TOWER-SOUDAN—Pressed by a recommendation from the Minnesota Department of Health, the Tower-Breitung Waste Water Board has approved seeking bids for the construction of a drinking water treatment plant that engineers estimate will cost as much as $5.5 million.
Available funding for the project includes a $3.375 million grant from the Army Corps and a $1.1 million grant through the state’s Public Facilities Authority, leaving the joint water authority about a million dollars short of the expected cost.
That means Tower-Soudan residents may be picking up the tab for any remaining debt service.
But the new plant is close to a necessity, according to TBWWB manager Matt Tuchel, given the recent reclassification of the communities’ drinking water source as surface connected.
That puts substantially greater demands on a treatment facility, since surface water is subject to much greater fluctuation in quality than groundwater. That’s been apparent in Tower-Soudan in recent weeks as a result of the ongoing drought, which has darkened the water and added tastes that the existing treatment facility can’t address.
“The new facility should result in much better drinking water quality,” said Tuchel.
The new facility will cost more to operate, although Tuchel said it isn’t clear how much more at this point. He said staff time to run the plant should be comparable to the existing facility, but he said chemical costs will likely increase.
Tuchel said the Department of Health has limited its response to the situation to recommendation, but Tuchel said the state agency could eventually require the communities’ to install an improved treatment system.
The communities have long relied on well water but those wells are shallow and recent studies have shown that their proximity to the East Two River and higher water tables due to beaver activity in the area, were creating surface contamination. State rules on drinking water treatment are considerably stricter when communities rely on surface sources.