Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Huge project, growing year after year, comes in $5 million over budget – and $2 million over estimate. Aldermen ask department heads to reconcile those several discrepancies.
The Wauwatosa Budget and Finance Committee on Tuesday night unanimously approved spending $5.2 million more than was planned for the Meinecke Avenue sewer Project. But despite the all-are-in-favor vote from the seven-member panel of aldermen, it was not exactly a rubber stamp or a hearty endorsement. Ultimately, the uneasy feeling was that a long-awaited, long-delayed and important project just had to go forward as designed and as bid, with no cutbacks or further holdups. But aldermen wanted to know two things: Fair questions, since $5 million is not chump change to a city the size of Wauwatosa, amounting to about 10 percent of the entire annual budget. The answers to the two questions are arcane and complicated, interrelated and yet …
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
With total project costs at $5 million over what city had budgeted, Finance, Public Works directors propose amended capital spending plan to close gap without increasing debt.
In what could be the last chance for public comment, the Meinecke Avenue sewer project will come before the city's Budget and Finance Committee on Tuesday night to address costs that came in significantly higher – by about $5 million – than anticipated when the plan was approved and budgeted. When bids were opened May 11, the lowest was for $14.4 million to complete the first major overhaul of the flood-prone area's sewers since the neighborhood was built in the 1930s. At the time, the city's engineering department reported that the low bid was about $2 million over its estimate for what the project should cost. With additional construction management costs of $677,488, the total project cost comes to about $15.2 million. But the report …
Monday, March 5, 2012
City's Public Works Board clears path for East Tosa bakery's launch.
Geoff Trenholme, owner of East Tosa’s soon-to-open Rocket Baby Bakery, got everything he wanted Monday morning, and then some. The city’s Public Works Board unanimously voted to allow rainwater from the roof of Trenholme‘s building, at 6822 W. North Ave., to continue to flow from the downspout along its existing above-ground route to a city storm sewer in an adjacent city parking lot. Alan Kesner, board chair and city attorney, also extended an apology to Trenholme for what he described as a “misunderstanding“ with “a very simple solution.” Kesner said the city’s concern is to ensure that clear water does not enter and burden the city’s sanitary sewer system. The existing rainwater runoff from Trenholme’s roof does not pose that risk, …
43.060753
-87.99802
6822 W North Ave, Wauwatosa, WI
Rocket Baby Bakery fights City Hall, wins
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Friday, June 24, 2011
Downpours Monday and Tuesday added up to more than Deep Tunnel would hold without threat of basement backups.
Heavy rains this week capped by the downpour Tuesday evening caused the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District to divert 170.5 million gallons of untreated combined stormwater and sanitary sewage overflow to area waterways. The district also "blended" 26.8 million gallons of partially treated wastewater and released it to Lake Michigan. According to MMSD's report to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources on sewer overflows resulting from heavy rain on Monday and Tuesday: Localized flooding resulted from strong storms Monday morning with about 2 inches of rain falling in less than two hours. The Deep Tunnel filled to 288 million gallons out of 521 million gallons capacity. MMSD pumped the tunnel down throughout the day and …
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Unprecedented rain was to blame for overwhelmed sewer system, public works staff says.
Wauwatosa’s engineers told the Board of Public Works that the low marks the city received from the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for its 2010 sanitary sewer overflows were the result of a nearly unique 500-year rainfall that summer. “That’s what hurt us,” City Engineer William Wehrley told the board Monday morning. Nine inches of rain fell on the Milwaukee area July 22, according to the Metropolitan Milwaukee Sewerage District (MMSD) website – just a week after another 5-plus inches hit the area. The DNR gave the city an A for financial management of its sewer systems that year, but a triple-weighted F for the performance of its “collection systems” in the agency’s Compliance Maintenance Annual Report (CMAR) – yielding an …
jbw
8:17 pm on Saturday, June 16, 2012
I experienced sewage in my basement within the last 10 years. The city confirmed it was not a city sewer problem. We paid an expert to examine our plumbing and found extensive root penetration and a partial collapse of the very old clay outgoing line within our property. They did a good acting as general contractor and replacing the line, including cutting a small piece out of the sidewalk and … more ›