Milwaukee, a Global Water Hub
Before you read all about how cool Milwaukee and its water technology is… some background on stormwater and why this technology is needed may be a helpful starting point. I invite you to a — fascinating! — science lesson here.
A championed water system
Milwaukee expanded its sewage system and developed more water treatment facilities, like the Jones Island Water Reclamation Facility in 1925 and the South Shore Water Reclamation Facility in 1968.
Jones Island facility
South Shore facility
Despite efforts in the early 1900’s to create more water filtration systems, Milwaukee’s water quality remained poor through the 1970’s. A nine-year project started in the late 70’s to construct Milwaukee’s Deep Tunnel system, providing the region with over 17 miles of tunnels, 300 feet underground, to prevent sewer overflows.
These tunnels, now managed by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD), were a game changer for the issues of health and sanitation in Lake Michigan. The two main water reclamation facilities in Milwaukee, Jones Island and South Shore, have massive capacities to treat water efficiently — about 150 million gallons on a dry day and 630 million gallons when it rains — but they max out around there.
300 feet below ground in Milwaukee’s Deep Tunnel
The Deep Tunnels are a storage solution, essentially, when rainwater exceeds the facilities’ volume. At the end of the day, the Deep Tunnels keep this water out of basements, streets, and Lake Michigan by preventing sewer overflows. The Milwaukee region now averages 2.3 overflows per year, opposed to 50-60 overflows a year before the Deep Tunnel construction. In fact, these facilities capture and clean 98.5% of all stormwater and wastewater in MMSD’s service region, exceeding the EPA’s standard of 85% for the 700 cities in the US with combined sewer systems like Milwaukee’s.
A water centric-city
Milwaukee is a water-centric city. Historians have referred to Milwaukee as “a city built on water” (there’s actually a PBS program with this title!). A traveler could come across our four largest bodies of water — the Milwaukee River, Kinnickinnic River, Menomonee River, and Lake Michigan — on a quick 15-minute drive through downtown. (Fun fact: did you know all the Great Lakes combined account for one-fifth of the entire planet’s freshwater? And Lake Michigan is the second biggest of the five lakes.) The city also spans both the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds, the two largest watersheds in the U.S.
Milwaukee is increasingly being recognized as a world hub of water technology and research, having more than 238 water-related busisnesses operating in the region, including five of the 11 largest water firms in the world. The region’s water industry is a $10.5 billion market with 20k jobs — this is 4% of the total world water business. Who knew!?
The water industry is so large in Southeastern Wisconsin (mostly made up of Milwaukee), that it qualifies as an “regional innovation cluster,” as defined by the U.S. Small Business; this refers to geographic concentrations of organically interconnected public and private organizations of all sizes that specialize in a particular industry and use their network to strengthen the region’s economy, resources, and goals in that field. The Water Council was founded in 2009 to bring those organizations together.
In fact, Milwaukee is one of only 14 cities worldwide in the United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme, which aims to maintain and improve water quality system dynamics, health, and sustainability as well as fresh water technology, policy, and management.
Here’s a little explanation as to why we are so water-centric, according to a UWM study on the water markets in the U.S. and the world.
As Milwaukeeans, it can be easy to forget how lucky we are to have such a massive natural resource at our fingertips. We benefit from it on a very basic level for drinking water, but also for our personal recreation and citywide economy. It’s an important reminder as populations are becoming more and more at risk of water scarcity and drought. To boot, we have this absolute powerhouse of water systems technology. Thank you, water experts!
“Most cities would kill to have the system Milwaukee has.”
— Don Theiler, former head of King County Wastewater Treatment Division in Seattle
Misconceptions about Milwaukee’s stretch of Lake Michigan
So, saying all this…let’s talk about the criticism of Milwaukee’s lakefront.
I have lived alongside that perfect Lake Michigan my entire life. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I never truly considered the impact these waters have had on me. When I think back to my childhood, nearly every notable activity revolved around water (we are also lucky to have 15,074 lakes in Wisconsin). I’m grateful to the water-focused entities I’ve collaborated with in Milwaukee for reminding me of water’s importance — not only as a fundamental life need, but also my lifestyle.
When I think back on my childhood, and years since then in Milwaukee, I also recall so many comments about the quality of the lake’s water, hearing so much criticism and negativity towards the city for letting Lake Michigan and its beaches get so dirty that people can’t enjoy them. I remember in summer, the lakefront smelled horrible — like dead fish, and often still does. People often blamed it on Lake Michigan, as if it was so contaminated that it literally stunk up the city. Others would blame it on the alewives that washed up on shore every year, with the implication that the lakewater was so filthy the fish were dying in masses. While I’ve heard fewer mentions of unsanitary swimming and fish graveyards over the years, I’m learning in all my self-education why these misconceptions exist/existed. (And when I refer to Lake Michigan here, I’m referring to Milwaukee’s lakefront/impact area.)
Alewife zombies at McKinley Beach in Milwaukee — it’s not uncommon on Great Lakes’ beaches!
First off, it’s not yet known why the alwives die off so frequently in such large quantities, but theories relate to their spawning migration from the ocean. Every year, they are new residents in vastly different waters (colder, salt-free, with different nutrients). The accumulation of fish on a particular beach is simply due to wind and currents. So, there are a lot of science-based factors that could explain the stinky visits every year, more so than a dirty lake.
Until the Deep Tunnel was constructed, sewers in Milwaukee overflowed each time more than one-quarter of an inch of rain fell, sending sewage and bacteria into the rivers and lake. The construction of Milwaukee’s water treatment facilities, though, isn’t really an exciting news story, and we all know that controversial stories draw more attention. It turns out that popular Milwaukee radio talkers and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel denounced the facility for decades by sharing wildly inaccurate misinformation about its success rate and accusing it of wasting tax dollars.
Though, as we know from my rambling above, the Deep Tunnel been incredibly successful since it started operating.
As usual with a lot of media, the most rare occurrences that will stir up controversy receive more publication than those that promote the positive impact of government projects — the latter is possible! A UW-Milwaukee study found that the Journal Sentinel blamed sewer overflows for bacterial contamination of beaches in 19 separate stories over a five-year period, but the beach closures were proven to be the result of stormwater contamination from fecal waste from pets and wildlife, particularly sea gulls.
This illustration looks like it’s probably been in a science textbook somewhere, and for good reason. It’s a great visual to see nonpoint pollution’s several origins.
Let’s talk about this kind of stormwater pollution. There is “point pollution,” mostly caused by sewer overflows, but it was only 9% of the cause for river contamination once the Deep Tunnel began operating (river contamination = lake contamination because Milwaukee’s three rivers flow into Lake Michigan). So, point pollution was being addressed, but “non-point pollution” became the remaining 91% of Milwaukee’s water pollution issues. This type of pollution is often referred to as stormwater runoff — essentially anything that is on the ground that the bodies of water eventually collect when it rains, i.e. animal/bird feces, dirt and salt from streets and parking lots, vehicle fluids, fertilizers, and pesticides.
The researchers in the UWM study also found during educational talks throughout the city that audiences overwhelmingly believed sewer overflows were the cause of beach closures and that the Deep Tunnel was a monumental failure. But what’s interesting is that we — Milwaukee residents living alongside the rivers and lake — were causing the problem. Non-point pollution like this is more of a challenge to reduce large-scale without true understanding and investment from residents, because so much of the contamination comes from our daily decisions, like using toxic lawn fertilizers or ice melt.
However, changing the products that consumers rely on is generally not a popular approach, especially in today’s society in which people are increasingly opposed to inconvenience, and for some, even greater resistance to revising their daily behaviors. So, an alternative route that’s accessible to most people (from a price and convenience standpoint) is becoming increasingly popular: green infrastructure.
These suggestions are a combination of green infrastructure strategies and simple household management shifts — the more the better! Illustration from Missouri Stream Team.
Want to learn about how you can help move things along?
