WAUKESHA, WI (WTAQ) – The state DNR will hold three public hearings in mid-August on Waukesha’s request to tap into Lake Michigan for its drinking water.
The state issued a preliminary report Wednesday which indicates that the city has enough justification to win the necessary approval of its request by all the other Great Lakes states and Canadian provinces.
Waukesha is trying to become the first to get the okay to use Great Lakes water while being located outside the lakes’ natural basins — where tap-ins are allowed under the Great Lakes water protection pact of 2008.
The public hearings were announced Thursday. They’re set for August 17th at Carroll University in Waukesha, and August 18th at UW-Milwaukee and the Racine Masonic Temple.
The DNR has started a longer than usual public comment period of 60 days, because of the heavy interest in the subject.
Waukesha is under a court order to eliminate radium from its drinking water by 2018 — and the DNR says Waukesha has no real alternatives close by.
If it takes Lake Michigan water, it must put an equal amount back in the form of clean wastewater. It would be discharged to the Root River in Franklin.
(Story courtesy of Wheeler News Service)
