Milwaukee’s mayor says efforts to curb the dumping of raw sewage in Lake Michigan have made progress under his watch, despite an attack ad in the race for governor that claims otherwise.
Barrett, the Democratic nominee in the race for governor, says he’s worked to expand sewer system capacity from 400 to 500 million gallons. He says it would actually be able to handle even more if Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, had not held up construction of a retention pond that would hold another 300 million gallons of water.
The ad blames Barrett for over eight billion gallons of sewage that’s been dumped into Lake Michigan, which includes about two billion gallons that went in this summer when Milwaukee was flooded by over five inches of rain. Barrett says it’s difficult to prevent something like that when you’re up against Mother Nature and God.
During a stop in the Madison area Wednesday, Barrett also criticized the Walker campaign for running the sewage ad at the same time that another TV spot is airing that goes after the Democrat for having a radical environmental agenda. Barrett says Walker seems to be “speaking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.”