Milwaukee-based nonprofit community advocacy organization Common Ground is calling for an audit of Veolia, the company that has overseen operations of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s (MMSD) water treatment facilities for 18 years, following a complaint from a whistleblower alleging inadequate treatment and overflow during storms due to equipment failure.
Whistleblower Steve Jacquart, who worked for MMSD for nearly 19 years as its intergovernmental relations coordinator, alleges that in 2016, the facilities had “massive breakdowns with processing biosolids – organic materials derived from treated sewage sludge through the wastewater treatment process.”
Due to the breakdowns, Jacquart alleges that the failures reduced wastewater treatment capacity during rain storms and increased the risk of sewage overflows and basement backups, which can also increase the volume of sewage released into local rivers and Lake Michigan when overflows occur.
Common Ground, a community-focused nonprofit organization addressing the area’s economic issues, is backing Jacquart and requesting that Veolia be audited by a third-party company prior to the signing of a new contract with MMSD.
France-based Veolia, which has its North America headquarters in Boston, and Dallas-based Jacobs Solutions have submitted bids for a 10-year, $700 million MMSD contract to begin in September.
The MMSD would not have accepted a contract renewal bid from Veolia had the allegations by Common Ground been true, said MMSD commission chair Cory Zetts.
“If there was any credible evidence of mismanagement of billions of dollars of our public infrastructure, (Veolia) would not be on the short list for another 10-year contract,” Zetts wrote in a statement addressing the allegations.
Zetts also said Jacquart’s allegations are suspect in the way they were released.
Kevin Shafer. Image courtesy of MMSD.
“(Jacquart) knows how to get in touch with me if he seriously believed MMSD infrastructure and our waters and community were at risk throughout the past decade,” she said.
MMSD further responded with percentages of water and wastewater cleanliness from 2015 to 2023, all of which were over 97%. The district’s executive director Kevin Shafer told BizTimes Friday that MMSD is open to an audit if the allegations were properly explained and the company knows what it is being audited on.
“Of course MMSD is willing to perform a third-party review, but we first need to better understand the specific accusations being made against Veolia,” Shafer wrote in a statement. “There are some instances when the South Shore Water Reclamation Facility was not at full capacity during a storm, but there are many reasons for that. These include ongoing capital improvements performed by MMSD and higher influent loadings to the facility.”
Both Zetts and Shafer expressed disappointment in their former colleague Jacquart for “waiting 10 years” to bring these allegations to light.
Common Ground has taken a portion of the investigation into its own hands. Over the past five months, the organization has been communicating with current and former Veolia employees about the allegations. The nonprofit says it has spoken with 16 people thus far and reviewed hundreds of documents attained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The nonprofit highlighted several complaints from employees which included comments such as, “‘South Shore does not run at full capacity – ever,’ ‘effluent standards were raised to allow Veolia to stay in contract compliance,’ ‘Veolia does not care about lake dumps, they say the mussels will eat the crap,’” and more.
In response to the allegations by Common Ground, Veolia released this statement: “Common Ground’s campaign against Veolia is a bad faith attempt by a third party to damage Veolia’s reputation and influence the outcome of MMSD’s ongoing public procurement process. The effort relies almost entirely on the assertions of a former MMSD employee and lobbyist, who is neither an engineer nor a plant operator, and whose own statements demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of wastewater treatment. Common Ground’s event featured a mix of false, unsubstantiated and overstated claims about Veolia, which Common Ground admitted during the event they could not verify. Veolia has treated hundreds of billions of gallons of wastewater in Milwaukee since 2008, maintaining a 99.95% permit compliance rate for effluent quality while consistently outperforming state mandates and stricter MMSD contract standards. While Common Ground pushes misinformation, Veolia’s hundreds of employees continue working around the clock in partnership with MMSD to protect public health and our waterways.”
