Milwaukee's sewerage district, MMSD , has gotten a bad rap for years about its deep tunnel, which has done a remarkably good job of keeping hundreds of millions, if not billions of gallons, of sewage out of Lake Michigan since the system was built.

I am a former MMSD commissioner and onetime journalist, and have seldom if ever seen a concerted campaign of undeserved negative news coverage of such long duration.

Now, there is a remarkable turnaround -- although it is probably too late to change people's opinions, shaped by years of relentless radio and newspaper coverage that trashed MMSD and the deep tunnel.

Bruce Murphy of Milwaukee Magazine gets it right:

... in the September issue of Milwaukee Magazine, I wrote a column quoting the mayors of Mequon, Hales Corners and Elm Grove all chastising the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and talk radio for misleading the community about the Deep Tunnel.

The truth is that the Deep Tunnel works as planned and Milwaukee has one of the best sewage treatment systems in the country. Prior to the Deep Tunnel’s construction, Milwaukee spilled 19 times more sewage into the lake than is does now, some 8.5 billion gallons of sewage per year, compared to less than 450 million gallons per year today. Milwaukee went from averaging 60 or more overflows per year to less than two, just as planners had expected. (To reduce the overflow as close as possible to zero would cost another $7 billion, and would still provide no guarantee of total success, which is why community leaders rejected this approach.) 

 The magazine’s September issue started arriving in the mailboxes of subscribers on Aug. 16. On Aug. 20, both Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling went into defense mode, with Sykes laying on the ridicule of yours truly (nicely done, Charlie) and Mark Belling attacking me as only he can (ouch). Then, on Sunday, the Journal Sentinel entered the debate, with a banner editorial declaring “the tunnel mostly works.” 

 The glaring line in the editorial was this: “Due to the constant and often uninformed sniping by talk radio and other critics, many people have mistakenly come to think of the tunnel system as a colossal, obscenely expensive public works failure.”

And just who are these “other critics”? It was the JS news editors, who for nearly a decade ran screaming front-page headlines about occasional overflows, leading readers to think Milwaukee had a huge problem rather than an imperfect but nationally laudable system. This kind of coverage gave Sykes and Belling all the ammunition they needed to attack the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. But last fall, the paper did a historic about face, pulling Marie Rohde and Steve Schultz from this beat and replacing them with Don Behm. The coverage of the MMSD changed radically. Last week, with the historically unprecedented downpour of rain in late August, the MMSD had an overflow of 117 million gallons of partially treated sewage, and the news was buried in a couple paragraphs at the back of a story about the weather. Wow, what a difference. 

 The Badger Blogger has condemned the JS editorial board for not crediting Milwaukee Magazine as inspiration for its editorial. That would be asking an awful lot from any newspaper. You can bet there have been fierce arguments at the paper about its coverage, and certain news editors are probably still livid at the complete change in how the paper covers and runs headlines on this issue. Meanwhile, it has been the editorial page, under the leadership of O. Ricardo Pimentel, that has occasionally run correctives to the news coverage and has helped readers get a more balanced view of the news. Its Sunday editorial made plain to readers what its news coverage has more subtly suggested for the last year: The Deep Tunnel works. That’s a service to the community. 

The change in coverage will leave Sykes and Belling with no oxygen on this issue, no factual verification of their complaints. Long-term, the community will go forward and can stop talking about wasting tax dollars on hugely expensive megafixes to lake pollution. It’s high time to address a cheaper and more effective fix to the major remaining problem facing our lake: stormwater runoff throughout the nine-county watershed that causes pollution.