MMSD, Veolia Deny Charges of Mismanagement by Common Ground
MMSD claims it is trying to conduct an audit. Common Ground leader calls it 'a sham.'
Jones Island Reclamation Facility. Photo by Urban Milwaukee staff.
The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) is pushing back against a public campaign charging its private wastewater operator is intentionally mismanaging the system and worsening wastewater pollution.
The sewerage district released correspondence Tuesday between an attorney consulting for MMSD and Bob Connolly, the founder of Common Ground, which is organizing a grassroots campaign with whistleblowers against Veolia, the French transnational water services corporation that has run MMSD’s wastewater treatment facilities since 2008.
Common Ground is calling for a third-party performance audit of Veolia’s operations at the sewerage district’s two wastewater treatment plants: Jones Island and South Shore. The community group publicly announced the campaign on April 30 alongside a whistleblower, Steve Jacquart. The group is reportedly working with more than two dozen anonymous whistleblowers who allege Veolia is purposely running wastewater systems below capacity during rain events, increasing the risk of sewer overflows into Lake Michigan and backups into basements across the region, and is forgoing maintenance to save money, instead allowing equipment to run to a point of failure and be replaced by MMSD.
The correspondence released Tuesday shows Common Ground rejecting MMSD’s plans to conduct a performance audit, according to a spokesperson for MMSD. But to Common Ground, the correspondence only publicizes the sewerage district’s attempts at “damage control” and to uncover the identities of the more than two dozen whistleblowers currently speaking with the community group.
MMSD released two letters. The first, from May 5, was from Emily Gnam, an attorney with Lake Effect HR & Law, to Connolly, explaining that MMSD had retained her to investigate the claims from Common Ground and the whistleblowers they are working with.
“At this point, we are proposing a preliminary investigation to help determine the scope of any subsequent audit or investigative activities, by interviewing the individuals who have raised concerns to Common Ground,” Gnam wrote.
Gnam said she would not record the interviews, nor would she provide MMSD or Veolia with whistleblower identities. She would, however, collect their names and employment history.
Connolly responded May 8, writing, “Common Ground does not accept your proposal. First and foremost, we do not believe this proposal is a good faith effort to discover and report the full truth to the MMSD Commissioner and the public.”
Gnam was not independent in Common Ground’s view. “You are on management’s side; on your LinkedIn page, you describe yourself as an expert in ‘management-side employment law.’ You also lack technical expertise in wastewater management,” Connolly wrote in his response.
After Common Ground’s response, MMSD canceled plans to conduct an investigation using Lake Effect HR & Law, Bill Graffin, public information manager for MMSD, told Urban Milwaukee on Wednesday.
“We’re going to take a different approach,” Graffin said. “Common Ground’s already shot that down and said they’re not satisfied with that company.”
MMSD has not decided what that different approach will be yet, he said. He said MMSD is concerned about impacting the current procurement process for a new wastewater facility operator. Veolia is one of two companies bidding on the contract, along with Jacobs Solutions, a Dallas-based engineering services company.
Common Ground has not provided MMSD with enough information to create a framework for an audit. The investigation by Lake Effect HR & Law was supposed to be the first step to gathering that information, Graffin said. MMSD and Veolia have maintained since Common Ground went public that the community group is not providing them with enough information or specific problems that need addressing.
“We don’t know what they want us to audit because they won’t tell us,” Graffin said.
Common Ground maintains that it has uncovered systemic, institutional problems with the operation of the wastewater plants. To verify these allegations, it is calling for an independent audit by experts in engineering and wastewater treatment.
“They’re trying to say that they want to do an audit, when they really don’t,” Connolly told Urban Milwaukee. “It’s a sham. If you wanted to do a real audit, you hire an engineering firm … you don’t contact an attorney who tries to solve an HR problem and find out who our whistleblowers are so they can do damage control.”
Common Ground gave MMSD a one-page proposal on what should be included in the audit, Connolly told Urban Milwaukee.
“They’re trying to find out who these people are, and then either kibosh it, or put a stop to it, or solve the problem so nobody can embarrass them,” Connolly said. “That’s not what this is about; Veolia is mismanaging the whole plant.”
Veolia Hits Common Ground Over Scuttled Investigation
After MMSD released the letters, Veolia released a statement from Senior Vice President Adam Lisberg, accusing the group of “trying to upend a years-long public procurement process and harm Veolia’s reputation by making inaccurate and unsubstantiated claims in the media” and “tilt MMSD’s procurement process in favor of our competitor.”
The company echoed MMSD’s calls for specific problems, saying Common Ground should have brought concerns directly to the company and the sewerage district, instead of “disclosing it only when TV cameras were rolling, a few months before MMSD decides on a new operator.”
MMSD Planning Independent Whistleblower Hotline
Graffin told Urban Milwaukee the sewerage district is planning to set up a whistleblower hotline to anonymously collect concerns or complaints about Veolia’s operation of the wastewater treatment facilities.
“We want to establish a whistleblower hotline that people feel comfortable actually using if they feel the need,” Graffin said. “If there’s something wrong going on, we want to know about it. Not everyone’s comfortable going to a high ranking manager and saying, ‘hey, this is wrong’.”
MMSD is still exploring potential third-party operators for the hotline.
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