e-Newsletter | 08/13/2015

This year, there have been a number of OnMilwaukee.com articles highlighting the proactive steps that the Milwaukee area is taking to help meet the goal of "managing water where it falls".

http://onmilwaukee.com/market/articles/greenluminaryzoo.html

http://onmilwaukee.com/myOMC/authors/jeffsherman/allpeoplesgreen.html

http://onmilwaukee.com/market/articles/greenluminaryoutpost.html

http://onmilwaukee.com/myOMC/authors/bobbytanzilo/mamgreenaward.html

These are all great efforts by great leaders! What is really exciting is that there are so many other, smaller projects that municipalities and residents are implementing with the same goal. Personal initiative is driving this movement, along with a passion to make the Milwaukee region a more livable community.

All this work deserves special recognition for what the cumulative impacts will be: cleaner neighborhoods and a cleaner Lake Michigan. Sometimes, however, Mother Nature throws a storm at you much bigger than what these dispersed efforts can manage. One of those storms just occurred on Monday, August 10.

Around noon, a storm came through that dropped over an inch of rain in 30 minutes at Mitchell International Airport. Watching the storm from my office, the rain pounded down so hard that you could not make out anything from my view. During that brief downpour, the MMSD deep tunnel captured around 130 million gallons of water. Later that afternoon, two other waves of rain added another 40-50 million gallons, bringing the total tunnel volume to around 180 million gallons! This is around 35% of the tunnel's total capacity of 521 million gallons. The smaller green projects did their job and managed the first half inch of rain, but the intense rain was much more than the dispersed green projects could manage. This is when the deep tunnel was utilized, resulting in no overflows to Lake Michigan.

As we expand the green footprint of the region, more rain will be managed by green projects. It is important to understand that the deep tunnel is there to back up these initiatives. Their combined efforts will help the region move toward zero overflows to Lake Michigan, keeping our Great Lakes GREAT!

Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District

260 W. Seeboth Street | Milwaukee, WI 53204