In July 2010 some of the world’s top experts in water came together for the annual summit of the Milwaukee Water Council (MWC) to celebrate Milwaukee as a water “center-of-excellence”. Hopes were high that Milwaukee might become prominent on the world’s water stage.

It appears to be a matter of convergence: Milwaukee abuts 20% of the earth’s available freshwater, hosts the first-ever college of freshwater sciences, claims a long legacy of long-term urban planning leading to many water innovations, and perhaps most notably, many of the world’s most important water technology companies have a presence here.
The conference was a platform to unveil what the MWC has dubbed the “Blue Footprint” -- a kind of hybrid “blue planet” plus “carbon footprint” marketing campaign that attempts to position issues of water, climate, population and energy on the same strategic stage, where they belong.

On these issues, the summit offered four important takeaways:

1.) Clean water demand will always be greater than supply.

• Systems designed 20 or 50 years ago won’t be adequate to address needs today or 20 or 50 years from now, and many won’t work at all.
• In the US, the issue is antiquated systems, designed for half the population and much less sprawl.
• In the developing world, you can’t build treatment capacity fast enough and you quickly run into either high costs or energy supply limits.

2.) Water and climate are inextricably linked.

• As climate change brings weather and resource volatility, water issues are increasing. We’re facing a wide range of availability and quality crises already that will increase and worsen for the foreseeable future.
• Human water use is energy intensive. Carbon-based energy used to treat or move water has climate consequences. Today, you generally can’t supply clean water without coal or gas, no matter where you are.

3.) Water technology companies create jobs where there is investment and talent.

• Water Council members touted developing public/private cooperation and co-investment that is attracting new water businesses to the area. For example, Senator Kohl used the meeting to announce that he included $4.5M in the 2011 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriation bill to help UWM and the MWC promote engineering and research in exportable technologies through UWM’s new National Center for Water Technology.
• Companies like AO Smith, Veolia, IBM, Siemens, Badger Meter and others are lining up to play collaborative roles, to find commercial uses for the resulting science and perhaps to hire the top thinkers in it.

4.) It’s a global problem with national security implications, but it’s always better and cheaper to address local issues locally.

• Milwaukee’s water business leaders clearly understand these connections, and they are aggressively positioning to take advantage of them by marrying smart, green energy technologies and services with water technologies and services.

However, local issues and solutions seemed to be an afterthought for everyone.

There was no talk of lake water for Waukesha (which is running dry 20 miles from Lake Michigan), or the direction of the Illinois river (which may be draining the lake after being reversed and is a thoroughfare for invasive species), or lake water levels, or the capacity of Milwaukee’s deep tunnel (an insufficient pre-treatment holding tank), or closer cooperation between suburban and urban municipalities to relieve pressure on taxed infrastructure.

Ironically, a week later, the skies opened and dumped 8 inches of rain on parts of the already saturated Milwaukee metropolitan area, filling the combined sewers, backing sewage into basements, and turning the streets into raging rivers of dirty water. A huge sink-hole swallowed a Cadillac and a man was drowned when his car was sucked into a rapids. Some neighborhoods were completely destroyed. FEMA has come to the rescue of over 900 households.

Milwaukee is missing a huge opportunity here. We should be working to extend Milwaukee’s position as a water leader by setting the example, here in Milwaukee. The region has a long and proud history of innovations and planning (the flushing channel, the milorganite plant, advanced drinking water treatment to eliminate cryptosporidium, to name a few.)

Let’s consider a radical new view. Instead of trying to become a water center with tag-lines and trade-shows, let’s extend the legacy.

Milwaukee should be the first international city to design holistically for climate change. It should define the global standard for a modern and rational approach to water and energy in a changing world, here, starting now.

Such a vision would have large, positive social and economic consequences for the region, and if well executed, Milwaukee would matter on the world stage in unprecedented ways. Here, we offer seven starter goals. Milwaukee should:


1. Shed the centralized approach to treatment and embrace lower-cost-to-buy and -operate decentralized systems; the closer to point-of-use, the better.  We see the limits of a centralized approach with every big rain. Decentralized systems, on the other hand, are designed to rise up or down to need, and can do it on a much wider scale. They are designed for volatility, and don’t create it. And investment is easier and incremental.
2. Separate its sewers and storm drains, systems that multiply the pollution problem, instead of shrinking it. This is a big change, but a fundamental one, and less painful when done together with the rest.
3. Lay less concrete, and where it must be, make it permeable. Water treated by soil is water treated freely, using gravity and natural filters.
4. Rebuild natural wetlands lost to development in the last fifty years, reducing risk in agriculture and for exurb and rural residents.
5. Deploy the lowest kilowatt per gallon treatment techniques region-wide with smarter, smaller integrated power and water systems. In this way, we are poised to recover the energy wasted during sludge treatment and disposal, and use it to power our treatment plants. And we can connect treatment to other renewable energy sources as they develop.
6. Scale up high-value sustainable agriculture water technologies like those being tested in area fish farms, and put the state in a position to increase trade of sustainably grown foods, advancing our already strong position as a food supply exporter.
7. Price water and energy together.

And in the process, Milwaukee would demonstrate to the world that when we use water, we are consuming the energy spent to make it ready. More importantly, it would show how smart design, public policy and the the act of conservation increases opportunity.

Milwaukee has many of the critical resources to do this right at its fingertips: great engineering universities, great scientists and researchers, great companies with new technologies, a long history of smart investment in public infrastructure, a proud legacy of environmental conscientiousness. And think of the high-tech, high-value jobs that we will create along the way.


Alas, what we’re missing is the social cohesion and political will and leadership to set big goals and do something great.


The clean water business appears on the outside to be one of almost unlimited demand. While the Milwaukee Water Council’s efforts to recruit business and talent to the area are to be applauded, let’s suggest a healthier and more realistic perspective than just assuming it to be a large and growing market, ad infinitum. This is bigger than a PR campaign.

Let’s tell the truth: water and energy are finite. And let’s structure our community around making the most from these valuable resources.

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