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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Tower plans for three big projects

$3.6 million in grant funds a major boost

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 2/10/21

TOWER— It appears that 2021 will see at least three major infrastructure projects in and around Tower after the city has learned it’s set to receive more than $3.6 million in state and …

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Tower plans for three big projects

$3.6 million in grant funds a major boost

Posted

TOWER— It appears that 2021 will see at least three major infrastructure projects in and around Tower after the city has learned it’s set to receive more than $3.6 million in state and federal grant funds.
The city council, on Monday, approved seeking bids for the three projects, which include a major reconstruction of Pine Street, a new main that will replace the city’s 70-year-old existing connection to its water tower, and a new and expanded water treatment plant.
The level of grant funding for the water-related projects surprised even the most optimistic of city officials. A $3.375 million grant from the Army Corps of Engineers was the biggest windfall announced by Matt Tuchel, who operates the joint Tower-Breitung water and wastewater system. Three-quarters of the funds will go toward the replacement of the communities’ joint water treatment plant as part of the Tower-Breitung Wastewater Board’s (TBWB) effort to address surface water contamination of the existing wells that serve the two communities. The remaining 25 percent will help to cover the cost of installing Tower’s new water main.
The two communities are planning to jointly bid the projects in hopes of achieving a more favorable price. The TBWB will pay for the cost of the water treatment plant, while the city of Tower will shoulder the roughly $1 million cost of replacing its water main, although most of that will now be covered by grants.
The Army Corps grant was a major windfall for the two projects, currently estimated to cost a total of $4.5 million. “There are only a few of these given out in the entire Midwest,” noted Tuchel.
Breitung Township has also obtained a $250,000 grant from the Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation for the project and is planning to apply for another $250,000 from IRRR. While the city of Tower will ultimately likely need to tap a loan from the state’s Public Facilities Administration (PFA) to pay for the remainder of the water main replacement, it now appears it will be just under $200,000, or a tiny fraction of the two projects’ overall cost. The TBWB will also need to borrow some PFA funds, said Tuchel, which could prompt a modest increase in rates to cover the loan. Even so, the level of grant funding should keep rate hikes to a minimum. “It’s very rare to get 90 percent funding on a project like this,” said Tuchel. “This is going to benefit both communities greatly.”
A real need
Tuchel told council members that a wellhead protection study done in 2014 found that surface water was infiltrating into the wells, bringing the risk of both viral and bacterial contamination. “We tried to find another source of water,” said Tuchel, but he noted that finding large sources of good quality groundwater in the area is difficult. “The state park spent hundreds of thousands of dollars looking and ended up with nine gallons per minute,” said Tuchel, or far less than required to serve both Tower and Soudan. Tuchel said he and SEH engineers explored tapping drinking water from Lake Vermilion, but concluded the cost was too high. So, in the end, they concluded that purifying water from the existing well was the most cost-effective approach.
Tuchel said the project will involve removing the existing water treatment plant and replacing it with one with twice the capacity. That’s designed to provide redundancy, eliminating the possibility of getting untreated water into the system if the existing treatment plant were to fail. The project also entails closure of two of the system’s wells and rehabbing the remaining wells to reduce the inflow of surface water.
Tuchel noted that the existing water treatment plant, installed in 1999, was designed to treat well water, which typically has less contamination than surface water. To address the surface water contamination, Tuchel has had to deploy additional chlorine treatment of the water, which creates elevated levels of trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids, which can cause health problems of their own. The level of those contaminants in Tower and Soudan’s water has generally been running below allowable levels, but the levels do vary and have been close to, and occasionally over, the safe limits at times.
Tuchel said replacement of the water main is also critical to the city, since any break in the pipe would cut off the city’s only source of water. He said the new pipe will be PVC, which should last “beyond any of our lifetimes.” Soudan had installed a new main several years ago, so its main doesn’t need replacement.
Council members said they were pleased to hear the latest news. “So, we’ll have better quality water, a redundant system, and everything will be state of the art and brand new,” said council member Dave Setterberg, who offered thanks to everyone involved in the project and grant applications.
Pine Street
The city also received good news on its nearly $850,000 Pine Street reconstruction with the preliminary approval of a $152,000 grant from the Community Development Block Grant along with a $100,000 award from the IRRR. The St. Louis County Board will still need to approve the CDBG funds, but that’s typically just a formality, according to Nancy Larson, the city’s grant writer and manager. The city has already received $472,000 toward the project from the state Local Road Improvement Program, although those funds have to be expended by the end of 2022, so the council approved soliciting bids for the project, with the understanding that the project could still be shelved or modified if bids come in too high. The bid request is expected to include some alternates to allow the city to trim the overall project cost if necessary. Despite the good news on funding, the city likely still faces a funding gap, currently estimated at about $64,000, but the exact amount won’t be known for sure until bids come back.
St. Louis County will actually undertake the bidding and contracting on the project, which means the city won’t face cash flow issues as is common with major projects that are funded on a reimbursement basis.
In other action, the council:
 Approved 4-1 with little discussion the request by the Breitung Police to suspend on-call coverage from February through April to cut costs. The council had rejected the request at a special meeting on Feb. 1, mostly over a lack of information. Setterberg said he had gotten more information and was satisfied that the impact would be minimal. The city would save about $1,500 from the change. Council member Joe Morin voted no.
• Heard from Clerk-Treasurer Victoria Ranua, who asked for city council input on the format and substance of city department reports. Ranua also asked if the council would like to see additional reports that they aren’t currently getting and she asked council members to think about it and come back to the issue at an upcoming council meeting.
• Heard from city grant manager Nancy Larson and ambulance director Dena Suihkonen about current applications to FEMA for a new ambulance as well as a new ambulance cot and radios. “It’s a very competitive process,” said Larson, although she said she believes the city has a competitive request. The ambulance request, which was set to be submitted on Feb. 12, totals $226,000. The smaller request for the radios and cot will be submitted under a separate category. The city purchased a number of new radios recently, said Suihkonen, but the previous ambulance director and fire chief had allocated them all to the fire department. She said a number of them did not come back after several resignations from the department last March. She said she has been unable to locate any paperwork on which radios were issued to which members, in information she would need to make a more formal demand for the return of radios.
“The only paperwork I have on radios dates back to the Bernie Zollar era,” she said.
• Gave approval to a request by the Wagoner Trails Club to allow for grooming of a 1.3-mile segment of the Prospectors ATV Trail for skate skiing.
• Approved adding the monthly city claims to the consent agenda.