Will Water Recycling Come to the Midwest?

Existing drinking water sources are under increasing strain due to overuse, climate change and other threats. Water recycling, also known as water reuse, may play a significant role in creating the sustainable cities of the future. Millions of people around the country are already being asked to drink recycled water, either indirectly (through a process in which treated wastewater is discharged to an environmental buffer such as groundwater or surface water and is later taken into the water distribution system) or even directly (when treated wastewater is immediately discharged into the water distribution system without an environmental buffer). At an April 10 conference sponsored by the Law School’s Water Law and Policy Initiative, several experts discussed the history and future of such technologies, and whether they are likely to emerge in Wisconsin or remain limited to the more arid parts of the county.

Noted author and journalist Peter Annin opened the event with a summary of his new book, Purified: How Recycled Sewage is Transforming Our Water. Annin described a significant water crisis facing many parts of the country, leading also to trouble in the production of food and energy, sectors long intertwined with water. Annin cited only two realistic options for “new” water supply­­­­—desalination and water reuse. Reuse is the far more sustainable option, he said.

Annin covered numerous historical case studies involving efforts communities have made to introduce recycled water into their water supply portfolios. Some were successful (Orange County), others less so (San Diego, at least at first). But Annin explained that careful examination of the United States Drought Monitor reveals that water shortages are not only a problem in the arid West. As a result, water reuse projects have been implemented or at least attempted in the more humid parts of the country too—in Norfolk, Virginia and Tampa, Florida, among other places.

In reviewing the lessons learned from all these efforts, Annin identified several keys to successful implementation of water recycling projects, including effective strategies for communicating with the public, rigorous monitoring of the water produced, and reliable technologies to ensure public safety.

In Wisconsin, at least so far, such technologies are more a matter of interest than necessity. “Nobody recycles water because it’s cool,” said Theera Ratarasarn, a panelist reacting to Annin’s presentation who is Chief of the Public Water Engineering Section for the Drinking Water and Groundwater Program at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Instead, they do it because they have no other choice; it is a last resort.  In Wisconsin, Ratarasarn said, “everywhere you look, you find water.”  Thus, he said, it isn’t necessary to resort to water recycling. In fact, it would run afoul of a Wisconsin legal requirement that the public drinking water supply come from “the best available source practicable.” As a result, Wisconsin regulators are more concerned about other pressing issues like PFAS, lead, and nitrate pollution.

Another panelist, Rachel Havrelock, who is Professor of English and director of The Freshwater Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago, observed that most people are accustomed to “single-use water,” and this view drives our discomfort with water recycling. In fact, she said, water recycling more closely emulates nature and the multiple-use water cycle. In most places, she said, there is already de facto water reuse, with treated wastewater returned to surface water and soon thereafter reclaimed for drinking water treatment a short distance away. Havrelock’s team has proposed a separate water reuse-driven supply for agricultural and industrial purposes in Chicago and the surrounding areas. “We don’t need to drink recycled water here,” she said, but reuse can still make a big difference by reducing the load on the portion of the water supply that will be used for drinking. She cited a “groundwater emergency” in many parts of the Midwest. “Water reuse is part of climate change adaptation,” she concluded, and the “legal world is absolutely vital at this juncture” to regulate the practice.

Michael Duczynski, a research civil engineer with the United States Army Engineer Research and Development Center, confirmed that from the military perspective there are plenty of avenues for non-potable reuse. The military, he said, has large critical infrastructure needs at many of its installations around the world, including everything from cooling towers to data centers. The resilience of those installations—and of civilian communities— can be increased through water reuse options, he said. Duczynski described a new project through which the military is discerning the regulatory requirements for a spectrum of potential reuse applications spanning different levels of treatment, different end uses, and different jurisdictions. Employing some of these projects could save millions of gallons of water, he predicted.

Video of the full program is available here (click the “watch now” button).

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New Marquette Lawyer Spotlights People Raising Their Voices to Seek Just Outcomes

Marquette Lawyer Cover with Wylie AitkenAll his life, Wylie Aitken has loved the performing arts. He wanted to make it on the stage, in movies, or in concert halls. He also wanted to advocate for people who were not getting fair deals in some important ways. As a young man, he realized the best path for him was to focus on the latter while drawing on his talents for the former. In the 1960s, he took his dreams from Southern California to Marquette Law School, where he developed skills essential to success as a lawyer. Returning home, he then launched a long and successful career performing, as he puts it, for audiences of 12, namely, members of juries. Aitken has won cases against giants such as Disneyland and the auto industry on behalf of what he calls “the little guys.” And beyond his legal practice in Orange County, California, he and his wife, Bette, have been influential in building up the performing arts, supporting Democratic politicians, and boosting the quality and vitality of education institutions. That includes generosity they have shown for years to Marquette Law School and Marquette University.

The Summer 2024 issue of Marquette Lawyer magazine features a profile of the colorful Aitken, who credits Marquette Law School with playing an important part in his success. The article, titled “Winning Performance,” may be read by clicking here.

Beyond the specifics of Aitken’s success lies a theme of the good that can come from developing talents and abilities, working hard, and raising your voice in pursuit of making things better. Those are themes reflected in several other pieces in the new magazine.

In “Army of Survivors,” Professors Paul G. Cassell of the University of Utah and Edna Erez of the University of Illinois Chicago assess the importance of victim impact statements given by 168 women who were victimized by Larry Nassar, once the team doctor for USA Gymnastics. The women who testified at Nassar’s sentencing proceeding showed great courage in raising their voices in court (in nationally televised sessions) in pursuit of making sure that not only Nassar but many who enabled him were held accountable and that the general public had increased knowledge of the evils of sexual assault. Cassell and Erez analyze different aspects of the impact the women’s statements had and conclude that giving victims the opportunity to raise  their voices has great value. The article is based on the Barrock Lecture on Criminal Law the two professors gave at Marquette Law School. It may be read by clicking here.

Professor Margo Bagley of Emory University raises her voice on behalf of bringing more women and underrepresented minorities into the world of inventing and patenting. In “Deploying Our Secret Weapon,” Bagley spells out specifics on how few women and minorities have become involved in such work in the past. She makes the case that bringing more of them into such work not only is right but can improve economic growth and America’s global standing. The article is based on Bagley’s Nies Lecture on Intellectual Property at Marquette Law School. It can be read by clicking here.

Voices have been raised in many varied—and passionate—ways in advocating for what corporations could and should do to involve themselves in the improving their communities or the nation as a whole. Is the only real obligation of a corporation to pursue profits for owners and shareholders? Or are there broader role businesses should play? And what is the law around permitted use of corporate resources? Professor Ann M. Lipton of Tulane University analyzes the complex issues involved in such debate in “Of Chameleons and ESG,” an article based on her Boden Lecture at Marquette Law School. The article may be read by clicking here.

Veteran Milwaukee journalist Tom Kertscher was visiting his father in West Bend, Wisconsin, when a police officer arrived to give him a ticket for not making a full stop at an intersection several blocks away. A doorbell video from a resident led to the ticket—and led to Kertscher’s raising his voice about the extensive amount of surveillance of this kind. It is generally legal when done by private individuals, he found. Kertscher’s tale, interweaving his unsuccessful effort in court to be given a warning and not a ticket together with broader context about the legality of such surveillance evidence, can be read by clicking here.

The Burdens of All: A Social History of American Tort Law, a book by Joseph A. Ranney, the Adrian P. Schoone Fellow at Marquette Law School, was featured in the Summer 2022 Marquette Lawyer. The book prompted Professor Cristina Tilley of the University of Iowa to raise her voice, as part of a Marquette Law School conference, in reacting to Ranney’s perspective. She praises his research—and calls on him to continue and expand it. Her essay, “All-American Tort Law, may be read by clicking here.

In his column, titled “In Celebration of Progress and Continuity,” Dean Joseph D. Kearney reflects on nine 100-year-old tables that were moved in 2010 from Marquette Law School’s long-time home, Sensenbrenner Hall, to Eckstein Hall—and, more generally, on how the Law School benefits from both tradition and change. His column may be read by clicking here.

Finally: the Class Notes describe recent accomplishments of more than 30 Marquette lawyers and may be read by clicking here, and the back cover (here) offers a recent snapshot showing the strong record of Marquette Law School graduates moving into good legal careers.

The full magazine may be read by clicking here for the PDF or here for the “interactive” version.

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Remembering a Marquette Lawyer (and Judge) on the Centennial of His Birth

Tom Curran A week and a half ago, the Law School held our annual Alumni Awards Reception and Conferral—always a highlight of our year. For it enables us to celebrate Marquette Law School’s spirit and ideals by recognizing four exemplars of the genus (or perhaps it’s the species) of the Marquette lawyer.

I had occasion that day to talk with a longtime colleague about past such alumni awards receptions and conferrals, including the one in 2007, where we honored Martin J. Greenberg, L’71, with the Charles W. Mentkowski Award for the Sports Law Alumnus of the Year; (now-Judge) Katie Maloney Perhach, L’00, with the Howard B. Eisenberg Service Award; the Hon. Patricia J. Gorence, L’77, as the Alumnus/a of the Year; and the Hon. Thomas J. Curran, L’48, with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Then, last week, my colleague noted to me that today would have been the 100th birthday of the last of these individuals (the other three, happily, still being active alumni). I relate a brief story about Judge Curran here.

I recall my commendation of him on that occasion in 2007. I said in part this:

You may think that it is his service for almost a quarter-century as United States District Judge here in Milwaukee that recommends [Tom Curran] for this award. And this is relevant, for it is a lifetime achievement award. I am inclined to think, though, that Tom Curran would be receiving this award even if he had never become Judge Curran, for his accomplishments from 1948 to 1983 would have sufficed.

Tom Curran joined his brothers’ law firm in Mauston, Wisconsin, in 1948, and for a brief moment—a year or so—the firm was Curran, Curran & Curran. That did not last, not I am sure because of any difficulty on the part of Irish brothers in getting along with one another, but because one of his brothers left in 1950 to become a circuit judge in Juneau County, where he served for the next 30 years. The firm flourished nonetheless, and today it is one of the largest firms in the state outside of a major metropolitan area (with apologies to the many Currans and others here today from Mauston for my characterization).

Of course, the fact that there are several Currans at the firm still (Judge Curran’s children) does contribute to the numbers somewhat, but you cannot maintain a firm of this size—or even stay in business for so long—without developing a reputation for quality and trustworthiness, and the Curran firm surely has that reputation. And much of that reputation developed during Tom Curran’s 35 years of practice in Mauston.

His own stature as a lawyer meant that Tom Curran was elected by his statewide peers to the presidency of the State Bar of Wisconsin, a signal honor.

I said more, but let me move the story along. I also recall a portion of Judge Curran’s remarks in then accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award:

Given the very special place Marquette already had in the lives of the Currans, it was no surprise, when I was discharged from the Navy in July 1946, that I would come up and enroll at Marquette. And I found myself, four days later, sitting in a classroom, as we then had the three-semester-a-year program, given that probably 95 percent of us were veterans. I would guess that we ranged in rank from a private to a brigadier general—a former brigadier general. The only problem was that the general had trouble remembering the “former” part of it—or at least he did, for maybe two or three weeks, until he ended up in Professor Ghiardi’s class.

Finally, I recall but, alas, cannot directly quote the moment in his acceptance remarks—not scripted, I should think—where Judge Curran turned around from the podium and looked back at Rev. Robert A. Wild, S.J., then the president of Marquette University, and me.

Judge Curran noted the coincidence of two guys from the South Side of Chicago leading a beloved Wisconsin institution, and his remarks were most generous. This was characteristic of Judge Curran, in my experience: he made that moment not about himself but about others—and about Marquette.

I have never forgotten it or him. It is pleasant to remember a generous and gracious Marquette lawyer and judge both on his 100th birthday and on other occasions.

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