REGIONAL — While a nationally recognized restroom at Bear Head Lake State Park may have captured recent headlines, members of the Minnesota Senate Capital Investment Committee discovered a far less glamorous story during their tour last week of northeastern Minnesota: Small communities are struggling under the weight of failing water and wastewater systems they can no longer afford to maintain.
“It’s been lovely being in northern Minnesota. We’ve seen tons of projects,” said state Sen. Sandy Pappas (DFL-St. Paul), chair of the committee. “But what we’ve noticed most is that water and sewer systems are aging out and need to be replaced.”
The infrastructure crisis stems from systems installed decades ago when the federal government covered approximately 95 percent of costs. Now, as those systems reach the end of their useful life, local agencies face the burden of replacement largely on their own, and many are coming up short.
“Local agencies are struggling to come up with the money,” Pappas said during the multi-day tour that showcased capital investment needs across the region.
The financial strain is hitting residents hard. Water and sewer bills in rural Minnesota communities have reached levels that shocked legislators.
“People’s water and sewer bills are so high in rural Minnesota, it’s shocking,” Pappas said. “If bills are more than $100 a month, they’re higher on the list” for state assistance.
The stakes are particularly high here in the northern part of the state, where environmental concerns loom large.
“We don’t want waste dumped into Lake Superior or the Boundary Waters,” Pappas said. “It’s such clean water. We need to make sure it stays pristine.”
But the math facing small towns is daunting. When utility rates reach their ceiling and residents can no longer absorb increases, the burden shifts to property taxes. Meanwhile, construction costs have doubled or tripled in recent years.
“I wish we would have started them in those years we didn’t do any bonding,” Pappas said, acknowledging that delayed action has compounded the problem.
The political challenges of bonding bills have slowed progress, though Pappas expressed optimism about current efforts.
“It’s a political issue. We’re working on that, trying to work together on bipartisan bills,” she said.
For Pappas, who was born on the Iron Range, the tour served another purpose: helping urban legislators understand rural realities.
“It’s really good for urban legislators to get around the state and see what the issues are,” she said. “It’s good to get an understanding when you have a city of under 1,000, it’s much more expensive to do some of these projects.”
The challenges are compounded by emerging contamination concerns. Communities are now grappling with new problems like PFAS and manganese in their water supplies, contaminants that could have adverse health effects.
The situation has left residents in an untenable position, Pappas noted, articulating a principle that resonates across rural Minnesota.
“We shouldn’t have to buy water. We pay for clean water. We should just be able to drink it from the faucet,” she said.