11-13-1984 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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always the case. It took ten years, and $400 million of state, federal and regional funds, to upgrade the plant to the point where its treated discharges have only a minimal impact on the Mississippi River. Priority was given to the plant during the last decade because its discharge was 16 times'greater than w the total discharge from the 87 combined sewer overflow pipes on the Mississippi River. With . Metro Plant up to Ltandards, the next key step in cleaning up the Mississippi River is to figure out the best way to keep raw sewage from entering the river. The benefi's from conveying all stormwater in the combined pipes to the Metro Plant for treatment would be very minimal. New filtering equipment at the plant could cost in the neighborhood of $150 million. In ada.tion, much larger sewer pipes leading to the plant would need to be built. The raw sewage, on the other hand, is not only unsightly, but contains large amounts of disease -carrying bacteria, such as fecal coliforms and viruses. Scparating the pipes that carry both sewage and storm water will remove these troublemakers from the Mississippi River. Minneapolis, St. Paul and South St. Paul began to separate their sewers long before the major upgrading of the Metro Plant began. Their pipes are very old, and were built by the cities at a time when the prevailing way to "treat" wastewater was merely to dump it into rivers and lakes. Minneapolis has separated all but 13 percent and St. f..il 40 percent. As of 1982, Minneapolis had spent $85 million, and St. Paul $68 million, on separation. South St. Paul has separated 65 percent of its pipes at a $3 million cost to the city. At current 2pending rates, it would take 25 years for the three cities to complete the separation. A five-year completion schedule financed solely by the three; cities could bankrupt them. The Twin Cities and state have made ambitious, expensive and salutory efforts to maintain the quality of Minnesota's waters. Combined sewer overflows are an anachroro-sm in the face of this tradition. Without state and federal financial assistance to meet mandated compliance scnecules, the Twin Cities Area could be subjec_ to enforcement action by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency or the U.S. Environmental Protect"on Agency. The enforcement agencies could levy tines anc mandate solutons that would remove choices and options the metropolitan area might wish to pursue to solve the problem. The agencies could impose a ban on hookups to the central sewer system until tr.e orcb`_e^t -s rect.f.ed. The effact of :such an action could be to halt con3trUction of buildings of all types --new homes, new industry or new cot:jnerc.,il developments affe,_cing bo cities and townships and about 80 percent of the Twin Cities Area's population. The action woul" hit the Twin Cities suburbs particularly hard. It would bring downtown and neighborhood commercial and residential development to a halt. A court could impose a aoluticn. Thin situation could occur after the permit is i:rauad and it' toe three cities, the Metropolitan Waste Control Commission or the Metropolitan Council du not meet the permit schedules for ending the raw sewage di!jeharge into the Mississippi River. Recently, the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area was taken to _a�irt over the quality of the area's discharges into Lake Michigan. Under a court-imvaned plan. Milwal-v« mw%t spend a huge amount of sonay, $1.6 billion, to expand its wastewater storage and trtament facilities. Thu atdte of Wisconsin went to court recently asking for court review of the L_