It’s ‘crunch time’ for city water conservation, treatment 

Following the issuance of mandatory water conservation efforts, the Storm Lake City Council discussed plans to construct a new water treatment plant to accommodate the city’s currently full water storage and treatment facilities. 

During Monday night’s city council meeting, Public Works Director Matt Beckman presented background information about how the city’s water treatment plant has reached capacity. City Manager Keri Navratil said this was only the beginning of a years-long process to improve Storm Lake’s water conservation, retention and treatment. 

 “We have been working diligently on our water situation. Over $15 million have been spent over the last seven years on our water infrastructure,” said Navratil. “And that’s just for our major projects,” including wells and a new water tower system. 

Presently, the city’s water treatment plant cannot make any more water than what is now being used. In other words, they need a new water plant. But that’s a costly endeavor, and the city does not yet know how they will fund the project. 

“The cost of a plant is not cheap,” said Navratil. “$65 million, not including engineering.”

“I’m sure the engineers will work for nothing,” Mayor Mike Porsch joked in return. 

Navratil said the city intends to embark on an ideally 3-5 year project to improve water treatment and construct a new plant. 

Plus, Navratil said, “We wanted to have the opportunity to dispel some rumors we’ve been hearing and we’ve been seeing about our water operations. I do want to say, we do have water.”

Beckman said that treatment capacity “is the next component needed to ensure sustainability in the long-term future of the community and water needs.”

Beckman said the city is currently working with an engineering team to meet treatment capacity. They will also work with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources on necessary permitting for a new plant. 

“The next step is finding a location for the new water plant, ideally directly north of where we’re at now,” he said. 

Navratil said the city started their conservation efforts in 2018. Since then, the city has installed new meters that provide better analytics on town water usage. Navratil said she or someone from the water treatment plant would present those analytics sometime in September. 

Navratil added, “When we say that we’re kind of in a crunch time at the moment, that’s where a growing community is going to see a time where it’s going to be a little tighter conservation-wise as we work through and navigate the DNR process, we get the new plant location decided, we do the engineering.”

Current state of city water storage, treatment

Beckman said the city’s water system “has to meet demand with our largest well out of service.” Over the past few years, the city has been rehabilitating multiple wells, which Beckman said “improved reliability and performance of our wells.” 

Storm Lake’s oldest well was constructed in the late 1940s, Beckman said. It recently “went down and was unable to be rehabbed due to the age of the well.” 

Councilperson Maria Ramos said, “My only concern is that we keep growing as a community and it seems like we’re spending a lot of money, but it seems like replacing and fixing rather than increasing the volume for the population that we have.”

Navratil responded, “You’re always going to be fixing and replacing. You have pipe in the ground that always has to be replaced under the streets.” She continued, “Water is an enterprise and it’s paid for by user fees.”

The city is currently constructing two new wells to replace ones that stopped functioning. The water treatment plant has also planned for two test wells in July, which they hope to officially construct if they work properly. 

Beckman said the city has also addressed previous water storage issues by beginning construction on a 1.75 million-gallon tower on Mae Street. The city now has a 3.425 million gallon storage capacity, which includes two ground storage tanks and three elevated tanks. Beckman said the Mae Street tower will add a million gallons to capacity. 

The existing city water treatment plant was constructed in 1978 and had a “major upgrade” in 2004, according to Beckman. “This upgrade added redundancy but not capacity,” Beckman said. Hence the need for a new water plant, he said. 

Additionally, Beckman explained that Storm Lake sources all of its water from three different aquifers. He said it takes one year for 10 feet of water to circulate through the aquifers. Storm Lake’s shallowest well is 90 feet. 

The Iowa Geological Survey recently found that the Dakota aquifer pocket shared by Storm Lake and Cherokee is near its production limit. 

Water conservation efforts

The discussion of a new plant also sparked questions about how citizens and city establishments can better conserve water. 

Councilperson Meg Mc-Keon voiced concerns about water usage at automatic car washes. Navratil said that the city is trying not to ask commercial properties to conserve extra water at this time. She and Beckman said that water usage analytics do not indicate any exorbitant water usage at car washes. 

But, Navratil said if the city “gets into emergency operations” they might have to ask car washes to close. “We’re hoping not to do that,” she said. 

Councilperson Maggie Martinez asked whether the city should work to conserve water from hydrant flushing. Beckman said they are looking at ways of trying to reuse that water, but it requires “extra manpower and equipment to set up an alternate system.”

Navratil said the city is “very cognizant that we want to get that hydrant flushing done, not in our peak time frame, so we do not want to hydrant flush in the summer.”

Other mandatory conservation measures include: no refilling pools without city approval; no use of water to clean sidewalks and driveways; and delaying seedings and sod, among others. 

If the measures do not reduce water demand by 20% and the water plant remains at full capacity, the mayor or city manager would if necessary proclaim a water emergency with stricter conservation requirements.