Milwaukee Riverkeeper's Executive Director Karen Schapiro was recently published in an Op-Ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel regarding MMSD's most recent combined storm water and wastewater overflows into Lake Michigan.
While July 22nd's rain-fall was too much for any city's sewage district to handle, Milwaukee Riverkeeper believes more should be done to alleviate the dumping, which occurs on a frequent basis.
[excerpted from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
By all accounts, the downpour of July 22 was of biblical proportion. As a result of the torrential rains, the sewerage system was overwhelmed and the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District discharged more than 2 billion gallons of combined storm water and wastewater into Lake Michigan and area rivers. In addition, an estimated 10,000 residents and businesses were assaulted by flooding and sewage backups, posing damage to property and risk to health.