WATER; Well-Intentioned Move

By FRANZEN

The Waukesha Common Council took a step toward a healthier municipal water supply last week when it approved the first legal step in condemning 42 acres in the Town of Waukesha to add as many as five new wells.

The wells will be used to reduce radium levels in the city’s water supply, something the city is under a state mandate to do. Radium is a naturally occurring element that is found in groundwater and has been linked to bone cancer.

The land is just north of the Vernon Marsh Wildlife Area, and some environmentalists expressed concern that drawing up to 3 million gallons daily from the site, as the city intends, would damage the wetland. But as Waukesha Water Utility General Manager Dan Duchniak pointed out to us last summer, the water that would be drawn from the radium-free shallow aquifer would be returned to the Fox River and thus the marsh through the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

Although some water might be lost in the process, the city essentially would be simply recycling it.

Waukesha was among 42 public and private water utilities that the state Department of Natural Resources required to comply with federal standards on radium by December 2006. As of February,

12 utilities, including Waukesha, were still not in compliance. Failure to meet the standards could result in prosecution by the state Department of Justice and daily fines of up to $5,000.

State officials wisely declined to prosecute communities that were sincerely working toward meeting the standards. By condemning the land and using its power of eminent domain to build the wells, Waukesha has shown that it is serious.

For the sake of a healthier water supply, Waukesha should be allowed to move forward rapidly and without outside hindrance.

For more information on radium, go to www.epa.gov/radiation/ radionuclides/radium.htm

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