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