MMSD Operator Causing Larger Sewage Overflow, More Pollution, Coalition Charges

Jones Island Reclamation Facility. Photo by Urban Milwaukee staff.

The private company running the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District‘s (MMSD) wastewater treatment facilities is allegedly cutting costs and poorly operating critical sewage systems, creating greater risk of sewer overflows and basement backups, and increasing pollutants dumped into Lake Michigan.

The charges come from Common Ground Southeastern Wisconsin, a coalition of more than 46 community organizations, including area schools, nonprofit neighborhood groups and businesses.

The coalition is working with a whistleblower from MMSD and calling for a third-party audit of the operator, Veolia, before a new contract is awarded later this year.

Along with the whistleblower, Common Ground reports it has interviewed more than a dozen former MMSD employees and obtained internal documents through open records requests.

Veolia, a French transnational water services corporation, has held the contract to operate and maintain MMSD’s two wastewater treatment facilities since 2008.

Common Ground alleges 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.  The coalition alleges the company has forgone maintenance to save money, instead allowing equipment to run to a point of failure and be replaced by MMSD.

Veolia is one of the largest private operators of water services in the world, with more than 200,000 employees and annual revenue of approximately $40 billion. The current 10-year contract with MMSD is valued at more than $500 million. The next 10-year contract, beginning in 2028 and valued at approximately $700 million, is up for approval in September. Veolia is competing for the contract with Jacobs Solutions, a Dallas-based engineering services company.

MMSD was created in 1982 by the Wisconsin Legislature, with the authority to levy property tax to fund infrastructure and maintenance. It is led today by Executive Director Kevin Shafer, an engineer who joined the organization in the 1990s.
is governed by an 11-member board of commissioners. The mayor of the city of Milwaukee appoints seven commissioners; the other four are appointed by the Intergovernmental Cooperation Council of Milwaukee County. Commissioners are paid $10,000 annually for their service, which is uncommon for public boards.

The whistleblower who alerted Common Ground to the alleged problems with Veolia’s performance is Steve Jacquart, who retired from MMSD in 2023 after 19 years as the sewerage district’s intergovernmental relations coordinator. He previously served as former Mayor John Norquist’s chief of staff and policy director, and as deputy commissioner of the Department of City Development.

“Some people there may prefer that these problems be kept quiet and not shared with the public,” Jacquart said in a statement released by Common Ground. “But I keep thinking about the safety of the many thousands of people who enjoy our beaches and waterways. I think about how we get our drinking water from Lake Michigan.”

In 2016, MMSD’s wastewater treatment facilities — Jones Island and South Shore — began suffering a “massive breakdown” in the processing of organic materials derived from the treatment of sewage sludge, according to Jacquart. The material, called biosolids, is used to create the fertilizer Milorganite. As removal and disposal of the biosolids broke down, wastewater treatment capacity was reduced, leading to a greater risk of sewer overflows and basement backups.

Common Ground and Jacquart also say wastewater treatment began to decline in 2017 after Veolia switched to cheaper chemicals.

“In layman’s terms, this means that the treated wastewater MMSD discharges into Lake Michigan every day contains higher levels of bacteria,” Jacquart said. “This has been happening since sometime around 2016 when this massive biosolids management problem began.”

A 2022 report by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum (WPF) stated the chemicals were a point of disagreement for MMSD and Veolia, which eventually led to a contract amendment making MMSD responsible for purchasing the more expensive but more effective treatment chemicals for the South Shore treatment plant. As the effluent quality has worsened, MMSD has also had to pay greater fines to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for environmental performance, the WPF report found.

“These problems need to be brought out and addressed in public before MMSD Commissioners select which private company will operate our regional sewage system under the next operating contract,” Jacquart said.

MMSD will hold a public meeting on the new operations and maintenance contract on June 11, according to a timeline released by MMSD. The commission will vote on a final contract on Sept. 28.

Veolia Responds

Veolia Senior Vice President Adam Lisberg responded to Common Ground’s claims after publication telling Urban Milwaukee, “Common Ground’s campaign against Veolia is a bad faith attempt by a third party to damage Veolia’s reputation and influence the outcome of MMSD’s ongoing public procurement process.”

Veolia has a 99.95% permit compliance rate for effluent quality and has outperformed standards set by the state and MMSD, Lisberg said. “While Common Ground pushes misinformation, Veolia is busy fulfilling the duties of its contract in partnership with MMSD, protecting public health and providing environmental security to more than 1 million people each year,” Lisberg said.

Regarding the whistleblower, Jacquart, Lisberg said he is not an engineer and that he has a “fundamental lack of understanding of wastewater treatment,” and that his claims rely on assumptions that are “fundamentally false.”

Lisberg did not say whether Veolia would cooperate with a third-party audit of its performance.

This story will be updated.