Milwaukee has more than 410 miles of streams, 85 lakes, and three rivers—the Milwaukee, Menomonee, and Kinnikinnick.Milwaukee ; plus miles of Lake Michigan shoreline. Milwaukee has been reinventing itself over the past decade, most of them involving water. The city is steadily transforming into what former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson hopes will be “the Silicon Valley of water.”
More than 130 water-technology companies—such as PaveDrain, which created a permeable paving system to help reduce runoff, and Aquarius Systems, which designs river skimmers and other surface-water cleaning products—now call the city home. And in 2009, the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, opened the country’s first School of Freshwater Sciences.