02-25-1985 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 was the total discharge from the 87 combined sewer overflow pipes on the Mississippi River. With the Metro Plant up to standards, 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 benefits 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 addition, 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. Separating 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 ntreat" wastewater was merely to dump it into rivers and lakes. Minneapolis has separated all but 13 percent and St. Paul 40 percent. As of 1982, Minneapolis had spent $85 million, and St. Paul $68 million, on separation. South St. Paul has separated o5 percent of its pipes at a $3 million cost to the city. At current spend-4-7 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 add state have made ambitious, expensive add salutory efforts to maintain the quality of Minnesota's waters. Combined sewer overflows are an anachromsm in the face of this tradition. remove choices and options the metropolitan area might wish to pursue to solve the problem. ne eu ect oa sucn an action could be to halt construction of buildings of all types --new homes, new industry or new commercial developments affecting 66 cities and townships and about 80 percent of the Twin Cities Area's population. The action would hit the Twin Cities auburda particularly hard. It would bring downtown and neighborhood commercial and residential development to a halt. A court could impose a solution. This situation could occur after the permit is issued and if the three cities, the Metropolitan Waste Control Commission or the Metropolitan Council do not met the permit schedules for ending the raw sewage discharge into the Mississippi River. Recently, the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area was token t0 Court over the quality of the area's discharges into Lake Michigan. Under a court -imposed plan, Milwaukee must spend a huge amount of money, $1.6 billion, to expand its wastewater storage and treament facilities. The state of Wisconsin went to court recently anklna for rnert rw'ew Ar rwo