Kenosha board hires Baxter & Woodman for Great Lakes diversion application

The Kenosha Board of Water Commissioners on April 28 approved a professional services agreement with Baxter & Woodman Inc. to prepare a water‑diversion application related to the city’s allocation under the Great Lakes Compact.

The work will support an application to ensure Kenosha’s water‑supply surface area and any growth‑area development are included within the city’s approved diversion footprint, staff said. "We were allocated 2,540,000 gallons per day back in 2008 when this was approved," Staff member Czarnecki said, and Kenosha’s recent average daily diversions have been far below that figure.

The agreement matters because of reforms the state made in July 2024 to Wisconsin’s NR code that changed how diversion approvals are implemented, tying review not only to diverted volume but also to changes in the area covered by a diversion. Staff told commissioners that the city previously executed an intergovernmental agreement in February 2017 that expanded the growth area outside the original 2007 diversion footprint; the current application will "clean up that process, making sure that all the area that's in the growth area is included in our water supply surface area plan," Czarnecki said.

Why it matters: The Great Lakes‑St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact (2008) restricts moving water out of the basin; for straddling communities such as Kenosha, any sanitary sewer that collects water diverted west of the subcontinental divide must be returned under the compact’s rules. Staff said Kenosha’s high water mark for diversions was 793,000 gallons per day in 2021; 2024 averages were about 711,000 gallons per day — roughly 31% of the city’s 2,540,000 gpd allocation, leaving about 1.8 million gpd available under the allocation, staff estimated.

Baxter & Woodman were the low proposer and previously oversaw a diversion application in neighboring Somers, staff said. The board moved and seconded approval of the professional services agreement; commissioners asked clarifying questions about the allocation numbers and the meaning of "diversion." Staff answered that Kenosha is a straddling community where the subcontinental divide runs through the city and that water "east of the center of the airport goes to Lake Michigan" while water west goes toward the Mississippi River Basin.

The board approved the contract and no opposition was recorded.