04-11-2006 Council Work Session Packet

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TO: Mayor Peterson and Council Members FROM: Ron Moorse, City Administrator /� DATE: April 6, 2006 SUBJECT: Joint Sewer Agreement with Long Lake Orono has a number of neighborhoods that have city sewer service that connect to the Long Lake sewer system in order to get to the Long Lake MCES lift station located at the intersection of Orono Orchard Road and Orono Oaks Drive. Most of these are small neighborhoods with less than ten connections. In addition, as part of the sewer work related to the Highway 12 project, the sewer flow from the North Long Lake neighborhood in Orono was rerouted through the Long Lake system so that Orono could eliminate a lift station at Brown Road and Highway 12. This brought the total number of properties using the Long Lake sewer system to about 200. The original agreements with Long Lake regarding the small neighborhood connections included a sewer connection fee equal to the Long Lake sewer connection fee, and no operating fee (i.e. no quarterly sewer fee) payable to Long Lake. The flow from these sewer interconnections is not metered, but the estimated sewer flows are credited to Long Lake, and the per unit MCES sewage treatment charges are then billed to Orono by the MCES. With the addition of the North Long Lake neighborhood sewer flows to the Long Lake system, Orono and Long Lake staff have been reviewing the existing sewer agreements, and discussing options for sharing the costs of the maintenance of the jointly used Long Lake sewer lines, and lift stations where applicable. Long Lake has proposed that, rather than calculating the volume of sewer flows from Orono to Long Lake, so that Orono pays the correct amount to the Met Council Environmental Services for sewage treatment, Long Lake would pay the treatment costs for all of the flows, and would charge Orono the same sewer charge Long Lake charges to its own residents--$67.00 per unit per quarter. Currently, Orono has a broad range of arrangements with the Cities that have shared sewer flows. For sewer flows from Orono to Wayzata from the Chevy Chase neighborhood, Orono pays the Metro sewage treatment costs, but no quarterly costs to Wayzata. For flows from Orono to Wayzata from the Old Long Lake Road area, Orono does not pay the Metro costs, but pays a quarterly fee to Wayzata of$88.00 per unit per quarter. For sewer flows into Long Lake, Orono pays the metro treatment costs, but does not pay any quarterly fees. Orono does not currently charge any operating costs to Medina for the sewer flows from Medina Morningside.