Waukesha wants to build a pipeline to the Great Lakes.
The city is in southeast Wisconsin, 17 miles from Lake Michigan. It has a radium problem in its groundwater supply.
Radium occurs naturally, but it’s a carcinogen.
Dan Duchniak, general manager of the Waukesha Water Utility, says as the city’s groundwater supply has been drawn down, it’s made the high radium concentration worse.
“And ultimately the radium exceeded the federal drinking water standard and we are now under a court order to come into compliance with that, and the means by which we are going to do that is to develop a new water supply,” he says.
The city has to come up with a permanent solution for its radium problem by 2018.