The City of Milwaukee, Milwaukee County and the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) are setting up a task force to plan for future flooding in the short and long term. The task force was announced Friday by Mayor Cavalier Johnson, County Executive David Crowley and MMSD Executive Director Kevin Shafer.
“This flood mitigation task force will build on the cooperative work that’s been underway for decades and add a renewed sense of urgency as a result of recent flooding events,” Mayor Johnson said in a statement. “The work of the panel will prioritize mitigation in locations facing the highest risk, including sites that have been flooded repeatedly in recent years.”
MMSD is the primary public institution focused on flood mitigation in the Milwaukee County region. It has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in stormwater retention and flood management projects. The district collects property taxes to fund sewerage and stormwater infrastructure in the region, but even that is not enough.
“The work of this task force can aid MMSD in both prioritizing the work and identifying funding for the projects we have in mind,” Executive Director Shafer said. “Mitigation efforts that the district has previously identified have price tags totaling about $900 million, and an investment of that scale requires significant public input and buy-in from numerous local governments.”
In 2022, the district secured a $42 million loan from the federal government to, among other things, construct a massive, 31-million-gallon storage basin called West Basin.
