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More
work needed for beach pollution
cleanup.
Health
official urges Great Lakes protection. |
City
should consider water sales to New Berlin
west of divide, alderman says
June
26, 2006 -- The city should study
the possibility of selling water to a portion
of New Berlin west of the subcontinental divide,
according to Ald. T. Anthony Zielinski.
A
local consultant on water issues, however,
says such sales would be against the law.
"There
is growing interest in southeastern Wisconsin
in water conservation, water reuse and thoughtful
land use planning," consultant James
Rowen said. "The alderman's proposal
takes policy in the opposite direction."
Zielinski
is sponsoring a resolution that would direct
city officials to investigate the potential
of selling water to the part of New Berlin
that is both west of the divide and part of
the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.
The
Milwaukee Water Works already sells water
to New Berlin to be used in the area of that
city east of the divide.
"There
may be an opportunity to increase Water Works
revenues by
providing
water service to the middle one-third of New
Berlin," Zielinski's resolution said.
"It would be desirable to assess the
feasibility of exploring new revenue generating
opportunities by increasing volume sales while
providing an excellent alternative potable
water source to an area currently reliant
upon well water high in radium content."
New
Berlin officials recently told the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel that their city
would not meet a federal deadline for cleaning
their water of radium. Importing water from
Milwaukee is an alternative attractive to
some Waukesha County communities, but opposed
by many others east of the divide.
For
a briefing paper on the issue and its implications,
click here.
Current
law requires all Great Lakes governors and
Canadian premiers to approve a Lake Michigan
diversion across the divide. That issue is
not addressed in Zielinski's resolution.
"Sending
water across the divide would be illegal under
current law," Rowen said.
Because
the rules governing Great Lakes diversions
are currently under review in the United States
and Canada, he said, adoption of Zielienski's
resolution "could jeopardize the adoption
and implementation of that agreement in Wisconsin
and across the entire Great Lakes region."
Zielinski's
resolution is scheduled to be discussed during
the Common Council's Public Works Committee
at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
More
work required for beach pollution cleanup
Feb.
27, 2006 -- Fixing contamination
problems at Bradford Beach will require treating
stormwater as well as implementing the planned
$1.3 million project to reroute county outfalls,
according to county documents.
Outfalls
are sewer pipe openings. The county's outfalls
now allow contaminated water to flow across
the beach.The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee's
Great Lakes Institute found in 2004 that water
from the outflows contributed to E. coli contamination
of the beach.
The
State Department of Natural Resources believes
"it will be necessary to treat stormwater
coming from a ravine in Lake Park and a parking
lot west of the Bradford bathhouse due to
the level of pollutants coming from these
areas," according to a county document.
The
additional cost is now estimated at $180,000,
but those figures are "quite preliminary,"
according to the document.
Health
official urges Great Lakes protection
Charter developer says straddling
county provision should be scrapped
Sept.
26, 2005 -- A proposal to allow counties
that "straddle" the boundaries of
the Great Lakes Basin to draw water from Lake
Michigan should be scrapped, according to a
local health official.
Decisions
on who should be allowed to get water from Lake
Michigan or other Great Lakes should be made
on the basis of "natural resource and hydrologic
boundaries and sound science," wrote Peter
McAvoy, vice president of environmental health
services at the Sixteeth Street Community Health
Center.
McAvoy,
who chaired the US-Canadian task force that
originally developed and adopted the Great Lakes
Charter in 1985, made his recommendations in
a letter to David Naftzger, executive director
of the Council of Great Lakes Governors. The
council is weighing changes in the rules that
govern access to Great Lakes water.
Allowing
water diversions based on politics would leave
basin communities "hard pressed to deny
claims later," McAvoy said in an interview.
Protecting
the Great Lakes and the quality of their water
is important, he said. Continued degradation
would have "both direct and indirect effects
to human health," he said.
There
already are fish advisories and occasional warning
to avoid swimming in the lake for health reasons,
he said.
If
Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes water quality
is improved, he said, "we can swim and
we can fish and we don't have to worry about
our health."
Those
types of things, he said, would be "an
improvement to our overall quality of life."
Poor
water quality also has an economic impact, McAvoy
said.
"We've
spent an enourmous amount of money in the last
few years correcting problems that really come
from our water, like cryptosporidium,"
he said.
In
his letter, sent on behalf of the clinic, McAvoy
said a proposed charter provision that would
allow some water bottlers to take Great Lakes
water should be eliminated.
The
exemption would undermine key sections of the
charter and "could have enormous and adverse
impacts on the waters of the Basin," he
wrote.
In
addition, all Great Lakes communities -- including
those within the Basin that now enjoy easy access
to the water -- should be required to implement
water conservation measures, McAvoy said.
"There
are practices, techniques, that are tried and
tested," he said in the interview. "We
just haven't done it."
