The City of Waukesha, Wisconsin has made the first application under a 2008, eight-state Compact for a diversion of water out of the Great Lakes basin, but the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has, since the spring of this year rated the application deficient and incomplete.
Now the DNR has forwarded to Waukesha a letter of stunning depth and breadth that lists 49 question areas.
Answering them will require extensive new documentation, analyses and study by the City - and no doubt further delay the DNR's review, any work on an Environmental Impact Statement, or the forwarding of the application into the eightstate regional review, where each state gets to ask its own set of questions, etc. et al..
I'm going to include below a blog posting with a list of embedded links to the DNR letter, relevant posts and websites for those who want to follow this precedent-setting, but stalled application in more detail.
The submission of an 11-page detailed letter from the DNR followed Waukesha's cancellation of a meeting with the Wisconsin resource regulatory agency about the application's status because representatives from an environmental coalition intended to sit in and observe.
Waukesha has had transparency shortcomings about the diversion process before, so while the canceled meeting was a setback for the public and the free flow of information, the DNR took the time in drafting its letter to put dozens of issues on the table for all to see.
The concerns ran the gamut, from questions about compliance with state statutes and the Compact, to water conservation, wastewater disposal and its return to the lake, costs to ratepayers, impacts to the environment, the the need for comparisons and further study of alternatives, the need for the application's review by neighboring communities being added to the city's water delivery territory as system growth, and so forth - - a veritable do-over - - and by no means the end of the questions - - even though the city had adopted the application in April after a long period of study using consultants, outside attorneys and a PR firm.
I've collected a number of items, posts, and websites at this one posting and offer it as a handy archive for those following the Great Lakes diversion issue, and the larger issue of water management in the US.
The Great Lakes comprise about 20% of the world's fresh surface water; the Compact is meant to manage and conserve it by making out-of-basin diversions allowable in a few very few circumstances.
Waukesha will have to convince all eight Great Lakes states that the diversion is the only reasonable way to provide an EPA-compliant water standard - - and also get past Wisconsin hearings, two Canadian provincial advisory reviews, a negotiation with a willing seller, such as the City of Milwaukee that has its own list of conditions, and complete funding, land acquisition and easement problems, plus finish construction of a pipeline and a disposal system - - all by a court-imposed 2018 deadline.