Waukesha County

In a posting Sunday, I noted the insufficiency of the SEWRPC water study and regional water supply scheme because these two linked ideas and goals leave out all the other major elements of comprehensive planning - - transit, housing and jobs.

SEWRPC is the Pewaukee-based Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, a suburban/exurban-dominated public agency on which the City of Milwaukee has no seats and votes, and on which the four least-populated of SEWRPC's seven counties can be a voting majority.

Ironically, just two days earlier, the Journal Sentinel editorial board crafted a profound, one-paragraph summation of the region's comprehensive planning needs in the context of the recession recovery.

Here is that editorial, and the specific graph, which I have set off in boldface:

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I agree with outgoing SEWRPC executive director Phil Evenson that the region needs more affordable housing - - a need that is pressing in Waukesha County where SEWRPC is headquartered in which many of its key administrators live - - but it's hard not to mention that for Evenson's entire tenure as the regional planning agency's boss there was no plan written there for the region's housing needs.

The last such plan was written in 1975, and a committee SEWRPC has named to finally begin such a study after nearly 34 years has yet to meet.

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Having been trapped in rush hour Tuesday on I-94 from Milwaukee to the west - - and yes, it was my choice to drive - - I again observe how insane the traffic is, and how greatly is better transit, and a reil link needed in that corridor.

Do you folks out Waukesha way have an idea of what is coming at you when the Zoo Interchange goes under reconstruction for four years somewhere around 2012?

You will be begging for a fast train downtown and back - - but your County killed light rail a few years ago and because Waukesha County is boycotting the regional transit authority, you will not be hooked up to commuter rail (the KRM) or better buses, either.

Speak up now, Waukesha, or be consigned to gridlock for the next decade, at a minimum.

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You remember "Chinatown," right - - the 1974 film classic about diverting the Los Angeles city water supply to nearby land where there was development and money to be had?

Who knows how closely life will imitate art when the City of Waukesha files its formal application for a diversion of Lake Michigan water - - a process presumably devoid of the Chinatownesque secrecy that accompanied an earlier effort by Waukesha to get a 24-million-gallon-per-day diversion permission from state officials?

And will Waukesha acquire water for itself, or will it bring in other municipalities, or will SEWRPC use the application and its recently-concluded regional water supply study to recommend the creation of a water authority to help expand diversions where over-pumping and over-development has enhanced demand?

Sensors and gauges and computers can track the environmental impact of waters' movements, but how closely and broadly will the political and financial course that diverted water and its return flow regime takes be monitored, analyzed and corrected?

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There is this blurb online from The Freeman (longer version only available to subscribers) about just how pressing is the need for affordable housing in Waukesha County.

Four questions before the text:

1. Why is Waukesha County balking at joining a regional transit authority?

2. How thick are the blinders at the Waukesha County-based regional planning commission (SEWEPC), which has balked at writing a regional housing plan since 1975?

3. Why should Milwaukee sell water to Waukesha County communities if economic development and housing starts there continue to be at the upper end, thus pushing affordable housing to other communities and counties, such as Milwaukee?

4. Shouldn't the US Justice Department come into the region and do a comprehensive review of SEWRPC and Waukesha County spending, programs and policy-making (transit, transportation, housing, zoning, water distribution, etc.), given the apartheid-like behavior of these bodies and their relationships to low-income, urban and other regional residents of color?

From The Freeman:

Report: Waukesha County needs
more affordable housing
5:58 a.m.


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