EDITORIAL: How the Milwaukee River one-ups the Seine

“The Seine is exquisite!”

Those were the words of Anne Hildago, mayor of Paris, after she took a dip in the famous river that runs through her town to show that the water quality would be safe for swimmers competing in Olympic events.

The mayor, wearing a wet suit and goggles, spent a couple of minutes in the water. Two weeks later, Olympic swimming events were postponed when dangerous levels of E. coli were detected in the river. When pollution levels improved somewhat, triathlon swimmers were allowed to compete in the river. Several of them were later reported to have gastrointestinal infections.

Apart from its water quality, the Seine is indeed exquisite as it flows between Paris banks adorned with such icons of civilization as the Louvre and the Notre-Dame Cathedral.

You don’t often hear people exclaiming, “The Milwaukee River is exquisite!” Yet it is superior to the Seine in one important characteristic: Its water is much healthier.

Kevin Shafer, executive director of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District, pointed that out in his Blue Notes newsletter by posing and answering the question, “If Milwaukee hosted the Olympics, would we have the same issue with the Milwaukee River?”

His answer: “An Olympic triathlon would not be cancelled if held in Milwaukee.”

That is because, according to Shafer, water tests in July found that the Milwaukee River had E. coli levels at 250 colony-forming units (CFU) /100ml. According to European standards, it is safe to swim in the Seine when the E. coli level is below 900 CFU.

Presumably, it got down to that number at some point, allowing the triathlons to go on, though at times during the Olympics, E. coli readings were reported as high as 1,553 CFU.

The Seine is so filthy that swimming in it has been banned since 1923. France spent 1.5 million euros trying to clean it up for the Olympics by installing underground holding tanks to store polluted river water. That may sound similar to Milwaukee’s deep tunnel system, but it’s a miniature copy. The French tanks have a capacity of 13 million gallons of water. Milwaukee’s tunnels can hold 521 million gallons of storm water to keep it from overwhelming treatment plants.

The relatively low E. coli level reported by Shafer was found in tests of Milwaukee River water in the City of Milwaukee, which has always been the most polluted section of the river. There still is a long way to go until the effects of centuries of contamination by Milwaukee sewage and industrial chemicals are mostly eliminated. But the favorable comparison with the Seine’s Olympic swimming water is a clear sign that the tunnel system and other pollution mitigation efforts are working.

Upstream water quality, always in better shape than in the big-city stretch of the river, continues to improve thanks to upgrades in municipal wastewater treatment plants that release treated sewage into the river and to conservation work done along its banks to restore wetlands and natural barriers that absorb polluted runoff.

The river flows through almost the entire length of Ozaukee County, entering where its north and east branches join near Waubeka, meandering east to Fredonia, and then south to Grafton, past Cedarburg to Thiensville and Mequon and beyond. Every Ozaukee community except Port Washington and Belgium are part of the Milwaukee River basin.

The stretches of the river between the communities, running through farmland and forested countryside, have benefitted from conservation efforts by the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust in partnership with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District. More of those efforts can be expected from the newly announced partnership of the OWLT with the River Revitalization Foundation. Together, the two organizations manage dozens of natural areas along the Milwaukee River and other waterways in Ozaukee, Washington and Milwaukee counties.

A new Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources project, the North Branch Milwaukee River Wildlife and Farming Heritage Area, will  protect and improve natural areas along nine miles of the river and make them accessible for public recreation on land owned by the state or protected by conservation easements.

Ozaukee County, working with the Clean Farm Families organization, has spearheaded efforts to curb the agricultural runoff that affects water quality in river tributaries.

With a total of more than 100 miles of shoreline, starting from its source in Fond du Lac County, the Milwaukee River provides a watery corridor through natural and developed areas where people can enjoy fishing, kayaking, canoeing, waterskiing, swimming and just watching a river flow, sedately or urgently depending on rainfall and the tributaries feeding it, on its meandering course to Lake Michigan.

To paraphrase the mayor of Paris, the Milwaukee River really is exquisite.