In response to flooding that resulted from the June 2014 and April 2015 wet weather events that caused numerous basement back-ups, the Sewer Utility District commissioned a study for a wet weather relief sewer. In 2016 the Common Council approved this study, design was completed in 2017, sewer work began in 2018 and construction was completed ahead of schedule in 2019 south of Mequon Road. The impacted project areas were restored in 2020.
Public Outreach with individual residents and property owners included door to door outreach plus a series of five public information meetings that were hosted at City Hall in fall of 2017 and spring 2018. The design team goals were to minimize impacts to residents, business, traffic, and preserve the quality of life. The design includes tunneling for sewer construction, where construction cost of tunneling were more expensive but not as disruptive as open cut sewer construction with road restoration.
This project focused on the East Trunk Sewer area south of Mequon Road to provide capacity improvements and to maintain the City's sanitary sewer system reliability. The East Trunk Sewer project also addresses the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources compliance maintenance requirements in addition to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District capacity, management, operation and maintenance requirements of the City's sanitary sewer system to limit sanitary sewer overflows.
Permis for this project were approved by WisDOT, UPRR, MMSD and Ozaukee County, and private property easements were obtained for the sewer tunneling underneath private property.
The constructed relief sewer can generally be described as the East Trunk Sewer south of Mequon Road (STH 167). This tunnel work extends from the County Line along the railroad corridor through Katherine Kearney Carpenter Park to Port Washington Road and Donges Bay Road.
Work is in progress in 2022 to update the City's sanitary system hydraulic model and to evaluate the sanitary system capacity and wet weather management. Additional capital improvements are anticipated for the 2023 Budget following the modeling work.