Upgrades May Be On The Way For Spirit Lake’s Water Treatment Plant
Upgrades May Be On The Way For Spirit Lake’s Water Treatment Plant
February 23, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Spirit Lake)– Some updates may soon be made to the city of Spirit Lake’s water treatment plant. The City Council Tuesday authorized the hiring of an engineering firm to do a study of the facility. City Attorney-Administrator Gregg Owens says it’s been quite awhile since the plant has seen a major renovation and some of the equipment is getting some age on it…
“I mean there’s nothing to be concerned about, but we just want to make sure that when we’ve got equipment down there that’s 40, 50 years old, let’s make sure either it’s still needed or if we’re going to make changes with systems for monitoring and other types of things that we get the right equipment in there to match up with that. And so it’s really, like I said, it’s really, without building a new water plant, we’re going to modernize that the best that we can.”
Owens says they’re confident they’ll be able to do the engineering and improvements without having to raise water rates. He says it will be covered by funds awarded to Spirit Lake through American Rescue Plan Act…
“Assuming it gets appropriated, of course, come this spring, over the course of the last two years we’ll have a total of a little over $720,000, probably closer to $750,000. We don’t know what any recommended improvements are going to cost. What we are pretty confident of, however, is this money that’s come in can be spent on utility projects, so sewer projects, water treatment projects, which is something ordinarily if you spend money on, affects rates. You’re usually not able to do projects without raising your rates because it’s a utility. And so we expect that money to subsidize a lot of what we project to do and we don’t foresee that the improvements we’re going to have unless we’re really surprised, are going to result in any significant change in water rates for the public.”
Owens says more recent upgrades were made on the raw water side to address problems caused by zebra mussels.
