[00:00] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead**: Going to call the uh Lake Elmo City Council workshop for April 8th uh 2025 to order today. The only thing on the agenda is uh discussion uh with Clark Schroeder regarding the Lake Elmo water issues. [00:15] **Clark Schroeder**: Good evening, Mayor Council. I think water is what they're dealing with. You can see on the agenda for today, we're going to be touching on the White Bear Lake work group updates and studies. And then I thought I would just uh review the county land for a little. So feel free to um feel free to interrupt me and ask questions when you go because it does it is going to flow through and we want to make sure that you have uh you know you get your your questions answered. Again, here's our agenda. So in 2012, a lawsuit was filed against the DNR claiming that excess groundwater permits in the east metro led to unacceptably low levels. Um, in here is the link to the timeline of the lawsuits. And then we have a we did a uh a short study, uh, or we did a summary of a short study here. And how do I get to that? It's up. I see it up there, but I don't I don't seem to be able to—Oh, there I can. Okay. Yeah. So, anyway, we're we're basically—I'm not going to go through this history. You guys have lived it. Um I'm just going to say we basically ended this at the um uh 23-24 contested case hearings and I'll go over what the next case is going to be which is on April 16th is we have a hearing. So I I will go through that. Um so because of this um these lawsuits the legislators and the Met Council put together the White Bear Lake comprehensive work group. That's a work group that uh many people have attended. I currently sit on it. Nicole attends on that and we basically do studies. There's the lawsuits. Um this is the uh you know for the lawsuits on April 16th at 11:15 there'll be an oral argument at the Minnesota Court of Appeals regarding groundwater appropriations permit appeal. We're appealing the administrative law judge decision that require us to implement and enforce a plan to phase down to 75/90. And then there's a trial in uh third week in December tentatively right now to address the city's objection to the DNR's September 10th, 2024 amendment to our water permits. So Jim Thompson from Kennedy & Graven is our lead attorney on this and he works closely with Nicole and I um to bring us up to date to make sure that we're monitoring this situation. [03:45] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: Are there any other cities that are joining in on that contested portion? [03:50] **Clark Schroeder**: Yes, I believe there is three other cities. I believe there's a total of four. The schedule for that uh he gave us a schedule. There's uh for our side there's 30 minutes total. And so Jim is going to spend—Nicole, do you remember what that was? He was going to spend 15 minutes on one subject and then he had one guy could only speak five minutes and then he had—I mean it was literally they were going to practice this thing down to how many minutes they get to spend on their 30 minutes on which argument they're doing. I don't—can't quote that from verse right now. So this work group as we alluded to earlier is uh has a goal. It's an overall goal to uh access sufficient safe water uh drinking water for the east metro to support growth while also ensuring sustainability of the surface water and groundwater resources to meet the community needs. Um I'm just going to briefly touch on this. Um this is the uh the current lake levels and I think the interesting thing is if we go back to let's say 2020 you can see the recent rains we've had have elevated it. Um so when we're looking at this uh this 923 is the—the protective stage is 922. 923.5 is where irrigation bans would happen. So if you look back to this timeline from uh 2020 going through um if it falls below there uh which is probably 50% of the time there would have to be a total irrigation ban. That is one of the issues which is being appealed uh from the administrative law judge's uh ruling is that the uh irrigation ban was uh arbitrary if not capricious due to the fact that it was under-inclusive regarding residential irrigation ban—did not include commercial irrigation ban or agricultural irrigation. So that was one of the issues uh which is being appealed um you know from from both sides frankly. [06:15] So this is um part of the studies here. I think this is what I think is is is interesting. And so we have basically 15 studies. This group we have uh $2 million which is allocated by the legislators and uh the uh anticipation here is that we will not have enough money to do all these studies. We're going to go back to get maybe another million or two million based on where we're at. I'm going briefly touch on these studies as some of these would affect um Lake Elmo and some of the solutions that we may think are common sense solutions to not only support uh groundwater but also help with our contaminated aquifers and the PFAS such as surface water is most likely not going to be coming to Lake Elmo. I'll be discussing that. So some of the studies we're going through here, we can see we have redirect storm water to augment the lake. And so they have different different studies that they're going to be dealing with that um actually even conveying treated surface water uh from St. Paul Regional um and construct a regional surface water treatment plant um to help with that augmenting the lake. Reuse treated waste water um for agriculture and industrial use. Storm water reuse for irrigation, reuse water discharge from contaminated wells. Uh that basically would that references the 1007 program and project which I will be talking about later in my presentation. Treat waste water uh from the interceptors and inject it back into the aquifers which would be uh a very expensive thing but that would be one way to to support the lake level due to this porous nature of it. This whole issue revolves around that the lake is uh porous enough that when the aquifers are drained to a sufficient level especially during uh peak demand in the summer the lake drains faster because there's less hydrological pressure supporting the aquifer and supporting the lake above it. [08:30] So um lake augmentation, um, you know, and that basically would involve taking literally Mississippi water, treating it, getting out invasive species, changing the pH, magnesium, and then dropping that into the lake in order to support it. Uh that would probably pump around I don't know I thought it was like it was less than a billion gallons but it was still a significant amount of water uh storm water collection raise the outlet level. So right now the outlet level um if you raise the outlet level like a foot you would end up you know capturing another three or 400 million gallons of water in the lake. Uh what they're doing now is they're currently going around and using some uh LIDAR and then and then also uh interviewing and doing site visits on lake properties. Uh as you well know if you've ever lived on a lake 12 inches can make a significant difference to your shoreline if you're very close. And so what are the unintended consequences that in in addition to what are the downstream effects for the overflow uh on the lake has to be studied concerning the watershed. Those two studies kind of go 9a/9b. You can see that um that would provide some maybe temporary relief, but it doesn't provide long-term solutions in drought-like settings. Study number 10, lawn water restrictions implement less potable water use for irrigation tiered increase water utility block uh rates you know which is something that uh you know that we may end up having to have a more punitive rate if this issue is not solved in a few years. um water savings uh input uh low input turf grasses and you saw that the other day Nicole um is discussing with the University of Minnesota to do a pilot study here in one of our parks to do a um very low water turf installation in one of our city properties. Future community impacts and PFAS groundwater contamination with the groundwater modeling. Again, this goes back to the 1007 program operating costs and then um additional wells in Shoreview and North Oaks, which is kind of a roundabout way, but most of North Oaks is all private wells and uh so there's no real regulation. Uh the DNR does not permit private wells unless they're uh capturing or pulling more than 10,000 gallons per minute. No, per day. 10,000 gallons a day or a million gallons a year. So, what they're thinking about maybe is moving some municipal water there because that that affects the aquifer uh quite a bit more than uh what Lake Elmo does. [11:30] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Clark, yes, just a maybe a piece of information. The a large number of studies have shown that in communities with high median household income, increasing water use—or increasing water rates—does not discourage irrigation. They don't care. They can afford to pay for it. You can't save enough water. And we have fairly high median household incomes in the east metro area. And so I don't think that's going to be a very viable alternative based on historical uh trends. [12:10] **Clark Schroeder**: And I've shared that with the group too. I I think um I don't know if they're going to go to the uh behavioral economics level as far as uh research and studying that, but I've shared that information because that to me—I've heard it enough—it seems to be common knowledge. [12:25] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Yeah, AWWA has a lot of studies on that. American Waterworks Association. [12:30] **Clark Schroeder**: Okay. [12:31] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: And it's just doesn't work in affluent communities. They don't care if their water bill goes from $100 a month to $500 a month. They can afford it. They want green grass. [12:40] **Clark Schroeder**: Um, I'm going to go over um and go over the surface water uh one of the surface water um proposals uh just so you can get an idea of what they're talking about why—and why Lake Elmo is really not part of the mix of the surface water, which I think would be great for us but um for more than one reason. So um so this is where we end up with that irrigation ban um as one of the conditions. So this was the four conditions: that 923 remains in effect until the water goes up to 924. Uh requires all permittees developed uh per capita use to reduce residential water use to 75 gallons per day per capita and 90 gallons per day. Um, we just—I just did get our preliminary report uh for the year for 2024. And just to give you a summary, I think we pumped 364 million gallons in 2024. 2023 we pumped 543 million gallons. 2024 was a very low irrigation, um, lawn and irrigation period for us because we had very consistent—except for the month of September—we had very consistent uh rain during that period. If we take—if we basically put that into our um what Adam has come up with for our citizens on city water, he has about 10,500 citizens roughly on city water. And we we average that out, we end up with 73 gallons per day per person. Uh on the overall when we add in the commercial utilization for that we get uh right around 100 gallons per day. So slightly over. So overall that exemplifies how much irrigation is being utilized in this city for that and we're really dependent upon the weather. So that's in a draft. Uh we're just reviewing that now. We'll be sending that out to council um you know as soon as we make sure it's finalized. But I just got that today from uh Marty and Adam. I just wanted to share with you that it's not unreachable if the weather is nice and we have less irrigation. [15:15] So um so that that's one of the permits require public water suppliers develop contingency plan to shift their source of water from groundwater to surface water. Uh this condition would be met um by the summer of 2027 when the White Bear Lake comprehensive uh work group will be issuing their report and so that is we're meeting—we're meeting that condition because of that report—and then require permit—the DNR annually collective efforts to in other north and east metros to develop uh per capita water use plans. So that would have to be—um we are arguing that point also because that would be—we'd have to submit an enforceable plan that basically sets benchmarks and how we're going to incentivize uh decreased water utilizations within the city in order to maintain the 75/90 requirement from the court. Going back to the studies um one study uh potential surface water connections to various cities. The proximity of a city to the lake obviously influences the lake level and I have a presentation here which I'm going to highlight with you. Um and this is all public information here. [16:40] So um this—this was um from the DNR and so they're studying, you know, try to get down to the 75/90s and then they're trying to group together different cities and what effects they would have on there and also lake augmentation and then finally in this presentation is injection of treated waste water into the bedrock aquifer. Um and so when you see in this study—and I won't go through all 42 slides here obviously—um but they talk about Hugo 1 and Hugo 2. If you uh if you review what the Hugo uh comprehensive plan looks like most of Hugo is developed on the western side of the city. The eastern side of the city is pretty much township-like development farmland and stuff like that. It—it's a significant amount of uh population that could come into Hugo 2 by moving all that land into MUSA that from an aquifer standpoint we need to analyze that as a separate um qualifier. The population for that one area to bring into the MUSA would be approximately 30,000 to 35,000 people so it's a significant amount of population whether they bring it into the MUSA or not and that's a decision that may or may not be made obviously uh in the long term. The decisions that we're obviously looking at here are you know 50, 100 red—year long solutions. So we're—Hugo 2 is one of those things that we'd be looking at. [18:25] Um so so so this chart here the green line is the analysis of basically with no pumping within the five-mile radius. And so you can see here from the uh 923.5 level down here. Um, for the most part, the lake is above that level and it's above the protective level of 922, which is the protective level they want to make sure they never go below. And then—and then the other things they have on here is they have um what has actually been observed is this blue line and then ultimate Hugo 1 and ultimate Hugo 2 are these other lines. So when we—when we start talking about water demands—um well these are the averages. These are the—over the—over the years where we talk about um per capita use residential and commercial. Here's Lake Elmo. We have an asterisk besides our name because we have um we have a few years during this period where our water utility program uh crashed out and we were not able to retrieve reliable data from it and this goes back to 2018-2019 area is that—you don't know—you weren't here either. Um anyway, we were not able to get reliable information out of the system and there it was just really screwy. So we—we decided just not to even include it. So that's why we have an asterisk there. Um and you can see North Oaks is just an outlier due to the fact again like we talked about most of North Oaks is on private wells except for one small subdivision which is using a lot of water. So that's—that's why they're—that's why they're out there. Um Woodbury that's that alternate—I'm going to get to another map here. [20:30] Um so some—so some of these uh some of the scenarios here where we do the analysis is you know taking you know Vadnais Heights, Shoreview, the city of White Bear Lake, the White Bear Lake Township uh which happens to have two zones um and I think that includes both zones for White Bear Lake, Mahtomedi, and then uh running that through the current uh McCarrons water treatment plant in St. Paul. And then another one would be basically uh running a new one, you know, developing a new water treatment plant and then feeding those same feeding those same municipalities. And then they have some other ones where they maybe would drop in North Oaks, they would they would grab uh Caputo Cheese. Um again, White Bear Lake Township South, White Bear Lake Township North. Um and then so—and so they're doing some of that analysis and then they go through this, you know, and then they come back and so you get to this—you get to this slide here and basically they would—the gray line would be if we move those cities which are closest to White Bear Lake off of aquifers and move them onto surface water. It basically moves the lake above the protective level of 922 during this period. Um and this goes from uh uh 2002 to 20—2002 to 2016. And—and the reason it is that way is because we already did some of these studies. As you well know, we've been arguing this issue since 2012. And so this surface water study has already been done once and they're updating it with better numbers and this is one part of what the $2 million is going to go um is to study the effects on current population with current water use to find out would the—would the results be very similar to uh to what we see here. [22:50] So, and then we have uh you know North Oaks, you know, this thing goes on for, you know, all these different scenarios they're basically studying and that they're proposing to go through to do the hydrological uh work on this. And I thought I would just bring that up because um you know like I said before, I think surface water would be a great solution for Lake Elmo. But as uh Jack so eloquently has said, a 20-year pumping from the lake on lake—from for Lake Elmo affects White Bear Lake approximately one-tenth of one inch or something like that. I mean is—I don't remember the exact number. [23:45] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Yeah, one of—that's roughly it. Yeah. [23:50] **Clark Schroeder**: So it's—it's—it's basically a rounding error and so it really isn't worth the millions and hundreds of millions of dollars it would take to get water down here. So um so this is the—I thought I'd show this slide. This is the augmentation and— [24:10] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Just that—that number comes from a DNR report. [24:15] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. [24:16] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: It's not—Jack didn't make that up. [24:18] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're just quoting what—what they gave us and that—and that—that came from the 2016 study. You know, so again, that's why you're looking at the court order maybe not be totally aligned with practicality implementations, but I'm the last one to criticize the court, of course. Um, yeah, 780 million gallons a year basically to drop, you know, going through a pump station, intake, treatment facility, and then bring it in. And they, you know, these are even some of the issues that would happen, of course, is you could only do it during warmer months. You wouldn't be able to do it during the winter. And you also have to analyze the temperature differential. So, not only do we have to analyze the chemistry of this lake, what kind, you know, the surface water coming from the Mississippi obviously is going to have higher levels of nitrogen in it uh due to agricultural runoff through the northern northern half of our state. And the last thing you want to do is bring in that to increase uh nitrogen in White Bear Lake. It would have algae everywhere and other types of milfoil and other types of things. So, so anyway, so that—I just kind of wanted to highlight those are some of those issues and we're probably not—in my opinion, we're not going to be considered for surface water for Lake Elmo. [25:50] So, back to the PowerPoint here. One of the key concerns on the surface water funding is we just had this discussion last time which is so let's say we take these five or six cities and we put this on—on surface water. This is going to be more expensive obviously because you're buying treated water instead of using free water from the ground. And one of the—one of the—one of the issues this group would have to study is um how would that be funded? Should Lake Elmo and all these other cities that don't get surface water have to contribute to a metro east metro taxing district in order to support the increased costs for the municipalities that have to have this surface water and that's something that would have to be considered. You know, that's again, we're not studying that now, but that's one of those things if the studies demonstrate that surface water conversion for some municipalities is one of the solutions. And I really honestly think it's not going to be a solution. It's going to be multiple solutions for this. How do you fund it? Does that come from the state? You know, does the state ever—you know, people in Brainerd want to pay for municipal water in White Bear Lake in order to support White Bear Lake levels? Yeah, probably not. Um so, uh, that's one of the issues that we have to study after we get done with this other study. How do you fund it? [27:15] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: Oakdale wasn't included in any of those either for surface water. [27:20] **Clark Schroeder**: No, even though they also are very close to McCarrons. [27:25] **Council Member Nick Kragness**: Yes. You know, Clark, the legislature appropriated, I think it was 80 million last year for water treatment in Worthington in that um Lewis and Clark district for water. So, you know, not unusual for people from one part of state to pay for water for people for the other. [27:45] **Clark Schroeder**: That—that is true, but it's my understanding from that water district—and Nick is specifically talking about a water system in southwest Minnesota. Yeah. Um that's more of a—that's more of the capital infrastructure to put this together. The operating costs are what we're talking about because the um the assumption here is that if this is a three or $400 million solution, those costs would have to be borne by the uh bonding bill hopefully in 2028 is kind of the goal of this whole thing. The operating costs, you know, for the next hundred years are what they're talking about. So, you're right. It's one thing to—to have capital, another thing to operate it. Again, just a—just a slide here. If people—if people or the audience—the audience does not go through the PowerPoint—these are the cities that are in the uh the uh White Bear Lake comprehensive work group and you can see some of these cities obviously are not within the court-order five-mile radius. So in this case you can see down to the south here we have Woodbury. Woodbury is way outside the five-mile radius. They are not under the court order concerning the four conditions which I highlighted earlier. They are however part of the—the—the east metro comprehensive water plan because they do affect White Bear Lake in a greater sense than Lake Elmo due to their population of 80,000 versus our 14,000. So, um, and there's other cities in here that have that—that are in that because of that. Um so the—actually any—any questions—further questions about the White Bear Lake comprehensive work group or any suggestions—anything that you—if you had something to say to the group that you'd want me to say among— [29:45] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: So has it ever been discussed by the group riparian rights for those who are on the lake? [29:50] **Clark Schroeder**: Every time we have a meeting there's one individual—I won't mention his name—he talks about the fact that the people that pump directly out of White Bear Lake um again are not permitted because they're not drawing more than 10,000 gallons a day or a million gallons a year and they use that water to irrigate their lawn. And uh this particular individual brings it up every time that he wants that study done to analyze how much water is actually being taken directly from the lake and dumped on. Um, uh, the DNR has said the vast majority of that water that goes on that lawn is just going back into the lake or it's going shortly into the lake, you know. Um I don't know if they're going to do a study on this and spend money on this, but if there is a matter of um—I think the indivi—the uh public works director from Woodbury, Mary, she basically has said it's an equity thing, you know, which is okay, if we're having people that can't irrigate their lawns across the street in White Bear Lake or in Lake Elmo, but the people that live on the lake can use all the water they—Where's the fairness and equity within that? And that's kind of a messaging thing that we probably will have to address at some point. [31:00] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: And for some of the studies where involved uh from the watershed or gray water reuses, are those studies going to be again very specifically for the communities directly around the lake or are we talking a much larger scale region-wide in the east metro? [31:15] **Clark Schroeder**: So storm water reuse for irrigation would be part of the greater east metro area. Um because again you're basically removing aquifer water—instead of dumping it on the lawn you're using storm water. So that's one of the things that they will be analyzing. What kind of effect can that—can that work with? Now I—I went up to Hugo to look at theirs. Hugo—you know, a different scenario—um they basically put together this—some very large bodies of water that are city-owned and so they're actually collecting the storm water and then they actually have separate lines that they run to the developments in the area and they sell that water back to the developers. And so they're collecting water coming off in the developments and then they're paying for the infrastructure and the pipes and selling it back at half the price of the regular municipal water. And you know that's—it's—it's one of those things that uh uh you know where they're doing this it works in a compact area but our city is you know 23 square miles it would be you know at this point without—I mean I think they plan—they've been doing this for years and years and years. I think they planned this thing as they're planning out developments. So they knew ahead of time where they're going to go with that. To retrofit uh municipal operations to that would be in my mind very difficult. [32:35] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: I see there's a vacancy for the metropolitan area water supply advisory committee. Has that always been vacant or is that recent? [32:45] **Clark Schroeder**: Um I'm not aware. I'm not aware that uh if somebody's in there or not. I pulled this off their website and I think it's relatively new, but I can check on that. [32:55] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: Clark, isn't Woodbury um using storm water irrigates from golf courses? I read about that a couple years ago. [33:05] **Clark Schroeder**: Yes, that's a—it's not a city infrastructure like Hugo. It's like—like we have—like we're doing storm water reuse right across the road here—or we will be—um you know and then there's a couple others in the city that do that but again that's private HOA infrastructure not municipal infrastructure. [33:25] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: Okay. [33:26] **Clark Schroeder**: All right. I'll move on. So, um, 3M priority 1 group—um as you and everybody here has been dealing with the 3M issue since uh well since before time it seems. It's managed by the trustees who review and approve the projects according to their charter. Um I won't review the charter but it talks about their specific uh you know what—what are they supposed to do? You know, they're supposed to have you know use—use the resources for priority of drinking water, clean drinking water, and down the line to natural resource um you know work and recreation. So and that—that's from 2020. So the past meeting notes are all there for you to look at their annual report is here and I think that—I think that's—that's interesting from 2024 because you can basically if you go through this report you'll be able to see my uh you know our summary which the approved projects are more expensive than the conceptual estimate and hence we're anticipating running out by 2027 and uh again I—I won't go through this whole report. Um, you know, here's your map of your area. And uh even this is uh out of date because Hastings uh as you are well aware of through the news has been um brought—brought on with that um because they were able to get a tra—one of the—it's my understanding they got a trace molecule that is a short chain molecule like a four-carbon molecule uh that was came down the Mississippi and seeped into well number five was the first one they founded in and they were—and the only place that comes from is Cottage Grove and so they basically have got some of this funding now too. They have been advocating uh that the priority 2 group of $20 million be diverted back to drinking water since the uh drinking water will not—the drinking water fund will not have enough money to fund what is needed for the—the needs that are highlighted. And so they've been advocating for that. I don't know if that will happen or not. [35:50] Um so th—this—this report from 2027 you know talks about you know the funding categories where—where it's spent, how it's spent um you know and so I'm not—again I'm not going to go over that because you guys can read it. I'll go back to the PowerPoint. Oh, just at that. Yeah, there's like here when we look at these two projects here for Cottage Grove, Woodbury, Lake Elmo, and Newport. You can see here in our the uh conceptual plan, it was, you know, right over $20 million and now we're basically now we're coming at the approved projects. We're coming in just over 80. So, you know, that's why the $850 million—this doesn't go as far as it used to. Again, these are the towns and these are the areas and the townships that are listed under this. Um, and then a map. You can look at that. [36:50] Um so one of the questions—and City Council is aware of this, but the citizens, you know, what are we doing with that money? We basically are—are treating well number two which is in the northeast part of the city with a uh temporary—that may be permanent—um uh treatment plant on there. We're hoping to get that online by sometime this summer in order to help with peak demand because right now we're—we don't utilize that well unless we absolutely have to because it does have uh PFAS in it over the EPA four parts per trillion. And so uh we occasionally have to utilize that on peak demand days when it's 95 degrees on a Friday and everybody's watering. Um but that water is pumped into the system. It doesn't—nobody in the city gets direct water right from well number two. It goes down through the lines and gets mixed with the other wells, well number four, well number five and in our towers and then gets redistributed back to the city. And uh we have on our website we have our our uh consumer confidence reports which tests the city water overall, which is the blended water which we're actually shipping to our citizens and selling to them listing the PFAS levels within that. [38:10] South water treatment plant we're currently negotiating that's going to be down on 10th and Inwood area. We're—we're basically talking to the landowner right now trying to figure out the land we need for that. And then uh we're conceptualizing a north treatment plant well number four and five which is on 50th Street—either side of 50th Street. We'd be looking at putting a treatment plant in there. It is uh creeping up with PFAS. It has levels that are—are low but it keeps increasing but it's still below the four parts per trillion. So, it's not required for us to do this, but the uh due to the trajectory of it, uh we're anticipating it's going to go over this at some point. So, we're—the MPCA and the trustees have supported us at least doing some preliminary work uh doing uh plant design and estimates in order to figure out what that would be. [39:15] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: With those numbers with 4 and 5 say they don't rise within the next year to above four parts per trillion. What have the trustees said in terms of funding? Are they prepared and willing to allocate it if it's at—if they're averaging three? [39:35] **Clark Schroeder**: I don't have—I can't answer that question for you. I have not asked in that direct question. Um, it's my understanding we're going to have to um—you're going to have to meet that threshold in order to have them allocate funds. So, I don't have a better answer for that, but I can ask that question next time. [40:00] Um, what's next? You know, after the 3M settlement fund runs out. In 2007, the MPCA and 3M negotiated a consent order to bring investigations and cleanup to the three disposal sites under the superfund process. These sites are Oakdale, Woodbury, and Cottage Grove. The Washington County landfill in Lake Elmo was not included in the 2007 consent decree. Uh listing from the AG office exhibits from the 2018 settlement right here. So, a 2007 decree um again doesn't cover ours. Um this document I ran across I thought was very interesting. And this comes from the AG's office and we have documents going back to you know patented of these informations back in the 40s and then we start you know the first time we actually see um you know worrying about this stuff is in the late 60s early 70s uh the one thing I found interesting here uh there's a log of 3M trucks dumping waste at the Washington County landfill from the Cottage Grove site from the Cottage Grove land—plant. So, they're—they're dumping sludge in there. So, our landfill here, which I'll be going over later, um is basically encompassed with residential from Ramsey County and Washington County along with commercial utilizations from Washington and Ramsey County. But I found that interesting in there. But yeah, th—this was just part of that 2018 $850 million lawsuit and uh people are really into it, really want to learn about it. That's a trove of—trove of documentation for people who uh like to study this. [42:10] 3M—3M is requesting mediation to resolve disputes with the MPCA regarding what is reasonable and necessary under the 2007 consent decree. And I am quoting a um Star Tribune article here. Um and they basically um have sent out a letter in on March 7th. Uh the MPCA did that 3M basically is pushing back on what the transition would look like. They—3M actually is asking for a um review of what was uh required and necessary under the 3M settlement fund and they want a state audit of the $850 million to go back and say was that spent properly and wisely according to the charter and according to the agreement that was signed in 2018. So because of that um because of that they basically are they're asking for mediation instead of sliding into the 2007 consent decree they're asking to mediate this issue and so um which is unfortunate but that—they have the right to do that. So that article is in there for uh for people to read about that. [43:40] Okay, we'll go back to the PowerPoint. Um, so one of the issues when we're talking about the Washington County landfill, you may ask, why is Clark carping on this? You know, this is something that's been around. So our plume is influenced uh also by the not only Washington County landfill but also project 1007 which is a project that stabilizes the lake levels and the Tri-Lakes area from 1987 but also created a path for PFAS transmission to be further downstream and and so this is the project this is kind of the flow of project 1007. Seven going down to the St. Croix River. And so this is a series of creeks, pipes, overflows, and lakes to get this uh water to go from back in the 80s the uh Tri-Lakes area had uncontrolled high-level water that were flooding out properties and flooding out homes. And so they created that. Unbeknownst to them, it, you know, ended up with collecting PFAS from Washington County and the Oakdale site, Riley Creek, and well, now you got PFAS down here in West Lakeland Township in every single private well. [45:15] So, um, there's a better example of the—um there's a better example of the flow underground. So just because it flows above ground, it also flows at a different path underground. One of the issues that is going to be affecting Lake Elmo is the different molecules in the aquifer that come from Washington County landfill and the Oakdale landfill. There's not a single molecule that comes out of Oakdale, nor is there a single molecule that comes out of Washington County landfill. So, it's not a—a simple analysis to find out what the percentage is. There's a mix and we're talking about PFOA, PFOS, um and a couple others. And so, both landfills have like these three at least three signature molecules, but there's a certain percentage that comes from—it's like maybe 70/30 or something that comes out of Oakdale and it's, you know, 60/40 the other way and Washington County. So by the time you look at this slide and you look at the different aquifers and you look at the different mix when it comes you know downstream here past—you know past Riley Creek going to Lake Park Reserve going down further it's like whose responsibility is it to pay for the cleanup on there? It is not 3M's responsibility to pay for cleanup from the Washington County landfill. That landfill is owned by city of Lake Elmo and we took possession of that from in 1995 from Washington County and uh we're not exactly sure why—Susie is looking into that. She has—she's been trying at least calling people that are around back then but we haven't figured that out yet. That's just a curiosity of my—my question. [47:20] So, so when we look at the—the mixture here, there's going to be some sort of negotiated, you know, discussion between 3M and the MPCA concerning who's going to pay for what. The Washington County landfill in our city is under the closed landfill program and there's a specific fund in the state that pays for mostly they pay for um protection of further environmental degradation. So they basically try to make sure that things are kept. They make sure that there's any—if there's any leach uh pumps that need to be happened underneath it to collect uh seepage within it and have that treated surface water runoff and you know that's traditionally what they do and I haven't got a direct answer but they basically concerning you know will they pay for remediations will they pay for all these municipal and private wells in the for 100 years for what comes out of the Washington County landfill and they're like well yes and no because again this is not all their issue it's also 3M issue. So this is where we need to be engaged with the MPCA uh as we go through this process because at the end whatever doesn't get picked up at least on the municipal side will be picked up by us the water users um and so that's one of the reasons we're anticipating operation and maintenance costs uh going up because we're anticipating some of these costs not being reimbursed at least in the short term because maybe another lawsuit or protracted legal arguments between 3M and MPCA. [49:15] **Council Member Nick Kragness**: So if not all 3M, who else contributed to the PFAS pollution in the dumps and aquifer? [49:25] **Clark Schroeder**: So, I talked to the person who's in charge of managing the uh closed landfill program and they found three boxes of paper down in their offices and they are had—they have assigned some staff to go through and start doing this. So, this landfill has been because what I asked him—I said this landfill was dug up twice um in order to facilitate protection in ground and then capping and all the different things. So, um, I said, "Were there any samples taken?" You know, they have some records of it, but this thing hasn't had anything dumped in it since late '74, early '75. And so, it really was only in existence as a dumping site for 10, 15 years. Um, so there are some records on it, but it basically was Ramsey County and Washington County residential and commercial operations. So, that's a good question, but I'm not sure we'll be able to find that out. At a certain point—and it's my understanding—because it has been taken over by the MPCA under the superfund project. The superfund project and funding was created in order to limit multiple-layer lawsuits for contamination. So in the past you might have contamination and a municipality or a private individual or somebody would maybe sue the hauler and the hauler would maybe sue the business, you know, and the business might sue their supplier. And so eventually what happens is the MPCA comes in and takes these over under a superfund program. They are the ones that go after the people that are responsible for this and the downstream recipients of the funds, meaning like us or the private citizens don't have to go through the trouble of figuring out that question, Nick. Where did it come from? That's the MPCA's problem, not ours. Although it might be curious. [51:30] **Council Member Nick Kragness**: Are there between the Oakdale and the county landfill? Are there certain chains that are at both sites? Are there any chains that are only at the Oakdale site that they could use as tracers? [51:45] **Clark Schroeder**: Yes. So MPCA along with AECOM um they are basically looking at these at these aquifers and they're doing test wells and they're sampling and that's one of the negotiations that they're talking about with 3M about because you know we've been after them to start doing this for a year because we all know the money is going to run out and so they are looking at that trying to figure out how do you come to a consensus of what's with Lake Elmo if it's going to—obviously, it's going to be different in Oakdale. It's going to be different in Woodbury, you know, but Woodbury maybe doesn't have anything from the Washington County landfill, but they have to make sure that it's from their landfill, you know. So, we're—going to—we're in my estimation, we are unique in this process between the uh Washington County landfill and the Oakdale landfill. [52:45] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Well, in there, hypothetically, West Lakeland Township could have Washington County landfill PFAS. [52:50] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about municipal water. Yeah. Um in—in my understanding and talking to the MPCA, um, private well uh treatment systems would just be paid by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. They wouldn't be in the position that we are, which is municipal water, where does it come from? You know, and—and that. But you know, so West Lakeland and all the residents we have in Lake Elmo, it's my understanding that the MPCA will just be paying that until the plume is gone using reimbursement from the consent agreement. [53:40] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Yes. Or— [53:42] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. Or the superfund that—again that's up to them to decide. They're not going to, you know, they're not going to wait for individual residents to try to go after 3M for that. Um, so I just said these individual filters would have to be on there till the plume is gone. Now, what does that mean? Uh, one of the long-term goals obviously is to eliminate PFAS in the aquifer. The only way to do that is pump out the water, reinject it back in, or divert some into drinking water. Um, and so, um, one of the projects that we're looking at is this multi-well multi—well array. And you as city council members, you have seen this before. Uh but some of the citizens have not. This basically would through a series of uh wells pump out water and then push—treat the water and then push some of the water back into the aquifer in order to create a hyd—hydrological wall in order to limit the continued expansion of this plume to go down to the river. And so it would uh and then some of the water would be redirected back to municipal use for—in this slide in this proposal. It'd go between us and Oakdale. Um so you can pump out water faster. Then you can reinject it back in. You're basically, you know, you're—you end up with too much pressure. You end up with, you know, almost like a uh fracking system where you end up cracking your aquifer and creating other unintended consequences if you pressurize too much water into it simultaneously. [55:40] We did have a meeting with um basically uh AECOM, MPCA and Oakdale and we just had that last week. That was last week, wasn't it, Nicole? Yeah. And we had the engineers involved. So, one of the things that we're talking about as—as you're going to be doing this study, they're going to be doing the hydrological study first. But the second study from—that we're concerned about from cities is how does this work financially? You know, are they going to be utilizing our treatment plant? Um, are they going to be building a new treatment plant? Um, are they going to be selling water to us? Are we going to be selling water back to them after it gets treated? All these things there's no answers to. We have—to they have to do the hydrological studies first and then we have to figure out the finances of it. Figure out one where would the capital come from and this is again this is a few hundred million dollars you're looking at on this board here and then how would it operate—where would the funds go—uh we wanted to share the information that even though this is a probably a good idea because you know I asked the question I said what happens if you don't do this and you know the problem is this plume—I mean this could last for whatever it could last for 500 or a thousand years. Whereas if you pump all this stuff out and you stop it, you might be able to stop it within a couple hundred years. And so they really want to do this. But I again, this is going to be a funding issue. Who pays for this? And that's going to be the juggernaut. But in order to get to that question, you have to figure out this question first, which is what does it look like from a hydrological standpoint? The pressures, the water flow, the rates, you know, and then we figure out how do you—what happens from an operational standpoint. [57:45] Um, and we wanted to share with them the fact that we can't wait. I mean, this is a nice solution, but we can't wait for this solution. We need water relatively quickly. We're going to be developing our plant down on the—down on 10th Street as quickly as we can because our population continues to grow and we're—and from a redundancy standpoint. We need more water. We can't wait for the years it's going to take to figure this out and get funding and do this. Hence, what would it, you know, what does that look like for when they're done? We don't know. But I thought I'd just let you know that, you know, this is something that, you know, we are—we are thinking about the back side of this also from the—from the uh us and—and Oakdale too. Obviously, what does the finance look like from operations? [58:50] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: There's a couple of lines down into Woodbury, but I don't see any information regarding that. [58:55] **Clark Schroeder**: These lines. Yeah. Yeah. So, these are injection wells. So, what they're doing, so you know, we got the—here's our landfills. Here's the plume. Plume's kind of moving like this direction. What they're trying to do is stop because Woodbury's—because Woodbury is pulling a lot of water from the aquifer. It is moving the aquifer in a direction which we never anticipated. In fact, you can see over here there are um there's injection wells here because they actually have some of the plumes going this direction southwest and it shouldn't go that direction. And so those injection wells are to corral this thing to get it to go in one direction. You can see even all the way down there along Highway 95 or Stagecoach. I don't know what road that is way on the far side there, but you know they're injecting water in there and they're pulling water in, you know, West Lakeland Township there. So again, this is a—and along here. So the blue is injection wells, black are—black is is well—pumping wells out. I just didn't see the— [1:00:20] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: Yeah. [1:00:21] **Clark Schroeder**: And then our treatment would be right there. You know, treatment would be here. Here's our water, one of our water towers. Our treatment plant would be somewhere in here. Um, so yeah. So, um, as you can see right now, pumping capacity for treatment, we're designing a 4,000-gallon per minute. Oakdale—Air has, you know, uh, 5,000 gallon a minute and a one—one they're looking at. I have heard numbers that this system might be anywhere from 10 to 14,000 gallons per minute, you know. So, think of the capacities, think of think of the pipes, think of your pumping stations to move the electricity to move that around. I mean, this is not a cheap thing. Um, so— [1:01:25] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: I mean, I'm looking at the numbers compared to 2020 and 2040. This multi-benefit wellway system is far greater than our current system. [1:01:35] **Clark Schroeder**: That is correct. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean—I mean the majority of the water from this system it's just would be injected back into the aquifer. Yeah. The excess water we would have. This would not replace our, you know, this would not take all—this might handle growth for us going, you know, past 2040, you know, but this would not replace what we're having to do up on well 4 and 5. It might—we might be able to eliminate well 2, but you know, when we're thinking about the treatment plant down here, you heard Jack and Nate talk about, you know, well number 6 and 7 going to that treatment plant. In our mind, we also at some point due to our growth would have, you know, well, 8, 9, 10, you know type thing. You know, when we're going out of ultimate growth, you know, the Met Council is looking at we would need 11 wells. Well, this would handle that. We would maybe just stop at 6 and 7 and then the rest of it would be covered by this based upon the gap between extraction and injection—precisely. [1:02:45] This is just a slide that uh again you know the the conceptual funding you know 2007 consent long-term then through settlement comes in community water rates and private wells help fund it and then going through there. So yeah that just—it's kind of a mix and we don't have a really good solution for what that's going to look like because there isn't a solution right now. Again, this just talks about the co-mingled plume. Um, discussions with MPCA are underway to develop funding framework for both private and public water systems in Lake Elmo. However, the details are still being finalized. The agency is also exploring the contributions from the two landfills in the area. Lake Elmo staff will continue to work closely with MPCA, 3M trustees and 3M itself. Um, although we're not in direct conversations with 3M at this point. [1:03:50] Um, one of the things I think, um, and this is just a reminder, uh, council is aware of this, but I think citizens should be aware of this. Why don't we just sue 3M? Well, we signed an agreement, uh, we settled a lawsuit with with, uh, with them in 2019. It was a multi-year lawsuit that had been going on for years and years against 3M v. Lake Elmo. And so this—this agreement releases 3M from any liability from PFAS fluorinated organic substances. The lawsuit agreement is here if you wanted to read it. Because of this agreement, Lake Elmo cannot sue 3M for costs related to PFAS cleanup or treatment. And so that's uh that's one of the reasons why you'll see uh as a municipality, we are limited in 3M. It's—for—for us our best uh chances of getting financial restitution here is working closely with the state and the MPCA uh going forward in the transition uh between the superfund site and the 2007 consent decree. Um this is just more made up of the different—different uh molecules on here. I do have a listing here for the private wells. One thing that you—that is interesting is if you look on the private well site and you look at each individual well, you can see—you'll be able to see the individual molecules that are being tested for that. And so if you had nothing better to do with your time, you could look at all these wells and see for yourself which molecules are coming from which site. Um again, but we have uh hydrologists and engineers that are reviewing that um you know right now. [1:05:40] So um but you can see here, you know, West Lakeland Township, you know, had decided a while back not to have municipal water. And um all these wells, even these green ones, well, eventually everybody is going to have their own private system. And so that's one of the reasons why you see we want to do—the state wants to do the—the multi-benefit well array because otherwise every single private well in this whole area will be contaminated for 500 years. [1:06:20] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: Any idea on how often they update this map? [1:06:25] **Clark Schroeder**: Um I clicked on one up in the Tri-Lakes area just last week and it was from January. So, yeah, I just—I know somebody that had a green one in West Lakeland and then they had it recently tested and they're getting a GAS put in. So, um, yeah, I just—curious. We have talked to them. I mean, they've done a lot better job. Last time we talked to them about this particular update issue and lack of current uh—that was last summer. They have done leaps and bounds in not only testing capacity and turnaround time on the testing and they've done a better job at this too. But yeah, it—it takes—it takes a while to get those things to go. [1:07:20] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: We in West Lakeland Township up until—end of 2019—and our well was detected contaminate PFAS in 2018. We were right on the Stone Ridge Golf Course. [1:07:35] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. So here goes back to your question, Nick. PFOS is a primary PFAS in the Oakdale site whereas Washington County landfill PFBA PFOA. The main point though is both landfills have a mixture of all three of these which we test downstream the aquifer. It's hard to tell where they came from. So those are the three. And then obviously um you know unregulated PFAS in uh you know in my mind is also something—the short chains are something we're going to have to be looking at which are unregulated at this point because I don't think they frankly have a very good technology to to look at test and analyze you know—you know two carbon atoms um on that type of thing. [1:08:40] So, uh, again, city took ownership of the landfill in 1995. The city is looking into the history of why and if there's any disclosures at the time. Both Washington County and Ramsey County utilize a landfill from '69 to '75. Um, and then this site is from the MPCA. This is again managed by the closed landfill program. And it does—it gives a good history of it. Talks about, you know, the where the dumping was, where the contamination is. Again, this is another testing site, which I'm—I guarantee is probably out of date, but you know, that talks about the well advisories in that area. And then um so it's—it's just a good—it's a—it's a good area. Does talk about the barriers and when they dug it up and what kind of covering they put on top of it, the leachate pumping system, they have approximately 60,000 gallons are collected and treated per month. So whenever you have a landfill and of course it's going to be mixtures of organics and other materials in there uh they leach uh water out of them even though the top of this thing is capped with uh you know basically rubber and other types of surfaces. So no rain water or surfer water gets into it. But we're still pumping 60,000 gallons that goes to the bottom of this thing into a pit. And they pump that 60,000 gallons up every month and they treat that. [1:10:30] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: And the the important thing is that the the bottom is also sealed where it wasn't previously and why it had to get dug up a second time. [1:10:40] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah, it's sealed with three separate layers of clay and then you know you know 100 mil plastics and rubber and all sorts of stuff. Yeah, it's—it's a—it's an engineered thing. Uh we do have some old boxes upstairs that talk about the '90s. Uh we have the resolution um when we—when we took possession of this thing. So, but it doesn't really give us much information or clarity of why—why we thought it was a good idea to take over a landfill. But maybe it was somebody's box they wanted to check off, you know. Um that's my presentation. [1:11:30] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead**: So any questions for Mr. Schroeder? Council Member Dragisich? [1:11:35] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: So from a you know perspective of how this all gets paid for the one maybe wild card in the whole thing is the residents could step back and say my water bill's gone up because someone dumped chemicals into the drinking water and so I'm paying X amount more per month for my water. I've been damaged and I haven't been a party to any litigation and they do a class action lawsuit against the polluters for those increased costs. Has that discussion come up? [1:12:15] **Clark Schroeder**: Not really because um as an individual party—and here's where I'll probably stepping outside of my knowledge set—individuals cannot sue the state on a superfund cleanup site. They sue the 3M. [1:12:40] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: You know, just it's interesting concept because they're the ones that are damaged by the increase in their water bills every month and you've probably got three or 300,000 people in these cities combined. They're going to be paying more and um some someone may step back and say, "Well, what do we got to lose?" [1:13:05] **Clark Schroeder**: Well, if you were—if you were in a city that was 100% covered by the 2007 consent decree, you you know, theoretically, you should be covered under that. Again, but those are all negotiations and those are all unknowns. We are probably unique in the fact that we're probably going to have a hole based on these negotiations because of the two landfills and the different molecular makeup of the plume. But you're right. I mean, somebody could—I mean, I don't know. I mean, tackling 3M would be a—a daunting task for any law firm, but the potential reward is huge. Think about that. Your what—your water bill goes up, pick a number. 50 bucks a quarter for the rest of your life and there's 300,000 people. [1:14:00] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Well, the net present value of 50 bucks a family for 30 years. [1:14:05] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead**: Yeah. Well, 3M did enter into—and I have not researched this—uh, but 3M did enter into a national settlement that municipalities could tie into or opt out of. [1:14:20] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. [1:14:21] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead**: And it was like, I don't know, $20 billion if I remember correctly for the whole nation. [1:14:25] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah, there was another one with DuPont similar. [1:14:30] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead**: DuPont. Yeah, it was— [1:14:31] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. 3M and DuPont entered a joint agreement with that. And uh and so that's—but I don't know if that—I don't know if that's for individuals. I think that was a strictly a municipality government settlement program. [1:14:45] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Yes. You think about the I don't know we had all these class action suits over drugs and everything else and I just thought that went through my mind when we were talking about you know the operating costs might not be covered by the 2017 settlement or the state settlement. I think well there are people who are injured who weren't a party to any of those and they're a fairly big group of people and there might be a creative law firm who sits back and says well if that there—there isn't costs incurred to these people what do we got you know— [1:15:30] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead**: Well, I don't think any of us here are lawyers or should be playing lawyers. [1:15:35] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: I'm a Philadelphia lawyer. [1:15:36] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead**: Well, you're something, that's for sure. Uh any other questions for Mr. Schroeder, anything I can bring back to these other groups, you know, that you're like, "Hey, I want you to ask this question" or "I want you to look into this," you know. [1:15:55] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: So either way with surface water for Lake Elmo, a preliminary analysis will be done as part of the project. Whether it's a quote-unquote study, whether it gets funded is another matter. But for our purposes of fulfilling what is in the suit, there will be documentation to show what it looks like to supply Lake Elmo with surface water. [1:16:25] **Clark Schroeder**: I don't believe so. So, if you go back to that slide that I had and it had those uh a box that had all of like eight or—eight or so different municipality—eight or different scenarios, those are what they're going to study. [1:16:45] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: So, if there's no final product showing even at a high level, "Here's cost to hook up Oakdale and thus Lake Elmo," how would we be fulfilling our requirement? [1:16:55] **Clark Schroeder**: Um, it's my understanding talking to Jim Thompson that basically this would suffice because we could study it and decide it's not practical. In this case, this study should show that it's not practical. [1:17:15] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: You know, I still would prefer they at least give numbers. [1:17:18] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. [1:17:20] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: So, this is—this slide here. You know, we're not on this slide. [1:17:25] **Clark Schroeder**: Mm-hmm. And this is—this is where they've kind of landed to uh to to figure out where we're at. [1:17:35] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: Is that primarily due to the proximity? [1:17:38] **Clark Schroeder**: That's exactly right. Yeah. And I—I fully get that it's going to have a larger effect on it. There's also to me that other variable of Oakdale is extremely close to a connection point off of McKnight and we are directly connected to Oakdale. So I—I just—I don't understand why it went as a low-hanging fruit just to check off the box even if politically the legislature is not going to—it—say we can reasonably hypothesize that they may not fund it because the impact to the lake is not great. I still want to—again, I consider the PFAS situation to be the far greater long-term thing than lake levels for millionaires. I just—that's a whole other ball game. PFAS will be here for a thousand years. The lake level solution is going to be solved long before PFAS. [1:18:40] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. So I—I think the answer to that is we already know from the 2016 studies what limited effect Lake Elmo pumping has on the—on White Bear Lake and because of that I think it's pretty obvious to look at and say it's not worth the money to do that. Now you'd rather just have that in writing. [1:19:05] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: So, well and because of the PFAS issue. [1:19:08] **Clark Schroeder**: Yes. [1:19:09] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: And as you spoke before about the operating costs of that um being shared by everybody, our part would be then relatively small because we have such a small impact on the lake level. [1:19:20] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. So those—that's—those are the issues we'll be talking about you know a year and a half from now maybe. But I brought that up because I, you know, I want to make sure that, you know, how much are we going to be asking us to pay to make sure the lake level is supported so that Vadnais Heights has surface water? Yeah. I mean, that's—that's a big deal to us because we're going to have people that are going to be like, "Why should we pay to do that?" By the same aspect, you can't expect Vadnais Heights to pay the total cost of this buying water and the operating cost to do this in order to support the lake when like us and you know other municipalities are benefiting from that. [1:20:10] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: So I might have missed what you're inferring there. You missed that point. Well, you mentioned it earlier, but is that almost inferring the creation of a taxing jurisdiction? [1:20:20] **Clark Schroeder**: Well, that—yeah, so I basically mentioned that in my slides which is I said that's one of the solutions we might have to look at. There could be there could be another solution which is there could be a surcharge that wouldn't be a taxing district but you know if you have a surcharge it's—it's then it's a variable that's affected by the—by the rates that you set every year and if you're going to do this long-term thing. So the first thing is would it be beneficial to do this and these are—these studies are going to show. The second thing is what is the cost? The third thing is how are you going to pay for it? And you know early on I'm like you know because I would rather not be stuck having to increase water rates to pay for people in Vadnais Heights to have surface water so the lake levels don't decrease. I mean this is like we're like four times removed from this operation. But that's one thing that uh that's why we're at these meetings to make sure our voices are heard and we're representing the city of Lake Elmo in the city's interest. [1:21:40] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: Yeah. The irony would be tremendous in that situation when they then get clean surface water and we continue to be forced to pull polluted water because we can't access clean water. That would be a pretty horrific irony. [1:21:55] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. So, I mean, when I talk to the some of the engineers that are working on this, they get the fact that, you know, going through Oakdale over to Lake Elmo would solve this PFAS issue for us, but that's not the charter that this group is on, you know, and I don't think that—I mean, I could be wrong, but I really doubt that 3M would pay for all of these treatment plants if they thought that converting to surface water would be a more viable long-term solution. [1:22:30] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Question I have is—it—it um you know just fairly large cost in grabbing water from the Mississippi over White Bear Lake—flows into Bald Eagle Lake. Uh there's two water sources that flow into Bald Eagle Lake. One is uh the channel from White Bear Lake, but there's also a judicial ditch number one. And I—I had had an engineer tell me one time that they had looked at that if they would grab the water from judicial ditch number one and bring that down near White Bear Lake, treat it for nitrogen the things and put that back into White Bear Lake. That that would potentially solve or help solve the lake level issue because all that water ultimately ends up going back into uh—that doesn't permeate through the—through the the base of the lake does go back into Bald Eagle Lake. So it'd be interesting if somebody had even looked at that. I don't know how much water comes into that. It's called JD-1. [1:23:45] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. So that's one of the studies here. You can see on this slide um this is the surface water. Now where does the surface water come from? Either that could come from the chain of lakes. It could come from other body of lakes as inlet pump treatment and then conveyance mechanism. I guess I didn't see anything related to that. Yeah, I—I don't—Yeah, they—they haven't—I haven't—well, I haven't dug—I haven't dug into what is the surface water they're going to tie into. [1:24:25] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Just something maybe to bring up I think is—is as an option and maybe it's disproved rather quickly I don't know— [1:24:32] **Clark Schroeder**: But yeah—I mean—I mean one of the—one of the things—I mean, I'm not familiar with that ditch but the question is comes in on the southeast side of Bald Eagle—I mean they're looking for 780 million gallons a year—that's a lot of water—that's millions of gallons a day—um so it'd have to be a pretty substantial ditch or river basically to provide that— [1:25:00] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: I just want to go back to uh Jeff what you were saying. So was I hearing your—I mean it sounds like you're really pushing for despite uh the group not—the White Bear group not wanting to bring the surface water you think more that that is the solution we should still be aiming for. [1:25:20] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: I mean, I have a bias for it, but I'm—when I look at the 100 red—year, 200 year, 500-year window and the long-term cost uh associated, especially since we no longer can presume 3M will fulfill its legal obligations. Surface water is not clean, right? It still has to be filtered. And there's a treatment plant that St. Paul uses. I—I find it hard to ignore it and to just—we're sticking long-term forever on groundwater. I—I would rather know further and have those costs known so we can make informed decisions. And it might not be a 2025 thing. It might be a 2050 thing or a 2080 thing, but PFAS is—it's not going away. Whereas the White Bear Lake issue is going to be resolved in some way, shape, or form. PFAS is not. So I—that's the lens where I'm coming from. [1:26:20] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: But I—I guess I—I and the reason I'm bringing that up is I'm somewhat on the same page of—I would prefer to keep exploring that and I don't know if that's—again I mean Clark, you're there. This is obviously there's a lot of variables going on and um I guess I just would—I would appreciate maybe a little more or continuing to push for that discussion. Um, I see a lot of these other options is um trying to play mother nature a little bit in some of these situations and it doesn't seem like that's worked out too well in the past when we've tried to change water levels and do things like this. And I—I just tend to think that surface water um could provide the solution without trying to change a bunch of variables and without so many experiments to figure out exactly how to do it appropriately and missing variables along the way and then having unintended consequences as a result of those decisions. So I just—I would prefer to at least explore that a little further. I guess I—I was understanding your—yeah. [1:27:35] **Clark Schroeder**: So, so but yeah. So, yeah. So, you're—you're talking to a person who sits on both of these groups that have different issues to solve. Yeah. The 3M group doesn't care about White Bear Lake. The White Bear Lake group doesn't care about PFAS, right? Okay. And so, it's not their charter to do this. So, if you look at this chart here, you can see here if we're replacing six permits, you know, um you can see that gray line underneath that green line that really moves the ball on this and um it's not, you know, I—I—I will bring it up and talk to them again, but I—it's not—it's not their—it's not their issue. [1:28:35] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: So the thought then is there if they brought Lake Elmo into this as well that gray line would move up uh an insignificant amount. [1:28:45] **Clark Schroeder**: You would not be able to notice—it'd be a rounding error. I think—I think the more important issue—and I—and I—I don't know this at all by the way. I'm just guessing here—but the St. Paul uh water treatment plant you know has excess capacity due to when it was developed it was developed you know during you know Whirlpool and Ford and Honeywell and that's why they have this excess capacity. So if that's—if that's a finite number you know even you know you think about it—if you were to bring Oakdale enough onto it you may be taking that capacity away from what's going to affect the lake, which is the charter for this. We're not supposed to worry about PFAS. We're supposed to worry about the lake. Even though in Lake Elmo's case, it would be beneficial for us. [1:29:45] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: I think in the during the course of working with some of this PFAS settlement money to hook up uh some of the larger larger acreages which had wells impacted, the DNR has made it fairly clear that they're not really interested in the PE—that the two issues to them are not comingled. So I—I definitely hear uh Council Member Hirn and Council Member Holtz what you're saying, but until the state offices make any sort of connection or combination thereof, I don't know that that's uh going to get any—any legs to it. [1:30:25] **Clark Schroeder**: So let me—let me ask you this. Let me interrupt you. Let me ask you this because you guys were here. I wasn't. Um, when you started going down this road of putting in starting to do talk about treatment plants, did you talk about just running water right through Oakdale? Not even hooking Oakdale up, but just running water out. Did that come up as a possible solution? [1:30:50] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: Yes, it was discussed multiple times whether it might be part of the town and maybe we split the system, but it was always discussed as this can be something we're going to find out more in the future, but it was never, you know, "What are we exactly going to study?" But yes, it was brought up as definitely something that could happen and may impact our future. And I—I fully agree these two things are separate legally. Fully agree. It's just now we're able to have a discussion as a group about water. [1:31:35] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: Sure. And so I—I firmly believe in the utility of this. I would also be curious because we're both on priority one. The group did do high-level studies for surface water connections for 3M settlement dollars. They weren't pursued because of political reasons outside of Lake Elmo, but they did do some analyses. So I would be curious what DNR—what our trustees would be able to share about—because we were always given the charts and the high-level information, but I would be curious what they could share because there were multiple scenarios that they did. I mean the scenario of putting a treatment plant on the St. Croix—that died a pretty quick death—but there were multiple other ones that involved surface water that they did run and they had—would run that as part of the the hydrology experts to see how it would affect this and that. Now obviously the numbers are out of date uh post-COVID, post-inflation, but they did studies and I would be very curious to know if those could be updated but—yes, fully agree—the White Bear Lake and PFAS are completely separate but I care about one and I don't care about the other. [1:32:55] **Clark Schroeder**: I'll um I'll—I'll check in with the trustees or at least their staff and see if they can dig those studies out because if I were a betting man, you probably have a better chance of chasing that dime versus White Bear Lake dime for surface water for the city. [1:33:15] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: I just want to add that augmenting White Bear Lake with water um to restore the level is not new science. Lake Gilfillan and—and North Oaks was augmented to drop five and a half feet and they take Mississippi river water. They treat it and pump it into Lake Gilfillan and to raise it five and a half feet and restore that water level. Um I worked with the city on financing that project and they—the only treatment they provide is to filter out any invasive species. So the filtration can filter out a white blood cell—that's so fine—to keep the zebra muscles from getting to Lake Gilfillan. But they filled it up five and a half feet and they—and they maintain the level through a treatment system that takes Mississippi River water, treats it, dumps it in the lake. The homeowners paid for that by special assessments. That time was $29,000 a home to put that in. But from their perspective, you know, what was their property worth with the lake dropped five and a half feet? So, you know, the augmentation piece that on the slide now is not—is not—it's not something that's never been done. It's been done successfully in the past with no—no uh unintended effects recorded. [1:34:55] **Clark Schroeder**: None that I'm aware of. No, none that we're aware of currently. [1:35:00] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: None that we're aware of that could happen in the future. I guess that's where again I—as engineers I—you know I know there you want there to be the solution for these things. I just—I think a lot of times when—and again—right okay we can filter to the level of the white blood cell—well what about these changing water levels? How does that impact the watershed? How does it impact the—the animals in that area? And again I just—not that I'm— [1:35:35] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: When they put the augmentation in the water level maintains at a certain level. It—it doesn't fluctuate much because the pumping system comes on it's certain between certain levels. The one thing you have to worry about of course with the surface water is pollution that comes in you know from—you don't find out about it till later. But that happens at the drinking water side, you know, with St. Paul Regional Water where they take their bulk of their water comes from the Mississippi River and they have to be constantly monitoring if you know if someone dumps off a million gallons of of um I don't know Drano in in the river for whatever reason. They have to catch that and treat it so they don't you know contaminate their their water users. That is one of the downfalls of surface water though. But the augmentation is—is nothing—not rocket science. In fact, this treatment to reduce nitrate and phosphorus and—and other levels in there is a much more advanced treatment than Lake Gilfillan has. [1:36:55] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. During—during breaks at this group when you're talking to other city people this is what—this is what we want—lay comment we you know—it's like, "Why go through the cost of you know city conversions, all these other—I mean, this is what kind of the city people want. Can we get there? I don't know, maybe we will. But again, even here again—what's the financing? Assess the homeowners that actually care? Well, that's what we all say but you know—again, that you know again that's—that's one of the things. So this is again this is a multi—you know, this is tens of millions of dollars to do this. [1:37:45] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Well it comes back to what you know what's the economic impact of each option on a net present value basis to the people who would pay. And if this had the lowest you know lowest net present value it'd be the logical one to choose because we know it will work. Um but we don't know what the costs are of all the others yet. So you can't make an informed decision. I mean connecting to St. Paul Regional Water, you know, certainly is something that had been talked about for a very long time. Um but Steve Schneider was a general manager at St. Paul Regional Water. He talked about sending water this way. Um but at that time, none of the eastern suburbs wanted the water. I would guess that he was in on those DNR studies because he was a GM for that, you know, for the plant that would be providing it. [1:38:50] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: When we talk about cost though—because that, correct me if I'm wrong, this solution is for resolving the the White Bear Lake water levels. So yes, like let's factor in the price of what this would be, but that doesn't also solve the issue of the water quality. So I mean, if we're going to be paying for this and for another solution for quality, you know, we need—need to look at those together versus if it was the surface water, we'd be uh correcting both issues with that one solution. [1:39:35] **Clark Schroeder**: Um, but then you could be, you know, you still have the PFAS thing to solve. Yes. No question about that. [1:39:45] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: Could we go back to the slide with the um that shows like when we remove the six um municipalities or communities or permits? So with that gray line that's shown there, did they when they did these studies, did they break it up and show how much each of those permits or communities impacted that change? Um or was that just they—they selected those six and they totaled it all up and and they drew— [1:40:15] **Clark Schroeder**: So that—so—so this is moving six this is with Hugo 1 um I think it's part of this group here I mean this is augmentation you know—so basically augmentation would do that. So that's part of what these 15 studies are going to do you know—so we're—you know we're going right back to, "Where do you get the most bang for your buck?" You know, and yeah, you know, we could—we—you know, so they're going to study what would wastewater reinjection, you know, so basically taking sewage water, treating it, and injecting it back into the aquifer to support the lake. You know, to me it seems very expensive to do that, but that's going to be one of the studies. Now, they may not chase that to the end—nth degree. So I think you know in my mind I think this augmentation will probably come out on the top when we talk about a—a cost-benefit ratio in my mind for solving the water for the lake for the White Bear Lake issue. [1:41:25] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: Yeah. So and again I'm not opposed to this solution. I just would hate as a council to miss the opportunity to be in that conversation for surface water. Um and I guess that's where my—just my only concern and with the the ability to discuss this tonight and that's kind of what I'm looking for is—um again like going back to with that the gray line with this um projection is—well, with those six um permits that are thrown in there, does one also just jump at an insignificant amount um that would be equal to what Lake Elmo would would increase it by? [1:42:05] **Clark Schroeder**: I—you know, so I don't know if—maybe I'm on—maybe I'm by myself on that. [1:42:08] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: The way—the way I read this uh—the gray line drops down to just north of 922. Right. So again the report that the DNR is using for the hydrological information on the lake is the draw-down for Lake Elmo. Now you bring Lake Elmo into uh surface water that is going to change this line rounding error 2/10 of 1 inch or 1/10 of 1 inch. [1:42:45] **Clark Schroeder**: So then when you factor in the benefit cost ratio of a tenth of one inch on this gray line, it doesn't—doesn't matter. And and that's where the difference is between—the DNR is encompassing the PFAS into it and the PFAS is a different one than this one. So we're concerned about both, but neither one of those two are concerned about both. [1:43:10] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: So I think I understand it. But what I'm saying is, well, what about those other six or four uh communities, the six permits? How much are—are they in a similar—they jumping by 2/10 of an inch as well? Are any one of those six as small as us? And so then—and then in that case, why are we excluded from it? You know, if there's one community that's causing 90% of that fluctuation and the other five are causing 10%. [1:43:40] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: Yeah. What I heard previously was that much of it had to do with proximity to the lake in that where most of our city while some of it's within this magic five-mile radius right that was created the vast majority of Lake Elmo being 23, 24 square miles is outside of that where you're going to get Mahtomedi uh Hugo right there next to it. White Bear Lake, the Caputo Cheese factory that's just north of the lake that uses a tremendous amount of water. I would imagine that they do. Now maybe somebody does have a breakout like—Mahtomedi uses would affect the lake by 2 inches and Caputo Cheese impacts it by 1 inch and Vadnais Heights impacts it by 3 inches and White Bear Lake impacts it by 4 inches—that you're looking for each individual of these and the so they cumulatively does. [1:44:45] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: Yeah. I would—I would assume somebody has that information to come up with the combination of those communities and permits to show that graph on the line just to see if there's another insignificant way, you know, were we excluded for some reason. I would be very curious to see that because the North Oaks one that you're talking about is one neighborhood. It's called a wrap farm. It's one neighborhood. Obviously, it's far closer. We have the proximity, but I would love to see our impact compared to that one neighborhood and why did they make the cut? [1:45:25] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: Well, but I think you're also looking at when you're looking at the—and I'm assuming some of these studies and what they've done, but just looking at where they've put their focus is that when you look at the benefit cost, you're wrapping in six or seven areas that can be impacted with the minimal cost of piping and treatment. And then you get to Lake Elmo that is further away to loop that in probably bounces your cost beyond any reasonable measure and throws out that benefit cost ratio. Uh you know so far would be—but that's my assumption. [1:46:15] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: Yeah, it so—again I think I—I can understand all that and understand the uh the reasoning behind wanting to exclude it. I'd hate for us to lose the opportunity. Um I think it's—it's a fair—it's a fair question to ask and it—well and if—because again these are all studies that are going to get done and they're going to determine what they want to do based off of the findings from these studies. [1:46:40] **Clark Schroeder**: They're going to study the effects. Sorry, the effects. And then they'll—then they'll estimate the cost. And so and then they'll weigh those 15 studies against each other and say, "Where do you get the most bang for the buck?" [1:47:00] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: Well, and the kicker for me is we can't have surface water without Oakdale. And obviously—and obviously that—well, and we could—it would be—or North St. Paul. Um it so it's not just Lake Elmo, it's Lake Elmo and Oakdale. So again, now it's, you know, two-tenths of one inch. But again, I just want to know. So then we have that information as we start to deal with the inaction of 3M so we can make an—more informed decision. So yeah, it's kind of leveraging this process, but I want to know and it—especially since the studies are being paid for by someone else. And if we don't have that opportunity, it sucks. It really does because I don't want to have to have our taxpayers be forced to pay for something for studies because we're being polluted. And if the study's being done, why not just add one additional and— [1:48:10] **Clark Schroeder**: And they could look at it from a—well, they—they actually—they actually did this study in 2016. That's where we got the one-tenth of—that's where we got the one-tenth of one inch. Yeah. And what they're looking at and they got a whole cadre of studies. If you look on the website for the White Bear Lake Comprehensive Group, they have all of previous studies that study this issue for the last decade. And so what they're doing is just updating those studies with current information, but what they're looking at specifically now is what you see on the board here. [1:49:00] **Council Member Jeff Holtz**: Um, and then I would presume that 2016 study was probably done with data from 2010 through 2014, which is again why I would want to see it updated with not only our 2022-24 data, but our our 2040 projections, which didn't exist in 2016. [1:49:25] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. So, we're working with Greg Johnson uh from the Met Council and he basically—we're—we're estimating a very large growth in population about double what we see today in ultimate build-up. So, I'll be dead. But, I mean, it'll be, you know, we're thinking 30,000 people eventually in this city. We have 14,000 right now. Um because we're just guessing high as a worst-case scenario because I don't know if it's going to happen or not. Future councils will make those determinations, but as a worst-case scenario. So, we're trying to estimate that and that's what they're building in the model is that ultimate growth, not what we had in 2010. And so, that's when you look back at that water use table that had the green and the blue bars. Um they're trying to capture data from 2012 going up to current times in order to project what—and so all the cities are doing ultimate ultimate buildout and that's why when you look on the board here you see Hugo 2 as a system you know um you know on here well they're not on this one but they're part of—this is a Hugo 1 Hugo 2 uh you know estimations based on—the blue line is actual here and then these two lines are—are ultimate Hugo because they have such a out effect on this system whereas we don't. [1:51:00] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: I think the thing remember about the surface water connection is you'd probably have to build the pipe all the way from somewhere close to the St. Paul treatment works out here to have the capacity to serve and there's a connection off of McKnight that's big enough to serve for Oakdale and Lake Elmo. [1:51:25] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. Perhaps there is. [1:51:26] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: But then you do—one—want—of just one. You don't want to have something coming from North St. Paul. [1:51:30] **Clark Schroeder**: So something—Yeah. If something broke, you wouldn't be without water. But I don't—One of the things that— [1:51:40] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Big enough to serve our future growth, then we're lucky. But um typically there wouldn't be a reason to build it that big. [1:51:45] **Clark Schroeder**: One of the things that the cities that are on this list have talked about which is: Do we maintain our infrastructure? Okay. Do we rely on that one pipe or do we keep our infrastructure going? How do we pay for the infrastructure which we've bonded for over 20 years for our current system that maybe we're not going to use, maybe we will—will use when we're getting surface water? I mean all the—all those issues are going to be coming forward. [1:52:15] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Easy-peasy. [1:52:16] **Clark Schroeder**: Yeah. You know, it's—it's all as clear as mud. You know, my dad always said, you know, "If somebody comes to you with a simple solution for a overly complex issue, he either doesn't understand the problem or is not invested in a solution." And he was a minister, so probably knew what he was talking about. [1:52:45] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead**: All right. Um, we're good with that. We've given Clark a couple things to take back and ask questions about. We appreciate your time and effort on that. Um, we do have a council meeting next week. Prior to that is the truth and taxation meeting if people uh have gotten their proposed property tax statements from the county. I will be out of town next Tuesday, so Council Member Holtz can run the meeting. Um, anything else, administrator? [1:53:15] **Nicole Miller**: We also have an EDA meeting in between. [1:53:18] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead**: There is an EDA meeting. Yes. So, we're going Truth EDA council. That sounds about right. Yeah. All right. With that, we're going to adjourn this evening's meeting. Thank you very much. Have a good night.