This is an image of MMSD's green roof.

SUSTAINABILITY

MMSD envisions a healthier Milwaukee region and a cleaner Lake Michigan accomplished through its leadership in attaining zero overflows, zero basement backups, and improved stormwater management. MMSD will serve as a model for its management of climate change impacts on wet weather and its focus on energy-efficient and sustainable operations. In 2010, MMSD adopted the 2035 Vision, which focuses on integrated watershed management and climate change mitigation with an emphasis on energy efficiency and includes the following energy goals:

  • Meet 100% of MMSD’s energy needs from renewable energy sources.
  • Meet 80% of MMSD’s energy needs from internal, renewable sources.
  • Reduce MMSD’s carbon footprint by 90% from its 2005 baseline.

Renewable Energy

Green Infrastructure

Greenseams®

Community Engagement

Sustainability is a rich part of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District's (MMSD) history, integral to present-day operations, and critical to our future. Our mission encompasses many overlapping facets of environmental and public health.

Sustainability is not an endpoint at MMSD, but rather a pathway forward. It’s about ensuring we do our part to protect the region’s environmental health, support social sustainability, and be fiscally responsible by incorporating green infrastructure in surrounding communities and educating the public on the importance of preserving our waterways.

MMSD's Renewable Energy

Cleaning water is very energy-intensive; therefore, MMSD's energy plan has identified ways to incorporate renewable energy to reduce energy costs, price volatility, and greenhouse gases and to provide energy security. To reduce our carbon footprint, each water reclamation facility has the capability to generate renewable energy.

The Jones Island Water Reclamation facility's primary renewable fuel comes from landfill gas, a local renewable energy source recycled into power, saving MMSD ratepayers millions of dollars.

The South Shore Water Reclamation facility's primary renewable fuel comes from methane gas produced by the digesters. If we do not capture, clean, and burn the methane gas in generators, it would be a waste of this energy. Instead, it saves ratepayers approximately $70,600 in savings each month by avoiding purchasing natural gas.

Landfill and digester gas are renewable fuels that reduce MMSD’s non-biogenic greenhouse gas emissions. MMSD has reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 18% since 2005.

MMSD continues to pursue energy reduction and renewable generating technologies to support our 2035 Vision.

MMSD's Renewable Energy Used in 2024

MMSD's renewable energy used at our water reclamation facilities and the annual savings to the community.
MMSD Green Infrastructure Capacity and Progess to 740 million gallons goal

MMSD’s Green Infrastructure Progress

Green Infrastructure (GI) uses or mimics nature’s processes to help manage water where it falls by storing it, helping it soak into the ground, slowing it down, or using plants to send it back into the atmosphere.

  • GI helps reduce polluted runoff, lessens the likelihood of basement backups, and reduces the amount of water needing to be treated at our water reclamation facilities
  • GI can add valuable green space to urban environments, helping to cool things down, improve air and water quality, and provide valuable habitats for pollinators and wildlife.
  • MMSD has a variety of community GI programs in place to help us reach our goal of capturing 740 million gallons of water using GI by 2035.

Join us in this effort and learn how you can help capture rain on your property by installing GI, such as a rain barrel or rain garden. It’s an ambitious goal, but together we’re making progress.

MMSD’s Greenseams®

Greenseams® is a forward-thinking flood management program that permanently protects key natural areas containing important water-absorbing soils. MMSD partners with The Conservation Fund, a national nonprofit conservation organization, to implement the program.

  • The program works to reduce flooding in a 720-square-mile area that covers six watersheds and Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Waukesha, and Washington counties.
  • Greenseams makes voluntary purchases of undeveloped, privately owned properties in areas expected to have major growth in the next 20 years.
  • Land purchases preserve important open space along streams, shorelines, and wetlands.

By keeping rainwater where it falls and absorbing it naturally into the ground, Greenseams® helps prevent future flooding and water pollution while supporting and protecting MMSD’s urban structural flood management projects—infrastructure investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

A graphic with MMSD's Greenseams flood management program information
2024 MMSD rain barrel and rain garden program stats

MMSD’s Community Engagement

Through the Fresh Coast Resource Center (FCRC) and workforce development programs, MMSD is connecting with communities in our service area to engage the public to take action through our residential green infrastructure (GI) programs and sustainability efforts.

The Fresh Coast Intern Team (FCIT) installs rain barrels and rain gardens in communities within MMSD’s service area each summer, working to meet our 740 million gallon goal.

MMSD participates in community outreach to educate and engage the public on the importance of GI and sustainability through tabling events, rain barrel and rain garden workshops, and our annual rain garden plant sale.

MMSD is committed to developing a sustainable workforce with the FCIT and the Milwaukee Community Service Corp (MCSC), allowing employees to develop skills in land stewardship, GI installation, and forestry.

By educating our communities on sustainability, we can all help protect Lake Michigan and local waterways.

This report showcases the work that has been done within the Greater Milwaukee Area. Through community engagement, green infrastructure installations, and community education, we continue to work towards a greener and cleaner environment.

View the 2024 Year in Review

MMSD Sustainability Plan

MMSD will continue to play a strong role in this region’s collaborative efforts to improve the region’s water resources. This is a crucial responsibility that builds heavily on our sustainable past and relies on relationships with partners throughout Greater Milwaukee. By identifying and assembling partner combinations for projects and programs, we can help ensure a sustainable tomorrow.

Energy Plan for MMSD Facilities

The energy planning report summarizes opportunities for energy reduction improvements, renewable energy production, and greenhouse gas reduction to meet MMSD's 2035 Vision. 

 

 

 

MMSD Urban Biodiversity Plan

This plan identifies goals and strategies for enhancing urban biodiversity in the MMSD planning area by making recommendations for incorporating biodiversity into green infrastructure and other projects, identifying high-priority conservation and rehabilitation areas, and suggesting future areas for research, monitoring, and education/outreach.

 

MMSD Resilience Plan

This plan is a framework for how the Milwaukee metropolitan area can address complex threats for a stronger, more resilient region. To realize a more sustainable, resilient future for our community we first need to understand the social, economic and environmental climate of the Milwaukee region.

green roof on business

Green Infrastructure

Green infrastructure captures, absorbs, or stores rain and melting snow, taking on numerous shapes and sizes from 55-gallon rain barrels to trees and porous pavers for parking lots, driveways, and sidewalks. You can see green roofs on buildings or bioswales along city streets.

Green Luminary® Recipients

A Green Luminary® helps protect our rivers and Lake Michigan by adopting practices that harvest rainfall for other uses, or mimic nature, by helping it soak into the ground to reduce water pollution. View previous Green Luminary® ​​​​​award winners from the MMSD service area.

MMSD Green School program at Hawley School

Green Schools

The Green Schools Program helps remove hard surfaces and replaces them with GI.  This helps reduce the amount of stormwater runoff entering our sewer system and local waterways, and provides a safe space for the students, their families, and the community to learn and play.

Greenseams Flood Management MMSD

Greenseams®

The Greenseams® program helps prevent future flooding and water pollution while supporting and protecting MMSD's structural flood management projects - infrastructure investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Greenseams® is an innovative flood management program that permanently protects key lands containing water-absorbing soils.

Marquette Interchange green highway project

Green Highways

The Green Highways program addresses highway stormwater runoff through innovative green infrastructure. The stormwater runoff is redirected from highway downspouts to an array of green infrastructure installations under overpasses.