By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
While the City of Waukesha may have been celebrating last week, Waterford Town Chairman Tom Hincz was far from happy.
Hincz said he was “extremely disappointed” in the decision made by governors of eight Great Lakes states to allow Lake Michigan water to be used by Waukesha for its water supply.
“I was told by state legislators, by folks on the DNR board months ago that this was slim to none that this would pass,” Hincz said. “Somehow, they managed to pass.
“To this day, I have not seen anything from the DNR that’s going to regulate flow, quality of water and anything that’s going to guarantee that our quality of water will stay the way it is today,” he added.
The diversion of the water – which will take water from Lake Michigan and then return it after use and treatment to the Root River near Franklin rather than the Fox River – has the potential to decrease flow by 11 percent to the Fox, according to data provided by the town.
Village President Tom Roanhouse said he’s heard it could be a loss of 8 million gallons a day of Waterford.
“No one knows exactly what that means,” Roanhouse said.
An eight-page document from the Town of Waterford documents how the decrease could result in water temperature increases, which could impact fishing on the river. The document, however, explains that much could happen, but no one can define what will.
“They don’t know,” Hincz said. “Nobody knows.”
The Fox River flows more than 200 miles from Colgate to Ottawa, Ill., with a watershed area of about 2,700 square miles. The upper part of the river flows through Waukesha, which has traditionally returned it’s treated water to the Fox River.
Waukesha requested the diversion for its water supply due to its current city wells being contaminated by radium – a naturally occurring radioactive substance that several communities have been forced to deal with.
The City of Burlington has already installed radium removal filters on two of its well, and is working to install the filter on another well.
Waukesha Mayor Shawn Reilly said that a radium removal effort wasn’t a complete solution. He said not only is the supply contaminated, but it has been drawn down more than 350 feet.
“It will be unsustainable,” Reilly said.
The Waukesha request had a number of conditions added to its original request, according to Jennifer Caddick of the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
“We applaud the great Lakes governors for agreeing with us that the Waukesha diversion application as submitted failed to meet the standards of the Great Lakes Compact,” she wrote in a news release.
The news release also stated that there will be no net water loss to the lakes as required by the compact, and that additional attention will need to be paid to make sure the terms of the agreement are honored.
Caddick said Tuesday that the conditions included the volume of water taken from Lake Geneva, and limited the water to basically Waukesha’s use only. She added that the Alliance of the Great Lakes is working for the betterment of all the states and lakes involved in the compact.
“We were in very close contact with the Wisconsin groups that were raising concerns,” Caddick said. “It’s certainly a complicated issue.
“The vote last week was not the end of this,” she added.
That’s of little comfort to Hincz.
“I kept asking, ‘what if?’” Hincz said. “And I was told, ‘ah, it’s not going to pass.”
The Waukesha diversion is one of three factors potentially affecting the Fox River in the Waterford area. On Monday, public hearings were held by the DNR regarding the potential dredging of the Fox River in the Town of Waterford, and where the sludge from that dredging would be placed.
“We have many questions about the disposal sites for the sludge,” Hincz said.
The Waterford Waterway Management District is coordinating the effort for not only the dredging, but a potential drawdown of the river levels to kill invasive species later this year.
The costs of those two projects are something that Hincz has concerns about, both as town chairman and as a riparian owner along the river.
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