Editor’s note: This is the seventh post in our theme for April 2025, The City Aquatic. For additional entries in the series, see here.
By Michael Carriere
On December 3, 2008, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett appeared at a day-long symposium on “concentrated poverty” in America, held at the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C. Barrett told the audience that poverty in his city was “obviously a serious problem” – the city’s poverty rate was over 26 percent in the early years of the new century – but he hoped that “people don’t think all of Milwaukee is mired in poverty.” In fact, Barrett continued, Milwaukee was on the cusp of a renaissance, one fueled by its access to a very valuable commodity: fresh water. Barrett reminded his audience that the report described Milwaukee as part of the “Rust Belt,” but he argued the term was becoming obsolete. Instead, Barrett told the symposium attendees to think of his city as the “fresh coast.”[1]
Over the remainder of his time in office (he would serve as Milwaukee’s mayor until 2021, when President Biden appointed him ambassador to Luxembourg), Mayor Barrett would frequently return to his vision of Milwaukee as the “fresh coast.” Such a moniker made sense for Milwaukee, as Barrett noted the city could always turn its access to Lake Michigan into economic opportunity. Over the decades, Barrett proclaimed that Milwaukee’s access to freshwater had fueled it growth. It was time to build off that past and make twenty-first-century Milwaukee “the place where water technology is king.”[2]
Barrett was correct in his assessment of Milwaukee’s historical relationship with water. By the early twentieth century, Milwaukee’s “Sewer Socialists,” with the support of the city’s labor unions, had made a significant commitment to improving the quality of life for Milwaukeans. Among those commitments was deeming access to fresh water a public good, one supported by significant public investment in infrastructure like water treatment systems.[3]
Yet by the early twenty-first century this history of engagement with water was being reconfigured to meet the perceived imperatives of the post-industrial urban landscape. As the city sought to use this natural resource to recreate its identity, civic leaders moved away from an earlier commitment to public infrastructure and access. Instead, water came to be viewed primarily through the lenses of entrepreneurialism and economic redevelopment, as the city – with the support of the state and federal governments – sought to clean up polluted waterways to grow their tourism sector and support start-up businesses in the emergent field of water technology. City officials branded Milwaukee as the “Fresh Coast” for water innovation and encouraged public-private partnerships like the Water Council, a start-up innovation hub dedicated to companies working in the field of water technologies. By 2013, the Water Council had a home in the Global Water Center, a multi-million-dollar redevelopment project in a formerly vacant industrial building in the city’s chic Third Ward neighborhood. Here, academic institutions and private companies alike work on water research and technologies, in order to transform the natural resource from a purely public good into commodity driven economic development.
As the example of the Water Council begins to illustrate, private companies have been remarkably successful in attracting public funding for their water-related work in Milwaukee. As scholars such as Andrew J. Diamond, Thomas J. Sugrue, and David Harvey have pointed out, these private-public partnerships are often a key component of urban neoliberal policy. These developments have not, for the most part, been met by any resistance. In fact, much of the city has embraced the “Fresh Coast” moniker, seemingly proud of the way their city has moved beyond its dirty industrial roots and embraced an economic development model based on a natural resource like freshwater.[4]
This essay offers what can best be described as a cultural history of this contemporary moment in Milwaukee. This history illuminates how the city moved from the Sewer Socialists building public infrastructure to venture capitalists funding water-based start-ups, highlights how this rethinking of water was both expressed by city leaders and lived by Milwaukee residents. As officials like Mayor Barrett preached the redemptive power of water, Milwaukeeans did see evidence of this post-industrial redevelopment strategy working. By early 2025, the Global Water Center housed over thirty tenants, including firms doing work in such fields as water-efficient restroom solutions and air flotation systems for industrial wastewater treatment.
Such private sector growth, rooted in the historically important resource of freshwater, was championed by city officials. Yet the public-private relationships at the heart of the city’s neoliberal turn did provide many Milwaukee residents tangible new opportunities. The early twenty-first century saw city officials leveraging funding from both the state and federal governments to open a graduate school at a public university dedicated to the study of water – at the University of Milwaukee School of Freshwater Science – and to clean up such once-polluted waterways as the Milwaukee River. With the support of the state, water now offers both educational and recreational opportunities for a post-industrial Milwaukee. Visitors and residents alike enjoy playing in clean water, while the city features a “Milwaukee Water Current Tour Map” on its official website.
Ultimately, what governmental leaders, private companies, and large swaths of the broader Milwaukee population share is a rethinking of water that transforms the life-giving resource from a necessity to a tool meant to spur economic redevelopment. This desire to brand water as more than a public good has provided positive outcomes for many of these actors. Yet the transition from an emphasis on access to a fixation on entrepreneurialism in water policy has left out Black communities on Milwaukee’s North Side, as have the moves to cast freshwater as a market product to outside municipalities and as a driver of tourism. African American neighborhoods, often cut off from the actual “Fresh Coast” of Lake Michigan due to spatial segregation and its social effects, continue to struggle with issues like lead pipes and lead poisoning; there is no money to be made there. The very issue that water was seen as capable of addressing – poverty – has a series of histories related to segregation, housing stock, and aging infrastructure that the “Fresh Coast” strategy strategically ignores. To address such issues comes at a cost – and that is not the way the city envisions its relationship to water in the twenty-first century.
Accessing Water
As Milwaukee grew throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, its burgeoning population required greater access to resources like clean water. By 1866, the Milwaukee Sentinel was reporting that many city residents had to walk more than half a mile to find a pump that supplied water. Not surprisingly, the city was plagued by high rates of water-borne diseases. To address such issues, the City of Milwaukee established the Milwaukee Water Works on April 18, 1871, with the utility beginning to pump water from Lake Michigan in September 1874. Yet access to this resource was initially unequal. It wasn’t until the election of Socialist mayor Emil Seidel in 1910, for example, that the Polish wards on the city’s South Side received water.[5]
The Seidel administration called for more than greater access to freshwater. By the early twentieth century, the growth of the city led to industrial and sewer runoff spilling into Lake Michigan, polluting the drinking water. Following his election in 1910, Seidel worked to also build a water filtration and treatment plant, citing the public’s support for such a system through a 1908 referendum. Seidel was unable to see this project through to fruition, but another Socialist mayor, Daniel Hoan, adopted the cause of clean water upon taking office in 1916. On the campaign trail, Hoan “pounded away on simple municipal matters” including access to clean water.[6]
After taking office, Hoan called for the modernization of the city’s water infrastructure and helped pass legislation to prevented raw sewage from contaminating the city’s drinking water supply. Hoan, who would remain in office until 1940, also pushed forward on the construction of a water filtration and treatment plant for the city. Following years of legal battles with Milwaukee-based manufacturers who didn’t want to pay higher rates for treated water, construction on the plant finally began in 1934. And while the Great Depression delayed the completion of the project, the Linnwood plant opened in 1939 – a victory for clean water in Milwaukee.[7]
Postwar population and industrial growth in Milwaukee saw the need for greater access to freshwater. The summer of 1961 witnessed the Linnwood plant record its highest single-day production of 267 million gallons. Such use made it clear why a second water treatment plant was need for the city; in 1962 the Howard Avenue Water Treatment Plant went online. Yet by the mid-1970s, as companies and people fled the city, water use in Milwaukee began to steadily decline. By the early twenty-first century, total annual revenues for Milwaukee Water Works were decreasing, while total annual expenses were increasing. By July 2009, Water Works officials announced expenses were running so far above revenue that the agency would wipe out its reserves by the end of upcoming year unless rates were raised. In early 2010, the Public Service Commission approved a 20.8 percent increase in Milwaukee Water Works rates. By this time, delinquency rates for unpaid water bills in Milwaukee were on the rise. The end of 2009 saw a 15 percent increase in warning letters sent to city residents and businesses who were behind on their water bill. The unemployment rate in Black neighborhoods throughout Milwaukee stood at over 33 percent in November. Not surprisingly, it was these communities that saw the highest uptick of warning letters.[8]
The Business of Water
The deindustrialization that reduced water use in Milwaukee led city officials to consider new ways to think about this important resource – and its potential role in economic development. In September 2005, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) created the Milwaukee 7 (M7) project. The M7 was meant to establish a regional, cooperative economic development platform to attract, retain, and grow businesses within the seven counties of southeastern Wisconsin. By 2007, a consensus had developed within M7 that an emphasis on water technology would prove a winning strategy for attracting investment to the Milwaukee metropolitan region. That year saw the formation of the Milwaukee 7 Water Council, a body committed to freshwater research, economic development, and education. Richard Meeusen, Chairman, President, and CEO of Badger Meter, a manufacturer of water quality and control products, and Paul Jones, Chairman and CEO of A.O. Smith Corporation, a provider of water heating and water treatment solutions, were brought on as co-chairs of the Milwaukee 7 Water Council. There was, in other words, significant corporate weight behind this move.[9]
In 2009, the Milwaukee 7 Water Council incorporated as a 501(c)(3). That same year saw Milwaukee gaining admission into the United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme (UNGCCP), one of only two American cities asked to take part in the initiative (with San Francisco being the other). To UNGCCP officials, Milwaukee’s commitment to freshwater research warranted their inclusion in the initiative. For the city’s financial press, participation in the UNGCCP would help Milwaukee immensely as it continued to craft its post-industrial identity. As the Milwaukee Business Times noted, membership in the UNGCCP would “help to increase the brand awareness” of Milwaukee as a leader in developing “the most advanced freshwater technology worldwide.”[10]
Undoubtedly helping Milwaukee’s case was that earlier in 2009 Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle announced a commitment of $240 million to help create the University of Wisconsin’s School of Freshwater Sciences. This investment of state funding into a public institution suggested that the state was on board with Milwaukee’s attempts to brand itself as a freshwater hub. Yet statements from the Doyle administration suggest why they were on board with such an effort. “Our universities have always been the engines that drive Wisconsin,” the Democrat governor said. “This initiative will support UWM’s efforts to grow the economy in southeast Wisconsin.” Water research, in other words, would come to equal water jobs.[11]
The School of Freshwater Sciences was not the only group getting a refurbished new home. In September 2013, the Water Council (they had simplified their name in 2012) moved into the Global Water Center; the building’s street address had been changed to 247 Freshwater Way to commemorate the momentous occasion. The previously vacant industrial building, meant to be hub space for universities and water-related companies, had been made possible by a $20 million in tax credits from the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA). The center, a potent symbol of Milwaukee’s post-industrial identity, was the first project in WHEDA’s Transform Milwaukee program, a broader initiative meant to stoke public-private partnerships across the city.[12]
Equally as important was what was going on inside the building. One of the stated goals of the Global Water Center was to foster entrepreneurial endeavors for start-ups working in the field of water technology. In 2013, the Water Council, with financial support from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), initiated the Global Freshwater Seed Accelerator. This program offered building space and $50,000 grants to four start-up companies: Microbe Detectives (Madison, Wisconsin), Vegetal i.D. (France), H2Oscore (Milwaukee) and Noah Technologies (Port Washington, Wisconsin). The program and number of start-up tenants it funded and housed in the Global Water Center would continue to grow over the next five years. Yet the Global Water Center also made room for more established water-related companies: Veolia Water North America had an office in the building. The French-based multinational company works with governments around the globe to manage water systems traditional overseen by public authorities.[13]
The Price of Water
As the Water Council was moving into their new home in the Global Water Center, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) was reviewing an updated application from the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin to purchase Lake Michigan water from Milwaukee. This water diversion application was initially submitted in 2010; an agreement between Milwaukee and Waukesha was ultimately reached in 2017. Under the deal, Waukesha will pay Milwaukee $3.5 million per year for Lake Michigan water. That number could reach $4.8 million, depending on much water Waukesha ultimately uses. When Waukesha finally began receiving Lake Michigan water on October 9, 2023, the conversion of water from a natural resource to a component of growth-oriented research and development strategies to a full-on commodity was complete.[14]
In early 2018, as Waukesha was setting up their system to receive purchased Lake Michigan water, Milwaukee Health Commissioner Bevan Baker was forced to resign over his department’s mishandling of lead poisoning testing. Advocacy groups argued that city officials hadn’t done enough to address the issue of lead pipes present in Milwaukee’s aging housing stock; over 105,000 of these units had been built before World War II, with the bulk of these units in Milwaukee’s communities of color. By 2021, the percentage of children tested with elevated blood lead levels in Milwaukee nearly doubled that of the state average. The majority of these cases in Milwaukee were clustered in neighborhoods marked by high rates of poverty. Mayor Barrett’s desire to use the “Fresh Coast” initiative to attack poverty was more than a failure; it also cruelly highlighted how poor water quality in certain neighborhoods remained a crucial component of that continuing poverty.[15]
A city-funded initiative to replace such lead pipes did begin in earnest in 2017 – but its immediate impact was rather modest. Between 2017 to 2020, just 2,000 pipes were replaced. The onset of the Biden administration suggested that the federal government would assist in this important work. In August 2023, Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin announced that the state, through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, was in line to receive $370 million to address lead pipe replacements. While that sounded like a significant amount, Milwaukee Water Works Superintendent Patrick Pauly noted that it was “not enough to replace all the lead service lines in the state, or even in the city of Milwaukee.” He estimated that it would take close to $700 million to replace the lead pipes in Milwaukee alone.[16]
By October 2024, 8,000 of the city’s remaining 73,000 lead pipes had been replaced. That same month President Biden visited Milwaukee to announce that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would require local governments to replace all lead service lines by 2037, and that his administration would provide $2.6 billion from the EPA’s budget for water infrastructure improvements. Wisconsin, Biden told the Milwaukee crowd, would receive $43 million of this new funding.[17]
Such funding, while important, was still not enough to fully address the presence of lead pipes in Milwaukee. And recent developments suggest that no additional federal funding is on the horizon. In February 2025, the Trump administration – with the support of Republicans in Congress – began the process of repealing the EPA mandate to replace lead service lines. Cities, in other words, were on their own if they wanted to ensure that all of their citizens had access to clean drinking water.[18]
Recent history suggests why a city like Milwaukee is ill-prepared for this moment. The communities where unsafe drinking water remained a reality throughout the early twenty-first century, marked by racial and class segregation and the impact of deindustrialization, had little to offer the “Fresh Coast” narrative, as the turn to water-based entrepreneurialism found very little value in addressing such communities. Once reduced to a commodity, water was viewed primarily as a means to forward economic development – not as a way to keep a city safe and hydrated. With the apparent federal withdrawal from environmental issues and investment in cities like Milwaukee, the public-private partnerships that marked the city’s complex relationship with neoliberalism may be in trouble. If nothing else, one hopes that this current upheaval of the status quo leads to a return to viewing this important lens not through the lens of economic growth, but through access.
Michael Carriere is a Professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, where he teaches courses on American history, environmental studies, and urban design. He has written for such publications as the Journal of Planning History, the Journal of Urban History, Cultural History, Reviews in American History, Punk Planet, Pitchfork.com and Salon.com. He is the co-author, with David Schalliol, of The City Creative: The Rise of Placemaking in Urban America (The University of Chicago Press, 2021).
Featured image (at top): Aerial view of downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, focusing on the Milwaukee Art Museum’s signature Quadracci Pavilion, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, at the Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Carol M. Highsmith, photographer, August 2016, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
[1] Diana Marrero, “Milwaukee on the ‘fresh coast, not ‘rust belt,’ says Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in D.C. speech,” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, December 3, 2008: Milwaukee on the ‘fresh coast,’ not ‘rust belt,’ says Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in D.C. speech; “Demographics & Data,” City of Milwaukee Department of City Development, n.d.: Data.pdf.
[2] “Testimony of Tom Barrett,” Office of the Mayor, March 19, 2009: Microsoft Word – BarrettTestimonyWaterSubcommittee31909.doc; Kent Wainscott, “Mayor Barrett makes water pitch to White House,” WISN.com, April 10, 2014: Mayor Barrett makes water pitch to White House.
[3] For more on the history of socialism in Milwaukee, see Nicholas Howland, “How To Build a Socialist Government: Milwaukee and the Sewer Socialists,” Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities 12(1), 2022: How To Build A Socialist Government: Milwaukee and The Sewer Socialists.
[4] See Andrew J. Diamond and Thomas J. Sugrue, “Introduction: Historicizing the Neoliberal Metropolis,” in Neoliberal Cities: The Remaking of Postwar Urban America, Andrew J. Diamond and Thomas J. Sugrue, eds. (New York: NYU Press, 2020): 1-12, 1,7,8; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 76-8.
[5] Kathleen Foss, “Water System,” Encyclopedia of Milwaukee, Margo Anderson and Amanda I. Seligman, eds.: Water System – Encyclopedia of Milwaukee; Kate Foss-Mollan, “Waiting for water: service discrimination and Polish neighborhoods in Milwaukee, 1870-1910,” Michigan Historical Review 25 (2), 1999: Waiting for water: service discrimination and Polish neighborhoods in Milwaukee, 1870-1910 – Document – Gale Academic OneFile.
[6] Lindsay Hoban, “Milwaukee’s ‘Sewer Socialist’: The Unfinished Story of Daniel Webster Hoan,” The Forum, October 1938: Milwaukee’s ‘Sewer Socialist’. The Unfinished Story of Daniel Webster Hoan – Socialist Party Collection – Collections hosted by the Milwaukee Public Library.
[7] Foss, “Water System.”
[8] City of Milwaukee Water Works, Financial Statements, December 31, 2009 and 2008: Microsoft Word – 11527MIL.docx; Larry Sandler, “Milwaukee, suburban water rates could soar 28.5% or more,” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, July 23, 2009: Milwaukee, suburban water rates could soar 28.5% or more; “PSC approves 20.8% Milwaukee water rate increase,” Milwaukee Business Journal, December 17, 2010: PSC approves 20.8% Milwaukee water rate increase – Milwaukee Business Journal; “Delinquent water bills rising in Milwaukee,” Pioneer Press, November 1, 2009: Delinquent water bills rising in Milwaukee area – Twin Cities; Tom Kertscher, “Milwaukee’s problems include ’52 percent black male unemployment,” Politifact, November 17, 2010: PolitiFact | Marvin Pratt, former acting mayor of Milwaukee, says black male unemployment tops 50 percent.
[9] The Water Council, “Our History”: Our History – The Water Council.
[10] “UN designation is great opportunity for Milwaukee,” Milwaukee Business Times, July 29, 2009: UN designation is great opportunity for Milwaukee.
[11] “Gov. Doyle: Announces $240 million for UW-Milwaukee building projects,” WisBusiness.com, n.d.: Gov. Doyle: Announces $240 million for UW-Milwaukee building projects | WisBusiness.
[12] “Global Water Center,” WHEDA.com: Global Water Center | WHEDA.
[13] Dan Shafer, “Milwaukee Opens the Global Water Center,” June 15, 2016: Milwaukee Opens the Global Water Center.
[14] A.J. Bayatpour, “Waukesha is set to switch over to Lake Michigan water next week, making history in the process,” CBS58.com, September 5, 2023: Waukesha is set to switch over to Lake Michigan water next week, making history in the process; Phillip Boudreaux, “Waukesha now supplying Lake Michigan water to its residents,” Spectrum News, October 9, 2023: Waukesha now supplying Lake Michigan water to its residents.
[15] Ann-Elise Henzl, “Milwaukee Health Dept. ‘Failed to Ensure Adequate Notification’ of Elevated Lead Levels in Kids,” WUWM, January 12, 2018: Milwaukee Health Dept. ‘Failed to Ensure Adequate Notification’ of Elevated Lead Levels in Kids | WUWM 89.7 FM – Milwaukee’s NPR; “Living with Lead in Milwaukee,” Edge Effects, March 21, 2022: Living with Lead Contamination in Milwaukee – Edge Effects.
[16] Matt Martinze, “Milwaukee significantly behind in project to replace 1,100 lead pipes by end of year,” Great Lakes Now, August 12, 2020: Milwaukee significantly behind in project to replace 1,100 lead pipes by end of year | Great Lakes Now; Chuck Quirmbach, “Post-visit from Biden: What’s next for Milwaukee-area effortsto replace lead drinking water pipes?”, WUWM, October 9, 2024: Post-visit from Biden: What’s next for Milwaukee-area efforts to replace lead drinking water pipes? | WUWM 89.7 FM – Milwaukee’s NPR.
[17] Alison Dirr, Mary Spicuzza, and Laura Schulte, “‘I’m insisting that it gets done’: Takeaways from Joe Biden’s visit to Milwaukee on lead pipes, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, October 8, 2024: President Joe Biden touts lead water pipe replacement in Milwaukee.
[18] Eleanor J. Bader, “Trump’s Plan to Make America Healthy Again? Continued Exposure to Lead in Water,” Truthout, February 18, 2025: Trump’s Plan to Make America Healthy Again? Continued Exposure to Lead in Water. | Truthout.
