Where's the work in public works?

Civic centers, prisons top the current list

By Ellen Hickok-Wall
Daily Reporter Staff

Web posted: July 24, 2001

A search of The Daily Reporter database reveals a variety of public works projects under way in the state this year, and eight alone account for $220 million worth of work.

Law enforcement facilities and civic centers predominate, and projects include a $15 million police station in Milwaukee, a $26 million center to retain prisoners in Oshkosh and a $19 million law enforcement center in Baraboo.

Menomonee Falls will develop a $19 million civic center to include an addition and renovation to its Police Department and Village Hall and a new library, while Dane County is building a $44 million courthouse in Madison.

Green Bay area residents will see a nearly $40 million mental health center constructed, while a county health care center will be developed in Manitowoc.

But the small city of Superior, with a population of 27,000, ranks top this year with $90 million in building projects planned. The city plans on building a $43 million metro center to house a Health and Human Services Department, City Hall and a jail, and another $47 million will be spent for an elementary school and a middle school.

There's so much happening in this remote city on the far northwestern tip of Wisconsin on Lake Superior that there's no question that area contractors will be busy.

In fact, the concentration of work raises this question: Are there enough workers available to complete the projects?

James Litwin, project manager for construction manager Adolfson & Peterson Inc. in Minneapolis, is working on the metro center, and he's concerned about just that.

"Right now, if you look to the future, there are just not enough people," Litwin said. "I don't know how they're going to pull it off."

What's ahead?

But those projects may not be indicative of what lies ahead, as Dan Thompson, executive director of the Wisconsin League of Municipalities, said that work in the pipeline is, literally, pipelines.

Thompson said emerging Environmental Protection Agency standards are driving more and more communities to look at creating storm-water utilities and storm-water management facilities.

"That would be one of the few growth areas, if you will, in municipal public sector construction," he said.

Thompson said past practices often led developers to ignore the effects of storm-water runoff resulting from impervious surfaces.

In addition to creating new systems, Thompson said a major source of work could spring from retrofitting existing developments to slough storm water more effectively.

Thompson said communities are busy setting detention and retention standards for new development.

"After you've done all of those things, we still have an awful lot of the built environment that did not have those policies and procedures in the first place," Thompson said. "To go back and retrofit our existing neighborhoods and downtown areas from an engineering perspective is very complicated."

Thompson had one reservation, though, about whether his predictions about plentiful public works projects are correct.

"Given the philosophy that President Bush has expounded, one would assume that the EPA may not push as hard for compliance to storm-water requirements," he said.

Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District Deep Tunnel Project

Political persuasion

But Peter Swenson, an environmental engineer with the EPA's Region 5 office in Chicago, said Bush's presidency shouldn't change what's already in the works.

Under provisions of the 1972 Clean Water Act, Swenson said, communities need to meet six minimum controls by 2003.

Those controls requires that municipalities:

• Develop a public involvement process
  
  
• Develop a public education process so the public can help with environmental protection issues
  
  
• Control erosion and sedimentation from construction sites that are 1 acre and larger
  
  
• Control development by requiring retention ponds and encouraging open space
  
  
• Remove illicit connections to storm-sewer systems."Developers might tap into a sewer and connect a sanitary line into a storm-water line," he said, "or septic tanks that are not operating properly. A properly designed septic tank, if it's not maintained, could fail. If that discharge gets into the storm drain, that's considered illicit entry to a storm drain."
  
  
• Maintain "good housekeeping for municipal operations - street sweeping, storm drain management, road de-icing, parkland maintenance." "Those activities that the city undertakes that have an impact on storm water need to be reviewed and carried on in a way that's in the interest of water quality," he said.

Swenson said cities need to have permits by March 2003, and much of the work will follow.

"They have to submit some information on the best management practices they intend to use and the goals of the program," Swenson said.

Second things first

Thompson said the second of those controls, educating the public, will need to reach deep into the soul of Wisconsin's heartland - the farmers.

It becomes evident, he said, when driving through the countryside and seeing cows standing in streams that we have a long way to go.

"You know, those cows aren't wearing diapers," he said.

But convincing farmers that it's important to do something about it won't be easy, he said. He recalled a situation where farmers were offered, almost free of charge, the solution.

"About 12 years ago, a bill was introduced in the Wisconsin Legislature. It was a 90 percent state grant, on a voluntary basis, if you wanted to put up a fence to keep livestock out of the streams, the state would pay 90 percent.

"On a voluntary basis," he repeated.

"I was amazed at the turnout at that hearing. There were farmers there from all over the place very angry about this 'communist conspiracy' to make them fence their farms."

Thompson said such situations give rise to frustrations for facilities like the Metropolitan Milwaukee Sewerage District.

Thomson said some people upstream "complain about MMSD practices" without realizing how they contribute to the problems of waste treatment and removal.

"They're generally unaware of how much their contribution affects the end result," he said.

So where's the work?

Where the work is depends on what the solutions are to these environmental issues, Thompson said.

"If it's retention and retention ponds, we'll need earth-moving contractors and piping people," he said. "In some situations, we will have to be installing minitreatment facilities. There you have contractors who build lift stations and pump stations and treatment facilities."

That's down the pike, he said. But when the time comes, he predicts lots of money will be spent.

"The cost of complying, for nonpoint source (pollution), potentially is far higher than the point source," he said.

Thompson explained that the Clean Water Act required both point sources, which include manufacturing facilities and sewage treatment plants, and nonpoint sources to comply with federal standards.

The point source work, he said, was very controversial.

"We spent the late '70s and the '80s building huge expensive technologically marvelous sewage treatment facilities to meet the standards," said Thompson, adding that the federal government provided about 75 percent of the cost of the projects. "The (MMSD) Deep Tunnel project was one of them. There were lots of huge projects built in lots of communities in the '70s and '80s to comply with those standards."

Those facilities separated storm water systems from sanitary ones, and Thompson said "it's not impossible to imagine a situation where the EPA would issue an order requiring all of the storm water to be dumped back into the sanitary system so that it could all be treated."

Because treating all the water - storm and sanitary - is the only real way communities can help keep water clean, he said, adding, though, that it's not a likely move.

"Having spent $1.5 billion separating the systems in the '70s and '80s," he said, "it would be politically embarrassing to combine those systems to treat all of the water."

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