ELY— Aging drinking water infrastructure has become a hot topic for the city council here in recent months as city officials are beginning the outreach for funding to help finance what is likely to be a multi-million-dollar project.
Clerk-treasurer Harold Langowski initiated the process to obtain federal funding with Eighth District Rep. Pete Stauber’s office back in February, part of an effort to raise the estimated $4.5 million it will cost to replace the aging infrastructure that brings Ely’s drinking nearly five miles from Burntside Lake.
“The original was built in 1932 with upgrades in the 1950s and 70s,” Langowski told the city council back on March 7. “The intake infrastructure is approaching its end of useable life and requires replacement, at an estimated cost of $4.5 million. The prospects for the funding aren’t clear, since Congress typically receives many more requests for project earmarks than it ultimately funds.”
Despite Langowski’s caution on funding, an application for the money to replace the water intake line is already in progress.
Boaters on Burntside Lake may have noticed the 92-year-old structures that support the city’s water intake line across the open waters of the lake and the Burntside River. A simple visual inspection of the ancient wooden pilings that support the water line is all that is needed to see why Ely wants to modernize the structure and pipe.
Water from Shagawa
Ely originally established its first water supply intakes much closer to home, in Shagawa Lake near where Semers Park is today. The water was pumped to a small concrete-floored holding reservoir at Ely’s first water supply plant, at “the foot of Chapman Street,” as reported in the June 24, 1889 issue of the Duluth Evening Herald. From there it was pumped to a wooden water tower next to city hall.
Given the primitive state of wastewater treatment back when Ely was founded, the water quality in Shagawa Lake began to deteriorate quickly during Ely’s first three decades as the community failed to recognize the problems inherent in using the lake as both a source of drinking water and the destination for its nearly raw sewage.
An early sign of trouble was reported in the July 14, 1916, issue of the Ely Miner. “On June 21, an investigation was undertaken on the public water supply, at the request of the health officers. The supply was obtained from Shagawa Lake and subjected to filtration and disinfection. The field investigation showed that the purification treatment was being applied in a satisfactory manner, but that an unsanitary condition was being produced by the maintenance of an emergency connection with the lake. In the analytical results, indications of contamination were not found in the treated supply. It was recommended that the emergency intakes to the lake be disconnected from the clean water pumps.”
As problems continued, the city called a special city council meeting on July 19, 1918, in order to approve the solicitation of bids for new water supply piping and the addition of a sedimentation tank to help filter the city’s potable water.
Shagawa water degrades
By 1928, water from Shagawa Lake was getting noticeably worse. On Nov. 9, 1928, the Ely Miner reported that the Minnesota Health Department was in Ely “for a week investigating the Ely water supply and trying to figure out a method to rid the water of the mouldy (sic) taste which persists in remaining. Previous tests have proven the water fit for drinking purposes with no evil effects but the mouldy (sic) taste remains however, although the volume of the taste has been cut down to a minimum.”
By the summer of 1930, the quality had deteriorated still further. The Ely Miner wrote, “Two years ago the local water supply became highly objectionable … due to certain algae or minute plant growths in the lake, which gave off foul-smelling and (foul-)tasting volatile oils. A general public demand that something be done … and has persisted since that time.”
The same article also mentioned the push to get Ely’s water from a different lake like Burntside or from wells, noting that “a natural assumption (is) that sewage from the city (was) entering the lake.”
The newspaper went on to report that the same kind of purification plant would be necessary for Burntside Lake water as was being used for water from Shagawa because similar contaminating material is present in each lake. The paper reported the cost of reaching Burntside Lake with a pipeline would be in excess of $200,000.
At the time, because of Ely’s foul water, the city was already using a sedimentation basin, filtering, and a new experimental chlorine and ammonia treatment. The Ely Miner reported,
“The object of this (treatment) is to kill harmful bacteria and wipe out odors and tastes. This treatment has thus far been very satisfactory and Ely is one of very few cities in the entire country and the first in the state to use such a water purification process and this method is regarded as the last word in water purification… 25 years ago Ely was the first city in the state to put into operation a water filter.”
The Ely Miner also wrote that the state health department testing showed the water was safe to drink after passing through Ely’s drinking water treatment measures, despite its lousy smell and taste. “It should be needless to state in conclusion, but still it seems necessary, that persons going to springs and poorly-constructed wells for drinking water are sacrificing the safety offered by our city water supply to overcome what appears to us at present an imaginary
distaste for the public water supply.”
The move to Burntside
After years of discussion and community pressure, the city council resolved to spend the money to build a water intake line to Burntside Lake. The Ely Miner reported on Jan. 23, 1931, “City water has occupied the attention of the city fathers for several years and the several councils have put in many sleepless nights trying to figure out some method of overcoming the criticisms aimed at them by reason of the medicinal taste in the water on several occasions.”
The decision came as Otto E. Brownell of the state health department recommended piping water in from Burntside Lake, which he said would save the city the “very heavy expense” of more rigorous treatment of the sewage that the city dumped into Shagawa Lake.
It was a time of burgeoning population growth in Ely, which only added to the pollution problem in Shagawa. Ely’s population peaked with the 1930 U.S. census count at 6,156, an increase of over a thousand from the 1920 census. The population spike impacted the volume of water needed in Ely. For the first time since the city was founded, water use exceeded “the amazing totals of 1 million gallons a day” several times a year, according to reports at the time. The city council recognized that despite its efforts to filter and treat the water from Shagawa, the lake could no longer meet the city’s needs for drinking water.
At a special city council meeting in January, 1931, the council bit the fiscal bullet and resolved to build a water line to Burntside Lake by that summer. The current water intake structure was completed in 1932.
The 1931-32 construction and subsequent updates of the water intake line to Burntside will be subject of an upcoming Timberjay article later this summer.