Little History

Our rivers, the very ones that pour into Lake Michigan and our beaches, are not healthy.

The Milwaukee Estuary includes the three major rivers in Milwaukee – Milwaukee, Menomonee, and Kinnickinnic – and Lake Michigan. More information on the projects happening in the estuary are shown on the map.

We did not make it this way but those before us contaminated the water so badly that the Federal Government put it on a list to fix.

The Milwaukee Estuary became an Area of Concern in the 1980s because of historical contamination and changes to the rivers, fish consumption, water quality, and wildlife habitat. An Area of Concern is an area on the Great Lakes that has a history of significant environmental harm from human activities, preventing people and wildlife from fully using or enjoying the local waterways. Go to: www.epa.gov/great-lakes-aocs to learn more about the Great Lakes Area of Concern program. Watch this short video to learn more:

Many federal, state, and local partners are working hard to design solutions, raise funding and fix it.

The Waterway Restoration Partnership is a group of long-standing, trusted partners in the community who have been working together for years to improve water quality in the area. With a once in a generation opportunity on the horizon, the organizations are formalizing their partnership and redoubling their commitment to work together to clean up the Milwaukee Estuary Area of Concern. Learn more about the Waterway Restoration Partnership.

The work to clean up our waterways is complicated but important.

The CAC serves as the voice of the community in the process of cleaning up Milwaukee’s Area of Concern. We do this by creating and facilitating conversation between the community and the regulatory authorities in charge of completing this work, ensuring the community’s concerns and ideas are recognized and prioritized.

Examples of Our Work

Community Advisory Committee for the Milwaukee Estuary Area of Concern Response and Recommendation to The Great JTI Jobs Training Initiative

The Community Advisory Committee for the Milwaukee Estuary Area of Concern requests the EPA and WDNR immediately pause the rollout of the GreatJTI training program in order to meaningfully incorporate the concerned feedback of the community of partners working to support this effort. Furthermore, the CAC wishes to make clear the program, as currently planned and facilitated by SKEO to date, serves to reinforce the very environmental racism and injustice the program claims to solve, counterproductive to its stated goals.

The Background

In January 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes National Program Office (EPA GLNPO) began planning for a job training initiative pilot serving Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in conjunction with cleanup projects in the Milwaukee Estuary Area of Concern (AOC). EPA GLNPO selected the Milwaukee area for the pilot out of 25 existing AOCs, defined by the U.S.-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement as "geographic areas designated by the Parties where significant impairment of beneficial uses has occurred as a result of human activities at the local level." The planning process for the EPA GLNPO job training initiative pilot, known as GreatJTI, consisted of building relationships with Milwaukee-area organizations involved with the cleanup of Milwaukee AOC sites as well as organizations involved in workforce development and community engagement. Read the GREATJTI PROGRAM PLAN REPORT