Waukesha — State Department of Natural Resources Secretary Matthew Frank told Mayor Jeff Scrima Wednesday in a letter that the department will not begin reviewing Waukesha's application for a Great Lakes water supply until the mayor and other city officials stop their search for other possible sources.
A 2008 Great Lakes protection compact requires a municipality seeking lake water to demonstrate "there is no reasonable water supply alternative" other than the lakes, Frank says in the letter.
Though the city's application documents repeatedly state that lake water is the only sustainable water supply option available to Waukesha, the mayor has publicly stated his preference to continue evaluating other options, such as more wells, the Fox River and even continuing to remove radium from water pumped out of deep wells in a sandstone aquifer.
"The city must confirm that Great Lakes water is in fact the only long term sustainable water option," Frank says in the letter.
The Common Council approved submitting the application on April 8, and it was delivered to the DNR on May 20. Scrima, however, criticized a Great Lakes application in his successful campaign for mayor. He was elected April 6, defeating first-term mayor Larry Nelson, who championed the Great Lakes application.
The protection compact requires the application to be approved by Wisconsin and each of the other Great Lakes states because Waukesha is outside the Lake Michigan drainage basin.
The Great Lakes Compact Council of representatives from the states is meeting in Chicago, and some of those representatives are talking about Scrima's statements being in conflict with the application, said Bruce Baker, the department's water division administrator.
"If there is any question of other alternatives still being considered, we're not in a position to move forward" with our evaluation of the application, Baker said.
Scrima acknowledged the DNR was doing its job.
"I need to rally with the staff and the common council and have a good dialogue," he said Wednesday. "At this point, we, as the city, will have to have a discussion of how to move forward responsibly."
For his part, Scrima said he is evaluating what is meant by sustainable. He has not decided whether he will ask the council to withdraw the application, Scrima said.
Sustainable supply
Waukesha Water Utility General Manager Dan Duchniak said Wednesday that the Common Council sets policy for the city and the council supports the application for Great Lakes water.
"There is no other reasonable alternative," Duchniak said.
"We need to continue to move the application forward. It is the only sustainable water supply for the long term."
Continuing to rely on the deep wells is not viable because water levels in the sandstone aquifer are dropping, requiring more energy to pump it to the surface, Duchniak said. Water from the deeper depths contains even more radium and salt, requiring costly removal to meet federal drinking water standards.
Switching to wells drawing water from shallow aquifers closer to the surface is not sustainable because water levels in local streams and wetlands, such as the Vernon Marsh, would drop quickly, according to the application.
The application proposes buying an average of 10.9 million gallons of lake water per day to meet customer demand in the future.
In his letter to Scrima, Frank says the application also lacks information on costs of buying water from Racine and Oak Creek.
Application documents provide detailed costs of purchasing water only from Milwaukee, although Waukesha identified the two other cities as possible suppliers, Baker said.
In the same way, the application gives details on how Waukesha would return its treated wastewater to Lake Michigan if it purchased water from Milwaukee, but it does not provide similar information for Racine and Oak Creek, DNR officials said.
The compact requires the return flow to be as close as possible to the withdrawal location.
Frank's letter to Scrima notes that the mayor has questioned whether the application had gone through all local approvals before being submitted to the DNR. On June 1, Scrima criticized Duchniak for delivering the application before reviewing revisions made to the text with the council and Scrima.
Wednesday, City Attorney Curt Meitz rejected Scrima's demand for a detailed summary of all changes made to the application after the council approved it. No substantial changes were made, so it was not necessary to return the documents to the council for approval, Meitz says in a memo to Scrima.
Frank also reminds Scrima that the city has not paid a required $5,000 application review fee.