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Grant may support tower, Lewis & Clark connection for local rural water

Lead Summary
By
Mavis Fodness

Federal CARES Act dollars may support an additional water tower for the Rock County Rural Water System.
County commissioners supported a grant application to the Economic Development Administration at their Oct. 6 meeting.
The grant could pay 80 percent of the estimated $2.5-$2.9 million water improvement project. The other 20 percent would be split between the RCRW and city of Luverne.
“What is going on with the federal government now is that they were allowed a large chunk of COVID dollars they are trying to get out,” said County Administrator Kyle Oldre.
Applications are reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis. An answer to RCRW’s application is expected by next month.
RCRW system manager Ryan Holtz is working with Banner Engineering on the cost estimates that would locate a 250,000-gallon water tower west of Luverne.
The tower would improve water pressure to the northern areas of the rural water system.
The grant would also cover an additional Luverne connection to the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System.
“The reason for the interconnection is that in major problems we can feed them and they can also do the same for us on our west side,” Holtz said.
The 8-inch pipeline would be installed along West Warren Street near the Maplewood Cemetery west to an existing 8-inch RCRW mainline.
An additional pump station would be constructed along the new line to pump water to the city of Luverne.
RCRW planned a third water tower several years ago when the system expanded service to the northern region. However, the lack of customer hookups made the project not cost-effective for federal funding and the project was not completed.
Since then, interest in connecting to rural water has grown.
Holtz said from 2017 to 2019 demand for rural water has increased more than 13 percent. This past summer’s drought has created even more demand.
“In the past three years, we have completed 37 hookups, which normally we do three or four a year,” he said. “Our demand is growing from the livestock …. I’ve heard from several producers that they have noticed — especially in nurseries, in calving units — their death rate drops substantially when they switch to rural water from (private) wells.”
With the increased demand for treated water, Holtz said providing that water on the system’s west side is stressing the current booster stations located near Beaver Creek and Steen.
“These booster stations are running all the time to keep pressure on the north side of the system,” Holtz said. “With the (new) tower there, one of these stations will fill the tower and we can run the pressure from there. We would have a significant power savings as well.”
The new tower could provide the system with 300 gallons a minute via gravity flow.
It would also increase RCRW’s one-day storage capacity, a need state Department of Health officials noticed during their annual inspections.
“They wrote every year, ‘We do not have enough one-day storage in our system,’” Holtz said. “We are not getting written up for it but it’s something they talk about.”
Customers of RCRW use a maximum of 1.4 to 1.5 million gallons of water per day. Current storage capacity is 623,000 gallons.
The new tower would bring the capacity to 873,000 gallons, much closer to the one-day storage recommendation.
Holtz said interest in connecting to RCRW continues to increase.
“We almost can’t keep up with the hookups this year,” he said. “We’ve done more hookups in the last three years than in the past 10. Growth has been good.”
 
RCRW receives Lewis and Clark commendation
“Congratulations to Rock County RWD on using 100 percent of its reserved capacity in Fiscal Year 2020,” said Troy Larson, executive director with Lewis and Clark Regional Water System.
“This resulted in the lowest possible effective rate of $1.04/1,000 gallons for the year, which is great news for the customers of Rock County.”
The effective rate is the total amount that Lewis and Clark charges members for water divided by the gallons purchased. Larson said the higher the percentage of its reserved capacity a member uses, the lower the effective rate.
At $1.04, RCRW has achieved the lowest effective rate among 15 members.
Rates ranged from $2.09 to $1.4. City of Luverne has an effective rate of $1.58
RCRW receives about 110 million gallons of water annually from the Lewis and Clark water system.
When RCRW joined the regional water system in 2012, its agreement was to use 300,000 gallons a day.
Updated controls allows RCRW to hit the daily gallon total.
“A couple cents here or there doesn’t sound like much but when you’re talking about a couple hundred thousand gallons, a couple cents adds up,” said RCRW system manager Ryan Holtz.

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