Patty Loew:
Early next month the city of Waukesha will file a formal request to divert water from Lake Michigan to replace its current water supply from wells contaminated with cancer causing radium. Because Waukesha is just outside of the Great Lakes basin, the diversion of lake water was very difficult until leaders of states and provinces surrounding the lakes signed the Great Lakes Compact. It sets up rules which, if Waukesha follows, allows them to divert water if it has no other reasonable alternative. But what constitutes a reasonable alternative? “In Wisconsin's” Art Hackett discovered information showing the best alternative might not be Lake Michigan.

Art Hackett:
This is the water Waukesha wants, Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes contain 20% of all of the fresh water in the world.

Dan Duchniak:
We're not saying that Great Lakes is the for sure option at this point. What we're saying is that it's our preferred option, it's the best environmental because we can recycle and reuse the water.

Art Hackett:
Waukesha wants to buy water from Milwaukee or some other lakeshore city, and return the treated water to a Lake Michigan tributary such as Wauwatosa’s Underwood Creek. But just past Waukesha's westernmost subdivisions, along the Fox River, a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is studying a different option.

Man:
There's water in there already.

Douglas Cherkauer:
City of Waukesha has put wells along the Fox River and we're trying to determine today whether those wells are having any effect on flow in the Fox.

Art Hackett:
The nearby wells hyrdrogeologist Doug Cherkauer is talking about are shallow and thus, radium free. The city argues if they were pumped too hard, they would reduce the flows in the Fox River and possibly affect springs and wetlands along the river. Or perhaps, not.

Doug Cherkauer:
Waukesha currently takes its waste water, treats it, puts it into the Fox River upstream from these wells. And if they're inducing some of the water out of the river into those wells, then they are recycling that part of the water.

Art Hackett:
If soil conditions are right, Doug Cherkauer says there may be an option which would provide a perpetual, radium free water source without harming the surrounding environment.

Doug Cherkauer:
It's a process known as riverbank filtration. It's fairly widely used in Europe, fairly widely used in western communities. Put a well down next to a river, pump the well hard, draw the water, filter it through aquifer material and if the water quality is pretty good to begin with, you're probably ok.

Dan Duchniak:
Some of the options that were screened out, including the Fox River

Art Hackett:
When the water utility previewed the application to divert Lake Michigan water, general manager Dan Duchniak told city council members that the concept the UWM group is studying had already been studied and ruled out.

Dan Duchniak:
Shallow wells south and west of the city and the Lake Michigan option and we believe Lake Michigan is the best environmental option and is the lowest cost alternative for us.

Art Hackett:
But others disagree.

Peter McAvoy:
We don't think that the information that has been collected so far has been adequately assembled and analyzed in a way that you can make that determination.

Art Hackett:
Peter McAvoy is with the coalition of groups who have long expressed concerns with Waukesha's diversion dreams.

Peter McAvoy:
What we've been asking the Waukesha water utility is, let's see all of the options that you've actually considered and let's do this side by side analysis. They have never provided a side by side analysis from an environmental or economic perspective.

Art Hackett:
The coalition McAvoy is part of helped obtain the grant paying for the current study on the Fox.

Art Hackett:
Even though the study comes near the end of the diversion debate, the concept is not new. Documents obtained by Wisconsin Public Television show the same concept was studied and given favorable reviews by a consultant hired by the city of Waukesha nearly 10 years ago.

Art Hackett:
The study ranked the Fox wells as having the highest overall benefits. Lake Michigan water was a close second. It was the most reliable option but was lowest in terms of potential political headaches. In 2005, another study for the Wisconsin department of natural resources also promoted riverbank filtration. Water utility general manager Dan Duchniak says followup studies found the concept environmentally undesirable.

Dan Duchniak:
There would be a draw down in the aquifers if we started using them for our water supply and that would have a negative impact on the streams, wetlands, rivers in the county.

Art Hackett:
The tests are intended to show if the wells are diminishing the river's flows. Or whether new wells could be drilled to take advantage of filtration through sand layers along the stream.

Art Hackett:
You're convinced that the geological conditions to allow to you drill a whole bunch more shallow wells, it will draw from the Fox River, that doesn't exist?

Dan Duchniak:
We believe that does not exist. In fact, when we had our meeting with Dr. Cherkauer and Dan Feinstein and others, who were here meeting with us, they all pretty much agreed with us that those features did not exist near the city of Waukesha.

Art Hackett:
Does that sand connection exist as far as you know?

Doug Cherkauer:
That's what we're trying to find out. And we don't know at the present time.

Art Hackett:
Under a consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency, the city of Waukesha has to provide radium free water year round by 2018.

Dan Duchniak:
We need to move forward because it's going to take five years to design, build, construct and place into service and acquire the land necessary to actually construct any project that we do.

Art Hackett:
And Waukesha has only started to negotiate with cities to purchase water. Milwaukee, Racine and Oak Creek are all possibilities. But McAvoy thinks returning the water to Underwood Creek instead of the Fox as they do now, poses more problems than the city realizes.

Peter McAvoy:
The stream that they're going to dump their waste water in is a totally different body of water. You can't...

Art Hackett:
Than the Fox River?

Peter McAvoy:
Than the Fox River. It's a lot smaller. It has serious environmental problems if it's Underwood Creek. But all of their options may well have problems. So we would like to see what they are and then be able to make a determination.

Art Hackett:
And city figures show that if the water has to be pumped all the way back to the lakefront, the cost nearly triples.

Patty Loew:
Waukesha hopes to unveil its formal water diversion application in a few weeks. There will be hearings on the plan and final approval is required by other states in the Great Lakes region.