If governors from the eight Great Lakes states allow Waukesha to tap Lake Michigan water, the annual financial boon to the Milwaukee Water Works would be at least $1.7 million and would grow each year, according to a utility official.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=475244
How much economic development (residential, commercial, perhaps industrial) will Milwaukee lose by supplying water to fast growing suburban areas in the Mississippi River Basin? More than $1.7 million per year.
The entire SE Wisconsin diversion debate is driven by gross mismanagement of groundwater by communities that should have been looking ahead. To reward that mismanagement and waste with Great Lakes water is a mistake. It will lead to an endless round of such requests, and ultimately lead to the draining of the Lakes.
And the compact that sets rules for (i.e., allows) such diversions has not yet been ratified by a single state.
Better yet, some of these same fast growing suburbs don't even want to conserve water wasted on their lawns. So in essence Lake Michigan will be used as a giant sprinkler system. See:
This is from yesterday's edition of the Kettle Index,
a Journal Sentinel-owned suburban in Western Waukesha
County paper.
The water issue is everywhere, and with various
tributaries of interpretation...
Water debate overflows to town plan commission
Kelly Smith, Staff Writer July 20, 2006
Town of Delafield - While Supervisor Clare Dundon may have succeeded Tuesday night, July 18, in opening the floodgates of debate over water conservation, her idea of banning residential sprinkler systems drowned in a
lack of support from fellow town Plan Commission members.
While plan commissioners were sympathetic to her concerns about how water is being wasted in the town, they were not convinced that banning residential
sprinkler systems was a solution to the problem.
"It is literally a drop in the bucket," said Commissioner Tom Tagtow.
Tagtow suggested the amount of water being used on lawns in the town is insignificant when compared to the amount of water that would be consumed by the proposed 2-million-square-foot retail, commercial and residential development near Highway C and I-94.
Dundon explained she was concerned that the town's rapid population growth and increasing number of large homes was contributing to a potential shortage of water in aquifers supplying private wells in town.
Furthermore, she argued, automated residential lawn sprinkling systems were contributing to the wasteful use of water.
She asserted that the systems automatically begin watering lawns, whether they need it or not.
"I have seen them watering lawns while it was raining," she said.
"You don't have to think about turning them on. You don't have to think about turning them off. You don't have to think about whether the lawn needs to be
watered," she said.
If the automated sprinkler systems were prohibited, she suggested, residents might think twice before watering their lawns.
"Because you can live in a $500,000 home doesn't give you the right to deplete the natural resource that the rest of us depend upon," she added.
But Plan Commission Chairman Tom Oberhaus, a farmer, challenged her premise that the water was being wasted.
"I think any time you have water going back into the ground, that is good," he said.
Furthermore, he argued, private septic systems did a better job of preserving the water supply than toilets using municipal water and sewer systems.
The septic systems, he suggested, return water to the ground, while municipal sewer systems flush it away.
"If anybody would do an honest study of it, maybe we would find out how much we waste every time we flush the toilet," he said.
Town Board Chairman Paul Kanter, a federal prosecutor, had a more lawyerly approach to the issue: "Isn't there a fairness issue here? One resident can get to
use their system simply because they got it installed before the deadline, while another resident cannot use one because they didn't have it before the ordinance was passed?"
Commissioner Gary Meyers compared Dundon's proposal to a recent attempt by the commission to ban tree-cutting in the town.
"I am not sure it is something that we, as town government, should be trying to do," he said.
Meyer agreed with Dundon that town residents sometimes engage in wasteful practices when watering their lawns.
Dundon responded philosophically to her fellow commissioners.
She said that even if the town did not adopt the ordinance, at least the public debate about it might raise awareness of the issue and prompt town residents
to use water more carefully.
(c)Kettle Moraine Index 2006
Posted by Dave at July 22, 2006 12:41 PM