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Jones Island Reclamation Facility. Photo by Urban Milwaukee staff.<\/p>\n
The private company running the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District<\/a>\u2018s (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.<\/p>\n The charges come from Common Ground Southeastern Wisconsin, a coalition of more than 46 community organizations, including area schools, nonprofit neighborhood groups and businesses.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Veolia, a French transnational water services corporation, has held the contract to operate and maintain MMSD\u2019s two wastewater treatment facilities since 2008.<\/p>\n 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. \u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n \t\tGet a daily rundown of the Milwaukee stories\t<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>, an engineer who joined the organization in the 1990s. The whistleblower who alerted Common Ground to the alleged problems with Veolia\u2019s performance is Steve Jacquart<\/a>, who retired from MMSD in 2023 after 19 years as the sewerage district\u2019s intergovernmental relations coordinator. He previously served as former Mayor John Norquist<\/a>\u2019s chief of staff and policy director, and as deputy commissioner of the Department of City Development<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people there may prefer that these problems be kept quiet and not shared with the public,\u201d Jacquart said in a statement released by Common Ground. \u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2016, MMSD\u2019s wastewater treatment facilities \u2014 Jones Island<\/a> and South Shore \u2014 began suffering a \u201cmassive breakdown\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Common Ground and Jacquart also say wastewater treatment began to decline in 2017 after Veolia switched to cheaper chemicals.<\/p>\n \u201cIn layman\u2019s terms, this means that the treated wastewater MMSD discharges into Lake Michigan every day contains higher levels of bacteria,\u201d Jacquart said. \u201cThis has been happening since sometime around 2016 when this massive biosolids management problem began.\u201d<\/p>\n A 2022 report<\/a> by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum<\/a> (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<\/a> (DNR) for environmental performance, the WPF report found.<\/p>\n \u201cThese 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,\u201d Jacquart said.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Veolia Responds<\/p>\n Veolia Senior Vice President Adam Lisberg<\/a> responded to Common Ground\u2019s claims after publication telling Urban Milwaukee, \u201cCommon Ground\u2019s campaign against Veolia is a bad faith attempt by a third party to damage Veolia\u2019s reputation and influence the outcome of MMSD\u2019s ongoing public procurement process.\u201d<\/p>\n Veolia has a 99.95% permit compliance rate for effluent quality and has outperformed standards set by the state and MMSD, Lisberg said. \u201cWhile 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,\u201d Lisberg said.<\/p>\n Regarding the whistleblower, Jacquart, Lisberg said he is not an engineer and that he has a \u201cfundamental lack of understanding of wastewater treatment,\u201d and that his claims rely on assumptions that are \u201cfundamentally false.\u201d<\/p>\n Lisberg did not say whether Veolia would cooperate with a third-party audit of its performance.<\/p>\n Campaign Begins MMSD whistleblower Steve Jacquert. Photo taken April 30, 2026 by Graham Kilmer.<\/p>\n Common Ground held a meeting with members Thursday night at the War Memorial Center, 750 N. Lincoln Memorial Dr.<\/a>, and began collecting signatures for a letter to MMSD\u2019s commission calling for an audit. The organization also put out an open call to any potential whistleblowers who may know about alleged problems with Veolia\u2019s management of the water treatment system.<\/p>\n Common Ground is not taking sides in the procurement process for the next 10-year contract, Bob Connolly<\/a>, founder of Common Ground, told Urban Milwaukee.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Veolia is doing a great job, they should welcome a performance audit,\u201d Connolly said. \u201cPlain and simple, we harbor no ill will towards Veolia. If they\u2019re doing a great job, fine, but you\u2019ve got to go talk to the people that run the plant every day, like we did\u2026 but they won\u2019t talk to somebody they don\u2019t trust. It needs to be somebody that cannot hurt them if they tell the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n Jacquert told Urban Milwaukee he was involved in senior meetings at MMSD for years, during which time issues of capacity at the plants and trouble meeting effluent standards frequently came up. He came forward as a whistleblower not to hurt Veolia or MMSD, he said. \u201cWhat this is about is trying to get this information out to the public, and particularly in front of the MMSD commissioners.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c16 whistleblowers, 16 people, have all said the same thing, those allegations need to be taken seriously,\u201d said Kevin Solomon<\/a>, senior associate organizer with Common Ground.<\/p>\n Connolly told Urban Milwaukee Common Ground has previously met with members of the MMSD commission and provided them with the information they released to the public Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat they want is they want specific problems that they can think they can go solve,\u201d Connolly said. \u201cSo we\u2019re not going to give them individual stories\u2026 This is about a serious problem with the whole operation.\u201d<\/p>\n After Common Ground\u2019s meeting, Veolia\u2019s Lisberg released another statement: \u201cCommon Ground\u2019s event this evening featured a mix of false, unsubstantiated and overstated claims about Veolia, which Common Ground admitted during the event they could not verify. Veolia has treated hundreds of billions of gallons of wastewater in Milwaukee since 2008, maintaining a 99.95% permit compliance rate for effluent quality while consistently outperforming state mandates and stricter MMSD contract standards.\u201d<\/p>\n Connolly did tell Common Ground members, \u201cNow be clear, we can\u2019t verify everything we heard tonight, but there is a way to determine the truth of what we have learned so far.\u201d That is, to conduct an impartial third-party audit.<\/p>\n MMSD Responds<\/p>\n After Common Ground\u2019s campaign went public Thursday, Shafer and MMSD Commission<\/a> Chair Corey Zetts<\/a> released statements<\/a> disputing Common Ground\u2019s assertion of knowing mismanagement of wastewater treatment facilities. Both MMSD leaders questioned why Jacquart was coming forward now, and with help from Common Ground.<\/p>\n \u201cWorking with Common Ground to release this information today feels suspect,\u201d Zetts said. \u201cThe Commission is poised to vote on a new 10-year contract soon, more than two years into a very thorough public procurement process, which has resulted in two finalists.\u201d<\/p>\n In his statement, Shafer disputed Jacquart\u2019s claim that a \u201cmassive breakdown\u201d in biosolid processing began in 2016. \u201cIn 2016 and 2017, MMSD captured and cleaned 99.8% and 99.999% of every drop of water that made it into MMSD\u2019s regional wastewater system. In those same years, MMSD and Veolia Water\u2019s performance was well within our permit limits,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Shafer told Urban Milwaukee MMSD is not opposed to a third-party audit and that it is always looking to improve. However, despite meeting with Common Ground representatives in January, the information he and MMSD commissioners and other staff have received from Common Ground is not specific enough to warrant ordering the audit.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I can\u2019t spend taxpayer dollars to do a performance audit when I don\u2019t know what we\u2019re auditing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Shafer told Urban Milwaukee that after Common Ground\u2019s assembly Thursday, capacity at both plants is regularly impacted by the maintenance and replacement of aging equipment. He also disputed the suggestion of a widespread policy of letting machines fail to save money.<\/p>\n \u201cNot to a large scale, I mean, there may be one item here or there,\u201d Shafer said. \u201cThere\u2019s been times where we\u2019ve had to charge Veolia for not doing the maintenance we thought they should have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get a daily rundown of the top stories on Urban Milwaukee Jones Island Reclamation Facility. 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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<\/a>. Commissioners are paid $10,000 annually for their service, which is uncommon for public boards.<\/p>\n
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