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In 2009, Kevin Shafer almost quit.
The civil engineer had been executive director of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District since 2002 – and he wasn’t having a great time. When he took the reins, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say MMSD was widely hated.
Years of sewer overflows into Lake Michigan, despite costly investment to address the problem, had cast a shadow of incompetence and mismanagement over the organization. The “sewer wars” of the ’90s left the suburbs bitter over MMSD costs they viewed as exorbitant. Popular conservative radio host Charlie Sykes even named a weekly “Deep Tunnel award” for government waste after MMSD’s biggest infrastructure project, mocking it as a boondoggle.
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“The first seven years were tough – and then my dad passed in ’09,” Shafer recalls now. The memory still makes him tear up. “I thought, you know, I’m not sure I can keep doing this. I thought, well, I can walk away and go back to engineering. … If I’m going to stay, I gotta make a change.”
Shafer, still reeling from the loss of his father, sat down at his computer and opened a blank document. What would change look like at MMSD? He pictured a 25-year horizon – 2035 – and started typing. By then, he wanted district operations to run on 100% renewable energy, 80% of which would be produced by MMSD itself; he wanted MMSD’s carbon footprint reduced 90% from its 2005 level; he wanted absolutely zero sewer overflows polluting the water.
He drafted a proposal for his bosses at the MMSD commission. “It was pretty radical. I thought, I don’t know if I can get a government body to accept some of this. I remember sitting there, staring at the keyboard,” he says. “Then I hit send.”
About three hours later, one of the commissioners called him and said, “I think we need to push this through.” In 2010, the commission adopted what was officially named MMSD’s 2035 Vision, a path toward climate resilience, water stewardship and sustainability for Milwaukee. It became a roadmap for the district over the next 15 years and into the future.
In possibly the most radical change of all, MMSD is no longer the pariah it once was. In fact, it’s one of the most celebrated arms of local government, one that appears to be doing almost everything right.
“MMSD is held up within the water industry, both nationally and globally, as among the best of the best,” says Dean Amhaus, president and CEO of The Water Council. “And really, Kevin is seen as a visionary. … It’s about time he gets the recognition that is due to him.”
And Shafer still hasn’t quit. He’s in his 22nd year, quietly leading MMSD toward 2035.
SHAFER NEVER WANTED TO live in Milwaukee. He was born and raised in Rantoul – a sleepy village of 12,000 in central Illinois. “Well, I never grew up thinking I wanted to be the executive director of a sewerage district,” he says with a laugh – but he did develop an interest in water resources and quality, and all the nerdy details that go into it. How do you keep fresh water clean? How do you help people access it?
He went to the University of Illinois, just a 20-minute drive from his house, to pursue a degree in civil engineering. While he was studying water, he was also pouring beer. At his side gig bartending, he met his future wife, Carole, with whom he now has two sons.
After Shafer graduated in 1982, the new couple moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where he worked for the Army Corps of Engineers while pursuing his master’s. Seven years later, he went private, taking a job with an engineering firm in Chicago. During his nine years there, he met a few people who worked at MMSD. When the opportunity to run the district’s engineering department opened, he applied and got the job in 1998.
MMSD in 1998 was a far cry from MMSD in 2024. Some might say that sewerage is never pretty, but it was especially ugly then. To understand how bad things were, you need to know a little bit about how Milwaukee’s sewer system works. (Don’t worry – we’ll keep it brief.)
The city has a combined sewer system that collects sewage, industrial wastewater and rainwater runoff in one pipe. When the system is operating correctly, all of it is sent to sewage treatment plants to be cleaned and then discharged safely back into Lake Michigan. But during heavy storms, the onslaught of rain can overwhelm the system, causing untreated wastewater to discharge into streams, rivers and Lake Michigan. And “untreated wastewater,” to be clear, means human and industrial waste along with the rainwater that catalyzes the overflow. In the ’90s, that stuff was flowing into lakes and rivers around 60 times a year.
Thick brown blooms spread across Lake Michigan’s otherwise beautiful blue water, and the Journal Sentinel ran repellent photos of them. Beach closures were blamed on overflows. The Friends of the Menomonee River – now called Milwaukee Riverkeeper – sued MMSD for polluting the water.
The Deep Tunnel was built to fix that. In 1987, before Shafer’s tenure, construction began on the massive reservoir, which would run 275-340 feet underground and store 405 million gallons, at a cost of roughly $1 billion. Pundits like Sykes painted the effort as a foolish waste of taxpayer money.
That high price tag led to the over-a-decade-long “sewer wars.” MMSD’s service area extends beyond Milwaukee County – into the northern suburbs like Mequon, southern ones like Franklin, and west to Brookfield. That means the suburbs pay taxes into the system. Considering how to cover the Deep Tunnel costs, the city argued that taxes should be based on property value, while many suburban residents and their representatives argued that it should be based on water use.
Should a family of three living in a $2 million Thiensville home with relatively little water usage pay more or less than eight people living in a $60,000 house in Milwaukee who use significantly more water? “You could argue either side,” says Kristine Martinsek, who was an MMSD commissioner at the time. “Which is what happened. … It was a very, very ugly battle that carried on for a very long time.”
The suburbs sued to leave MMSD. The legal battle lasted until 1996, when the suburbs paid MMSD a $140.7 million settlement that left both sides bitter.
“There was a tension … an adversarial relationship,” says Christine Nuernberg, who was elected mayor of Mequon – a prime battlefield in the sewer wars – in 1998. She remembers a meeting early in her tenure with other suburban leaders, in which the MMSD leadership threatened to fine the suburbs if they didn’t “get their act together.”
“People walked out not particularly enthusiastic,” she says. “[MMSD] just had the facts wrong. And the attitude was not particularly friendly.”
When Shafer was offered the chance to lead MMSD in 2002, taking over for former executive director Anne Kinney, he was wary about wading into that tense, bitter atmosphere. During his four years as head engineer, he remembers fellow MMSD staff, in conversation at parties, would lie about where they worked. “They were afraid to even say they worked at MMSD – there was that much animosity.”
“WHEN I FIRST MET KEVIN, I thought, boy, they’re just going to eat him alive,” says Martinsek. As an MMSD commissioner, she had sat through many long, intense meetings full of arguments and accusations, and this new executive director, a friendly, soft-spoken engineer, just seemed “too nice.”
Shafer overcame his trepidation and leaned into that “niceness” during his first years at the helm. “I thought, well, we can’t do this alone,” he says. “Everyone is paying into MMSD – we need to benefit everyone with what we do.”
It’s hard to picture Shafer, an unassuming man with a quiet voice, yelling at anyone, but it’s easy to imagine him calmly swaying people to his side. When he speaks about infrastructure, water treatment and topics that could easily bore a layman senseless, his amiable tone takes on a professorial intensity.
He began scheduling meetings with suburban mayors, nonprofits, businesses and more. His PR strategy began with roping these people and groups into the MMSD mission. Going forward, in Shafer’s vision, MMSD couldn’t be an outside force imposing heavy costs without clear benefit. It was going to be a collaborative effort with investment from everyone it affected, and he was going to make sure as many people as possible knew what they were getting out of it. He worked with suburban mayors and common councils on flood management, green infrastructure projects, and conservation through MMSD’s Greenseams program, creating partnerships with the skeptical and enthusiastic alike along the way.
When Shafer took over, MMSD was still in the midst of a protracted and messy lawsuit from Milwaukee Riverkeeper that ended with an appellate court ruling in MMSD’s favor. “My lawyer came in and said, ‘We won.’ And I said, ‘No, we lost.’ [Riverkeeper] wants the same thing we want.”
Education was a key part of Shafer’s public relations effort. Not all of those brown streaks in Lake Michigan are overflows – many are simply erosion from the shore and rivers. And beach closures? Those were often due to sediment from bird droppings, not from sewer overflows.
Around that same time, the Deep Tunnel was starting to pay dividends. In 1992, one year before the tunnel went into operation, about 9 billion gallons of untreated water overflowed from the sewers. In 2002, when Shafer took over, that number was only 441 million, although overflows persisted.
Originally, an algorithm controlled the Deep Tunnel, causing an overflow if the tunnel filled to 200 million gallons. “We just arbitrarily would let the tunnel overflow, when it was only half full,” Shafer says. “That caused a huge outcry from the public, rightfully.”
One of his first moves as executive director was ditching the algorithm and making each overflow decision personally. That meant a lot of 2 a.m. phone calls when storms passed through. “If you’re mad about an overflow, I didn’t want to say, ‘Well, a computer told us we had to.’ I’m the one making the decision,” Shafer says. “I think I put a face to the district. It’s not a pretty face, but it’s one you know.”
Shafer felt like he was on the defensive those first seven years, doing triage. His father’s death sparked a crisis, and it was after that dark time, when he penned the 2035 Vision, that MMSD really started to look to the future.
RAIN BARRELS MIGHT SEEM a little silly. Shafer knew that – but it was the first step of a much larger idea. The commonly used term for what he wanted to implement in Milwaukee is “green infrastructure.” That’s as opposed to “gray infrastructure” like concrete channels, sewers and the Deep Tunnel. Continuing to expand the tunnel, at a high cost, didn’t seem like the most efficient option. Instead, he wanted to collect the rain where it landed, preventing it from running into the sewer, and the easiest way to start doing that was by encouraging homeowners to buy a 55-gallon barrel for $30 from MMSD and drop it underneath their downspout. In 2002, Krista Lills, a water resource planner with MMSD, spearheaded the idea and got the program off the ground.
“I probably got ridiculed for that more than anything else,” Shafer says. For years, the public perception was that MMSD was dumping sewage in Lake Michigan, overcharging taxpayers for wasteful projects … and now they wanted people to buy barrels to fix the problem? It took convincing.
Fifty-five gallons doesn’t seem like much, but in aggregate, as MMSD persuaded more and more homeowners to opt in, it was meaningful. But equally as important, “It really got residents involved,” Shafer says. “[We’re] out there in neighborhoods, helping people understand the situation.”
Shafer’s green infrastructure push expanded outward – MMSD installed bioswales (landscape features like rain gardens) and porous pavement to collect and hold rain across the county. They began enlisting the help of local institutions and businesses to build green roofs – vegetation on flat rooftops that absorbs water.
“I didn’t think about climate change when we were starting the green infrastructure program, but as we’ve gotten more knowledge about the changing climate, it’s obvious that green infrastructure is helping us mitigate that,” he says.
Overflow volumes dropped, water quality improved, flooding was reduced. From 2019 to 2023, MMSD averaged 812 million gallons in overflow per year. In 2023, the total volume was only 230 million, down from 9 billion in 1992 before the Deep Tunnel. And the district now averages 2.2 overflows annually, as opposed to between 50 and 60.
AT THE SAME TIME THAT MMSD’S green infrastructure program was expanding, Shafer was boosting the agency’s flood management efforts, removing concrete channels in parks and replacing them with natural ones. Between 1996-97, heavy storms had produced two of the worst flooding seasons in Milwaukee history, with several children drowning, swept up in the fast-moving water exacerbated by concrete channels.
MMSD undertook multiple restoration projects, including at Lincoln Creek and Hart Park, an effort that continues to this day. In Pulaski Park, an ugly concrete channel carrying the Kinnickinnic River was removed in 2020 and replaced with a winding brook surrounded by vegetation. Instead of shooting the water down concrete, it allows it to spread out, slows it, prevents floods and provides a green space. “This is the future of infrastructure,” Shafer says of the project.
Pete Hill, a longtime environmental policy advocate and author of River Profiles: The People Restoring Our Waterways, discovered Shafer through these flood management and restoration projects. “[MMSD was] pushing the boundaries compared to what normally might be done,” says Hill. “It became clear to me that there was someone behind this, pushing people.”
Shafer’s leadership style leans toward big picture and away from micromanagement. He gives his staff a great deal of leeway to pursue the solutions they feel will reach the larger goals he has set out. “The approach of most state and federal agencies is tactical retrenchment, whereas the work of MMSD seems boundless,” writes Hill in River Profiles. “It represents mission creep in its best sense.”
Nothing illustrates this reputation quite as clearly as Milwaukee’s Area of Concern. Since 1987, the Environmental Protection Agency has designated the Milwaukee estuary – where the Milwaukee, Menomonee and KK rivers meet Lake Michigan – an “area of concern” due to its decades of heavy industrial pollution.
For the past 10 years, Mary Miss has shepherded a city-wide art project to promote Milwaukee’s waterways. The project, called WaterMarks, sees the New York-based artist and her team installing blue letters in 10 spots including Acosta Middle School, Harbor View Plaza and Melvina Park by the end of this year.
The letters connect to digital content about Milwaukee’s water, and their lights pulse when heavy storms threaten an overflow. The collaborative project was done in partnership with MMSD, and Shafer was a major proponent of expanding its scope into underserved neighborhoods.
“It’s become a project of Milwaukee, not a project for Milwaukee,” Miss says. “It’s Kevin’s leadership that has made this possible … his sense of care and kindness, which are probably not the words one would usually use to describe someone running a big agency.”
The necessary cleanup is vast, with multiple projects slated across dozens of governmental and private organizations. One of the biggest is the Dredged Materials Management Facility, a fortified outcrop of the south end of Jones Island that will store the contaminated sediment dredged from the rivers.
In 2020, while the project stagnated, Shafer volunteered MMSD to take over construction. The district didn’t have authority to do that, so Shafer and his team spent 2021 lobbying the state Legislature to grant them the right to build it. Law was changed, and now they’re on track to have the project done within two years.
“MMSD could have simply stayed within the realm of wastewater management, but they do so many other things in our entire basin,” says Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson. “Kevin has been a leader making it happen.”
MMSD also took over construction of the federally funded Kletzsch Dam Fish Passage, providing a path for native fish to travel upriver. And in 2019, it partnered with Milwaukee Riverkeeper – the nonprofit that was once locked in litigation with MMSD – to remove the Estabrook Dam.
“Kevin’s willing to really go that extra mile and see that larger vision and look beyond just the current couple years and into the future,” says Jennifer Bolger-Breceda, the Riverkeeper’s executive director. “What should Milwaukee look like? What should we be handing over to the next generation?”
WHEN IT COMES TO THAT NEXT GENERATION, the issue that looms largest for Shafer is climate change. “When we came out with [the 2035 Vision] in 2010, climate change was still very contentious – it still probably is in places,” he says. “I’ve had people email me with not such nice stuff about things I’ve written about climate change, but it’s happening, and you can see it every day. I think having that path laid out on how we want to address climate change really has helped the public understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”
Green infrastructure and water quality are cornerstones of that preparedness – as are MMSD’s increasing energy efficiency and lowering carbon emissions.
“With climate change, we are seeing and will continue to see the West on fire, the South boiling, the East flooding, and people will look to come to the Midwest as a haven,” Mayor Johnson says. “I see [Shafer] laying the foundation for us to adequately maintain and manage the changing climate.”
Shafer now travels around the globe to discuss the work MMSD is doing in Milwaukee, speaking in China and other countries about climate resilience, green infrastructure and water stewardship.
And in Milwaukee, he’s finally feeling the transformation. “I think what I’m most proud of is that change in perception. We’re now looked at as a protector of water as opposed to a polluter of water,” Shafer says. “And, you know, our staff can go to parties now and admit where they work.”
