Despite the fact that the city engineer told Monkeyleg that it wasn't because of Milwaukee's sewer problems, with a straight face, I'd be skeptical.
Here's a little background for the non-Milwaukee posters:
- Due to the historically curious fact that we once had a small dynasty of socialist mayors, Milwaukee was one of the first large cities in the U.S. to install a "modern" sewer system.
- Unfortunately, by doing it so early they, jumped the gun, and installed what's known as a "combined sewer" That means rain from the streets, and pewp from homes goes in the same pipe. When modern sewage treatment came on the scene, this was a huge problem when it rained. It's way too much for any plant to handle. Untreated sewage was going into lake Michigan just like the old days.
- Liberal Milwaukee decided they needed to come up with a scam ("wealth distribution") to make the "rich" suburbs (which all have modern separated rain and pewp sewers) pay for Milwaukee's screwed up sewers, or even better, get them out of having to replace them.
- Milwaukee is the driving force behind forming the MMSD, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District, which all municipalities that share Milwaukee's exit point into Lake Michigan have to participate in.
- The burbs have a chance to either be full members with a seat on the MMSD board, or, just be a non-voting "customer" city of the MMSD. Most burbs chose the "customer" status fearing that being a full member will somehow cost them more money.
- The Burbs were stupid.
- The MMSD packs it's board with pro-Milwaukee people who will follow the "screw the rich suburbs" agenda.
- Instead of biting the bullet and separating Milwaukee's sewers, the MMSD comes up with the "Deep Tunnel Project". It's a huge thing 10x the size of NORAD under Milwaukee, (where all those pretty limestone rocks lining the shore came from&) costing billions of dollars that (supposedly) stores the rain/pewp mix from Milwaukee's screwed up sewers, then "catch up" and treat it on dry days later. Because some of the burb's normal pewp-only sewage goes into the tunnel on rainy days, it's the justification that they have to help pay. The fact that their clean rainwater from their proper sewers stays out, is not enough to get them off the hook apparently.
- Surprise! The Deep Tunnel doesn't work! It was supposed to only get overloaded and let pewp into Lake Michigan during a "100 year rain", but instead does so regularly at every decent thunderstorm. Milwaukee public beaches are closed more often than not because of dangerous bacteria. (Although who'd want to swim in Lake Michigan is beyond me anyway, the western shore is cold as a witches tit, even in August, all the warm water blows east to Michigan's eastern shore&)
- Instead of admitting the Deep Tunnel was a scam/failure, the MMSD is now pushing the Burbs to clean up "incidental" sources of rain water, claiming older sections of the burb's sewers "leak" and let a little rainwater in, increasing the volume. There's also a big push to make sure people's downspouts are not dumping into sewers. However Milwaukee's downtown combined sewers are more than likely 95%+ of the rainwater mixing with the pewp, causing overflows into the lake. This is all just more re-direction and scamming...
- Despite the fact that Milwaukee/MMSD is arguably the biggest polluter by volume in Lake Michigan, maybe even the U.S. the WI state DNR, and the Fed EPA do NOTHING, because it "isn't fair" to fine a big liberal city full of "poor people". All the while, some small business spills a can of paint thinner in their parking lot, and gets fined millions, has to dig up tons of dirt etc...
So that's why poor Monkeyleg has a headache.
The whole Sewer problem in Milwaukee makes our CCW fight look trivial some days...
