meeting on bid for Lake Michigan water
Waukesha - City officials later this month will unveil a draft application to pump Lake Michigan water to Waukesha for its residents and businesses, Water Utility General Manager Dan Duchniak said Tuesday.
Switching Waukesha's supply from groundwater wells to the lake - if approved by the governors of Wisconsin and the other seven Great Lakes states - would cost an estimated $78 million in construction costs, officials said. The price includes building a pipeline to discharge the city's treated wastewater to Underwood Creek in Wauwatosa so the water would flow back to Lake Michigan, as required by a Great Lakes protection compact.
The city's draft application will be discussed Jan. 28 at a special joint meeting of the Common Council and Water Utility Commission, Duchniak said. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the Common Council Chambers at City Hall, 201 Delafield St.
The utility will respond to questions from members of the council and commission at the meeting before opening the discussion to the public, Duchniak said.
Mayor Larry Nelson said the public will have several weeks to study the application and to comment on it before he asks the council to approve the request.
"The water utility and common council will be holding additional meetings," Nelson said in a statement released Tuesday.
Nelson said he plans to ask the council in March or April for permission to submit the application to the state Department of Natural Resources.
Waukesha officials late last year asked Milwaukee, Racine and Oak Creek water utilities to send letters by Jan. 31 stating their willingness to negotiate selling lake water to Waukesha. Those letters will become part of a final application.
Water from the city's deep sandstone wells is contaminated with radium and salt. Buying lake water would allow Waukesha to close the deep wells and avoid radium treatment costs.
Waukesha is under a state order to comply with federal radium safe-water standards by June 2018.
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