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Orleans City Council Reviews Proposed 28E Agreement With Iowa Lakes Regional Water

January 24, 2023 Steve Schwaller

(Orleans)– Meeting in special session Monday evening, the Orleans City Council voted to authorize city officials to negotiate terms of a proposed 28E agreement with Iowa Lakes Regional Water to eventually supply water to the city. As we’ve reported previously, the current water supply contract with the city of Spirit Lake runs out this coming June 30th. The fact the city of Spirit Lake has indicated it likely will not renew a similar contract with Orleans, along with new requirements from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, has Orleans officials looking at possible options. Brad Veit, Chief Executive Officer of Iowa Lakes Regional Water says it won’t be until late 2024 before they would have the infrastructure in place to serve Orleans…

“First we have to give it to the engineers. They’re going to make sure, they’ve already verified that we can provide the water. They’re going to set up the most feasible route and everything like that, and then we’ll look for financing and then we’ll go ahead and get construction going.”

Veit says Iowa Lakes Regional does have the capacity to serve Orleans…

“So right now we’d be able to feed them from our current tower that is on the east side of East Lake Okoboji. We would be running some main line from there up to the city limits. Then we would also be looking to add another water tower up around the lakes area to help with capacity.”

Veit added it was important the city of Orleans show some sign of commitment…

“So obviously with anything when we’re getting engineers involved, legal involved, there’s upfront costs and we just wanted to make sure, my board wanted to make sure, that we had some commitment from the city that they were going to move forward with Iowa Lakes Regional Water.”

Orleans Mayor Bill Maas says city representatives will now meet with Spirit Lake officials to ask about their willingness to continue to provide water service through the interim until Iowa Lakes Regional Water would be able to serve the city in late 2024. Maas says he’s cautiously optimistic those talks will be successful…

“I had a discussion with the City Administrator from Spirit Lake and he seemed willing to try to help us out. We’ve worked on many projects before and we’ve helped them in some cases and they’ve helped us in others, and so it’s been a mutual friendship, shall we say, that we kind of help each other out through times of crisis and stuff, so.”

Maas says they’re prepared to look at more options if, in the worse case, those talks are not successful…

“Well I don’t think we’re going to be like Scottsdale, Arizona and stuff, but in a worse case scenario I suppose Spirit Lake could say we aren’t going to help and then we have to find some other method to work with it and stuff.”

Orleans city council members Monday evening also expressed concern over how requests for new connections would be handled during the interim period.

It all comes as the city transitions to a new City Clerk and City Attorney.

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