MILWAUKEE — Communities located near Lake Michigan are forced to compete with each other for their water needs and the competition is halting growth in some regions with well problems, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
For example, Waukesha, WI, lies west of the sub-continental divide that marks the edge of the basin that drains into Lake Michigan and, for that reason, likely will never receive a drop of lake water, under a federal law and international agreement.
Numerous other eastern Wisconsin communities with well water problems — from Waterford in Racine County to Hartford in Washington County — also face costly investments for removing radium or finding other sources of water. They, too, are denied access to the lake, the newspaper reported.
But the same rules do not apply to northeastern Illinois communities outside the lake's drainage basin where generous allocations of lake water have fueled growth.
Nearly 7 million northeastern Illinois residents — more than half of the state's total population — now consume lake water, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, as reported in the newspaper.
Chicago and other water utilities serve municipalities as customers and reap the profits. Chicago alone filters 1 billion gallons of water per day for residents of the city and 124 other communities. About 200 Illinois municipalities tap into the lake, the newspaper reported.
Waukesha is the largest city facing a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandate to reduce the amount of radioactive radium in the water it serves residents from wells, according to the paper. This federal regulation could cost the city between $75 million and $135 million for some of the options being considered, from treating the water to remove radium to drilling distant wells in an untainted aquifer.
A different federal law and international agreements prevent Waukesha from a less expensive option — asking Milwaukee or Oak Creek to sell it water from the lake, the newspaper reported.
Pumping water out of the basin to Waukesha would be considered a new diversion and require approval of each of the Great Lakes states, under the US Water Resources Development Act of 1986.
A separate Great Lakes charter requires a state seeking any new diversion of more than 5 million gallons per day to notify and seek the consent of the other Great Lakes states and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, the article said.
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