Skip to content
You are here: Home Area News Pope County Tribune & Starbuck Times Lowry Wastewater Project To Start Soon
Lowry Wastewater Project To Start Soon PDF Print E-mail
Pope County Tribune - Starbuck Times
Written by Valerie Schmidt   
Tuesday, 13 April 2010 14:17

Water issues of some kind were the items topping the agenda of the Lowry City Council at their monthly meeting on Tuesday, April 6.


lowry-signcc_07Jeremy Anderson of Design Tree updated the council on the pre-construction conference which was held on March 18. He said no big surprises had come from this which was good. Quam had given them the list of all sub contractors for the project. Anderson noted that most of the sub-contractors were local. Work is scheduled to begin the week of May 24 and they will start south of Isabella and work toward Drury then to Poplar and begin to work east.

At this time Anderson said he was waiting for a schedule of the pond construction but felt he would be getting a date fairly soon.

The city also needed to approve someone to test certain aspects of the construction of the pond site. According to Anderson this is a fairly new requirement of Rural Development. Since his firm does not have anyone on board to do this testing, they had submitted this out to two firms. The lowest one had bid the work at $31,600. Anderson assured the council that this is an expense that will be covered by the loans and grants.

This was bid at an hourly rate, and Anderson was confident that the amount could be less than what Brawn Intertech had bid. Council members authorized Anderson to proceed with this firm.

In other business for the wastewater treatment project council members authorized signing the agreement for the wastewater treatment grant in the amount of $2,665,000.

The next issue was the arsenic in the water. John Grothe had been to Lowry recently and six wells outside of the city limits had been tested. Several of the wells tested were no better than what the city is currently dealing with. However, one well not far out of the city showed zero nitrates and zero arsenic.

Anderson said the next step is to get on the project priority list at the Department of Health. All the paperwork needed to be submitted to the Department of Health, Anderson said he and his firm could do. Once they have an opportunity to review the paperwork, the Department of Health would assign the project points.

Once Lowry is on the list, they can then look at further funding based on what will be determined as needs. Anderson said the city would not have long to wait as the official list is published in June. He told the city they used the same formula as Rural Development, so they would be eligible for loans and grants.

It now appears the city will need to drill a new well, and construct a new well house at the site, then pipe the water to Lowry.

The water meter situation was the next item the council addressed. Design Tree has submitted their report with recommendations on how to address the issues and concerns that were found during the water testing. While not all issues will be addressed immediately, council members feel that a number of the issues must be addressed. They set a work meeting for April 19 at 7:30 p.m. to start addressing the issues in the report.

In other news

• Took action to now waive the monetary limits on municipal tort liability as established in MN statute 466.04.

• Authorized Clerk Lucy Olson to submit a grant application to Charter Point Energy on behalf of the police, First Responders, and fire departments.

• Authorized the hiring of a temporary person to do yard waste pickup until the person hired can start on a regular basis. It was noted yard waste would not be picked up on a regular basis on the interim.

• Discussed condemnation of a building behind he post office and Legion, but decided not to pursue it at this time since the building is on private property and not city property.

• Authorized a building permit to Jon Larson to construct a lean-to on his two car garage with work beginning after the waste water treatment work has been completed.

• Heard a tennis court update from Mayor Bruce Larson. Larson stated that the corner and gate posts had been installed Monday evening by members of the 4-H Club. He said two walk-in gates need to be purchased, and that on May 10 the 4-H would be planting flowers and they would later start installing the chain link fencing around the tennis court.

• Learned from Clerk Olson the city of Lowry would lose $5,053 this year in local government aid.

• Authorized the clerk to send letters to dog owners who have not had their dog licensed. Some owners will be assessed the cost of several years, for each year the dog has been unlicensed.