Village of Waukesha drops water lawsuit against city
WAUKESHA - The city’s pipeline to its future water source again looks to be secure.
The Village of Waukesha has dropped a lawsuit that challenged the City of Waukesha’s authority to run water pipelines through different points in the village not specified in a previous agreement between the two municipalities as part of the city’s Lake Michigan water project.
It was a short-lived lawsuit — filed Jan. 29 and the subject of only one hearing, in which a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge denied a temporary restraining order and questioned the merits of the case — but which nonetheless caused concerns over whether the city’s construction work would be critically delayed.
Judge Lloyd V. Carter signed the order to dismiss the case on Thursday, two weeks after declining to halt construction work while the lawsuit was litigated.
For Waukesha Water Utility General Manager Dan Duchniak, this week’s action is a relief.
“We are extremely happy with their decision to withdraw the lawsuit,” Duchniak said. “While we were very confident in our position, you never know what’s going to happen once it gets to court. At that point, you don’t really know if the judge is going to rule in your favor or not.”
In the end, the legal snafu caused no delays in the project, nor did it affect the overall budget, estimated at $286 million.
Village of Waukesha President Brian Fischer declined to comment in detail.
“It is what it is,” Fischer said. “That is officially done. It was by mutual consent of the parties and we’re moving on.”
The village lawsuit argued that the city required permits to install pipelines along different points of Les Paul Parkway as part of its Lake Michigan water project, for which construction officially began in December.
In the lawsuit, the village claimed the original intergovernmental agreement with the city was not all-inclusive for the whole of the project and only permitted two areas along Sunset Drive.
The project, a long-sought measure to supply lake water to replace the city’s traditional deep-aquifer wells tainted with radium, faces a tight deadline completion. If it isn’t at least halfway complete by May 2022, the city could be forced to install radium-removal equipment until the new system is ready. If the project isn’t 100% complete by Sept. 1, 2023, the city could face federal sanctions for continued noncompliance of prohibited radium levels in its water supply.