By Chad Koenen

Publisher

The City of New York Mills is reaching a crossroads, of sorts, about whether it should move forward with a new water treatment facility.

During its regularly scheduled meeting last Tuesday night, the NY Mills City Council heard a preliminary engineering report on its water treatment plant. The presentation was made by Michael Weber, of Apex Engineering, who said the city will need to address its aging water treatment in the near future. His proposal included everything from doing nothing, rehabbing the current water treatment facility to constructing a new water treatment facility in the South Point development to fit the city’s needs at a cost of $10.15 million. 

The city council did not act on the report or one of the proposals presented by Weber, but did indicate it could address the issue at a future city council meeting. 

According to the report presented by Weber, the city has 559 total water users, a vast majority of which are residential users. Weber said over the past 20 years the average daily water demand has been 124,000 gallons per day, but can increase to 150,000 gallons per day on average during the summer. There are appropriately 6-10 days per year that can increase to around 250,000 gallons per day. 

The city’s water tower has a capacity of 150,000 gallons, but Weber said it does not effectively maximize storage capacity as it currently operates 75 percent full in the summer and about half full in the winter. 

The current water treatment plant was constructed in the late 1960s and was designed to remove iron and manganese through gravity filtration. The facility has undergone multiple improvements, including a backwash waste storage tank in 1996, a plant retrofit with process equipment and controls in 2001 and a filter media and under drain replacement in both 2001 and 2017. 

The supply wells number three and four were constructed in the late 1960s and early 1970s and have undergone multiple pump rebuilds/replacements, and piping that was replaced over the years. 

The water storage tank features a 150,000 gallon elevated storage tank that was constructed in 1972 and rehabilitated in 2009. 

In addition to the older wells, the city has a new well that was completed in 2021.

While the City of NY Mills continues to show positive population growth, including an average growth of 12 percent from 2000-2020, Weber suggested the city look at building a smaller water treatment plant than it currently operates. Even if the city continues to show a 12 percent population growth over the years, Weber said the city would be better off with a smaller plant that operates in a more effective manner. 

“With that information and project future demands we would recommend a design capacity of 350 gallons per minute for a production rate for the plant,” he said. “This is different, it is reduction from your current capacity of 550 gallons per minute. But based upon your current usage and demand and these projections there is a good opportunity to right-size the facility for the system and (that) could lead to some cost effectiveness, especially up front as well as maintaining the equipment, smaller equipment is a little less expensive.”

When asked if the city could run out of capacity should it receive a population boom in the near future, Weber said the city would need to have a significant growth, well above the past history of the city, in order to come close to not having enough capacity for water production.

“It would take a pretty significant growth to move above and beyond that proposed 350 gallon rate, probably 50-60 percent growth or more to be a real concern,” he said 

In order to meet future demands and increase storage, Weber said the city had three options at its disposal. It could do nothing and operate the current facility as is. It could also rehab the current water treatment plant to upgrade the equipment, filtration, controls and wells, but also warned rehabbing the current facility may not be the best option due to the current building size, design and layout of rooms, as well as the limited site space.

Weber’s recommendation was to construct a new water treatment facility in the South Point development, which would be near a new well the city tapped into a few years ago. The facility would be approximately 4,600 square feet and feature proper storage and chemical feed systems. 

As part of his proposal to the city, Weber said there were some upgrades that were needed at the water tower and continued testing on the new well.

The total cost for the new water treatment facility, as well as testing for the wells and water tower was estimated to be $10.15 million. If the city were to construct a new facility with the current 550 gallons per minute facility the cost would be $11.4 million. 

In order to help fund a potential project, Weber said the Minnesota Public Facilities Authority has a Drinking Water Revolving Fund that would provide low interest loans and potential grant funding through the organization. That funding would be dependent on state funding through the drinking water revolving fund. 

In 2025 the city’s project was not in a fundable category in the intended use plan as the city did not fund any new projects of this type. Weber said NY Mills was ranked second of new project requests in 2025 of all of the projects that were listed on the non-fundable list.

“If and when they do this project should be funded,” he said. 

If the city wanted to move forward with the project, it could apply for placement on the 2026 intended use plan in July for 2026 ad could begin the design phase as soon as July 2026. Bidding could be held next April and construction could begin at soon er summer of 2026.