appreciate everybody coming tonight you're here for uh an informational meeting about pasas we know there are a number of people who have other questions about other issues within the city but we're going to try to focus ourselves today on drinking water and pasas within the City of Lake Elmo my name is Clark schroer I'm was the interim City administrator for Lake Elmo a couple times and I basically am working on special projects for the city currently so I just do odds and ends around the city we have a number of speakers tonight as you can see on the agenda from the state agencies and the city the PowerPoint that you're going to see tonight will be on the website tomorrow so you guys will be able to download it in addition if you want a copy a hard printed copy of that please come to City Hall and we'll have copies sitting out in the front desk for people to take home if they don't have a computer or if they're not as comfortable with the uh looking at online uh we'll be recording this meeting that will be up on the website in a couple days and because of that we want to make sure when we get to the question and answer period that it gets recorded on the cameras that you can see around the room here so I'll be repeating the questions because we only have one microphone and it's this one so I don't have a microphone to pass around so I'll I'll be asking you to do that if you can take a moment right now and silence your phones there's a lot of people in this room I appreciate to not have ringing interrupt so everybody just take a second and put your phones on silent we're going to right there Bing I'm I'm also going to ask you to hold your questions till the end we're going to have a 25 minute period of question and answer where we'll just have individual questions very short that will'll have the experts from the state Andor the city answer so please hold them to the end um in addition after the meeting is over there'll be another opportunity to talk to City staff department of health staff Minnesota Pollution Control staff out in the hallway if you have further questions on there we'll be able to allow maybe a half hour before they kick us out of this building so with that I'm going to introduce Kirk from the Minnesota Pollution Control agency so you're up yes I got one more thing I should have had something besides a pencil we do have a Spanish interpreter that is available Alexandra right there and if you would like translation services she can be out there and help you um translate what you're being heard or after the meeting if you didn't understand what's being said she'll be back there to be able to answer some questions in Spanish I apologize for interrupting no problem hello everyone can you hear me okay just want to make sure if for some reason [Music] you okay if for some reason you don't just kind of wave or something we do want you all to hear us so welcome tonight and want to join in with the city and the welcome we have a number of folks here from State agencies my name is kir adelka I'm assistant commissioner with the Minnesota Pollution Control agency and you're going to be um presented here by a number of folks from our agency and the Minnesota Department of Health my discussion tonight is just to kind of kick it off and provide a little background on how we got to where we are today so you'll see four sites on the map there the Washington County landfill Oakdale disposal site Woodburry disposal site and The Cottage Grove disposal site these are sites that we know 3M disposed of various waste and others um throughout history these sites were being investigated prior to 2000 for various contaminants but things really changed when we learned about past uh being present in the groundwater in the East metro area so in 2002 this state was notified by 3M that pasas was found in one of their production Wells at their Cottage Grove facility that set off an investigation by the state agencies including npca Department of Health working together with 3m to find out if it was present in other locations then in 2004 we had the first hit in a municipal drinking water system which was in Oakdale from there that moved on the state required 3M to do sampling of Municipal systems and private drinking water wells and and that work through the following years in 2007 we memorialized those requirements on 3M including the sampling and work being done at these disposal sites to help remove past and then also determine where it traveled through the groundwater what wells private and public were impacted and if it re exceeded a health-based value and Department of Health will talk a little bit more about those values they needed to provide safe drinking water to the residents so that work continued on under the 2007 consent order under the overview of the state but our super fund program which this is under really just looks at what is the source remove the source find the pathways and remove them but even in cases where we are able to do that work that cleanup work the remediation work there's still underlying impacts because of the contamination many times to our natural resources think of our drinking water our fisheries and others and that's why later the state under the attorney generals along with with the npca and Department of Natural Resources filed what's called a natural resources damages claim in 2010 that's um important because in 2018 as you can see on the the slide there we settled with 3m for $850 million for those injuries the money is dictated by that settlement agreement on what it should be used for you'll hear tonight the term Priority One we'll get into that short hand and just want you to let you know that's about providing safe and sustainable drinking water to those impacted from those four disposal sites that's where you'll see the conceptual drink and water supply plan that was finished in 2021 really focuses on how for the 14 communities that we know have been impacted public and private Wells what is the plan to move forward for sampling and also looking at how do we provide safe drinking water in the various different situations some communities and residents rep respond or depend on Municipal drinking water systems some on private Wells and so that's what the plan talks about how will we move forward with that and allocating dollars for Capital large projects for communities or private Wells and operation and maintenance dollars to move forward in addition this plan was meant to be flexible and resilient and so we put away contingency dollars in case things were to change the one thing you'll learn today is past we are increasingly understanding it better and better the science is becoming more rigorous and as a result ad the Technologies we're able to use to measure it and also the impacts to individuals are better known and so we had additional dollars set aside for those situations and we'll learn more about that tonight the goal here is not only to look at providing Safe Water also to look at what can we do to fix the underlying problem and so there is additional work that we're not going to focus on tonight but we can talk about if folks have questions later on contining removing the source from the contaminated sites and other work that we're doing along those lines so with that I'm going to turn it over to my colleague at the Department of Health and she'll talk a little bit more about P I had a lower it here uh good evening everybody my name is Chris close and I am a scientist with the Minnesota Department of Health and I'm going to talk to you about p and health effects tonight so we need to get one thing out in the open first of all and that is that pfast science is fast moving so what we know today is going to change a week from now a month from now a year from now there'll be new data coming out um I someone asked me upstairs tonight um how many Publications or new studies have come out in the last week um I don't know about the last week but I went to the pub Med website which is just health studies and in the last year 14400 came out so it is a lot of information and a lot of data so we do the best we can to stay on top of it to protect Everybody's Health so some of you are experts at this because you've dealt with past before and some of it is new to you so I'm just going to go over a background slide here so past is a family of chemicals and there's over 5,000 chemicals in this family and they're called the poly and per flu alal substances and what puts them in this family is that they were created in the 1940s and they have these Florine and carbon bonds in them and these are incredibly stable they were made to be indestructible and they are indestructible so far so um they're called Forever chemicals because they don't break down in the environment and they don't break down in us so um when you think about these 5,000 chemicals we have guidance values for six and that is because there is just little toxicity information or studies on the rest of the past chemicals so where are pasas they're everywhere they're in us so everyone across the globe has pasas in their blood serum they're also in our drinking water and they're also in the products we use the the majority of your pfast exposures are going to be in the products everyday products you use in your house there if it's if something you have says it's greas prooof waterproof or stain proof chances are it's got one of those 5,000 pfast chemicals in them so it's everywhere from your stain resistant carpeting waterproof upholstery in your furniture nail polish Electronics um cell phones it's in your dental floss and shampoo it's in your water resistant mascara um the dust in your home has it from the products breaking down the pasas is released it's in your furniture candy wrappers and then even in the containers for our food like your pizza boxes and your microwave popcorn bakes so we're all exposed it's everywhere and again as Department of Health we want to reduce your overall exposure and so drinking water we're talking about tonight that's one of your exposures but you also have all these products around you that have P Fass in them and if you are an anxious person like me and you want to reduce your all overall exposure you can start looking at the labels of things that you're buying and what's going to help us a lot is that next year amar's law goes into effect so some goods sold in Minnesota cannot have P in them so that is going to help reduce all of our exposures a lot so some of you may be wondering like why did the levels of pasts that are allowable in water keep going down in Minnesota and that's because as I told you earlier it's a fast-moving science realm right so 1,400 Publications came out just within the last year so back in 2002 when past was first discovered in our water we had to come out with guidance values for what we knew then the few available toxicity studies that we could get our hands on so you can see back in 2002 we had guidance for pooa at 7,000 nanograms per liter and for posos at 1,000 and just in that time as more and more data comes out our numbers kept dropping more data came out we had to review what we had to protect everybody the numbers had to drop again and then in 2024 this year epidemiology studies came out that's human studies and with those we had to drop them again so it's a constantly moving Target okay so why are we concerned about past well one of the first things we notice is that past behaves differently in the body than other chemicals so we talked about it first it doesn't break down right so if you're com if you are exposed continuously to past it builds up in your body and second of all you can pass that P along to a fetus and an infant so the fetus and the infant become our most sensitive population because they're often born with the same or similar levels of past in their blood serum as the mom and then as the Mom breastfeeds it's passed through the milk so when we make our guidance values we focus on this most sensitive population so the numbers protect this group of people and then everybody else and so again this slide just kind of shows you the health effects that we have for children and infants so um one of the things that makes them most susceptible is that they drink more water and milk on a per body weight than any other life stage so they're drinking more and secondly they have that hand to mouth Behavior they're crawling on the carpet they're touching the household dust of putting their hand in their mouth so their exposure goes up so potential health risk this is from epidemiology studies are they're correlated with lower birth weights and then a reduced response to vaccination now if we look at the adult population most of us have spent our whole lives exposed to past either in water or in products around us and it comes from again many different sources so these are from epidemiology studies again those are human studies so as your level of peps goes up you have an increased risk for cholesterol changes some liver enzyme changes and then some cancers so particularly kidney and testicular does that that mean you're going to get these if you're above a certain level no it just means that the risk starts increasing the more you're exposed the longer you're exposed and what we do know though however is that if you reduce your exposure your blood levels go down so this is a graph for those of you who love statistics and graphs this is the different past over time this is National Data so blood just taken around the country and these are averages so you see um in started in 1999 2000 and then posos was um phased out so 3M and other Industries voluntarily stopped putting p in a lot of the products but you we know they're still out there you can see the levels come down in blood over time so this is showing that when you intervene and you stop exposures the blood levels it goes down this is East Metro data so the red bars are the US population in 2014 these are averages so average concentrations of these different pasts in the blood and then this was from a study done with about 150 residents some of you might be here that are part of the study so blood was tested before intervention in 2008 and then again it was tested in 2010 and 2014 and you can see a reduction over the years in the past levels in the blood so this is great news right you stop the exposure and then the levels go back down and I don't know it'd be really interesting to see 2024 10 years later how close we're getting to the average background and again that average background that you see there is probably most likely from consumer products and from the things we exposed to every day in our houses and in our lives and so with that my final message is is for those of you that are more anxious like myself you have things you can do to reduce exposure for other people you know it it's your safe it's your safety level how much risk are you willing to take so some people this is good news enough right so um I'm going to end it there and pass it on to Rebecca hi I am Rebecca place I work at the Minnesota Pollution Control agency as the 3M settlement coordinator I am here to talk to you about private well sampling these numbers are from our legislative report so they are through December 31st of last year uh sampling began in 2003 we have roughly 7 to 8,000 private wells in the East metro area um we've sampled over half um roughly over half of them and this doesn't include there's been almost 300 this year so that all these numbers will go up but, 1500 number of private well advisories issued and Lake L's Elmo's numbers are included in these numbers I will in a couple slides I'll show you those numbers um point of entry treatment systems we've installed just under 1,200 and those um you'll hear the word poet point of entry treatment system that is a whole home treatment system we also use the word gak that's granulated activated carbon and that's the type of filtration that's within that poet system so you'll hear those change those terms interchanged um and then 393 homes have been connected to Municipal Water uh recent impacts to the private well sampling program as Chris said the Department of Health lowered the health-based values in January of 2024 uh that that means that right away we know that 650 Wells um that didn't previously have an advisory would be triggered into the um well advisory status and then 1300 residential Wells need to be resampled using that new methodology that can that can test to the lower level so in Lake Elmo there are uh 1300 roughly 1300 private drinking water wells uh 694 Wells have been sampled uh there's been 252 of those uh point of entry treatment systems installed and 230 homes have been connected to Municipal Water so our process for private well sampling is that um once we have the residents permission um a technician comes in and collects a sample and then those results are it's analyzed by the lab those results are reviewed by mpca and mdh uh if it's determined that there's not a well advisory a letter would be sent at this point saying there's no well advisory um but otherwise it goes to Department of Health um reviewed again and then issued um an a well advisory and then bottled water is offered by the pollution control agency um with that advisory as an interim fix until the point of entry treatment system can be put on the home and then once we have a signed access agreement uh to come into the home then that point of entry treatment system is put on and then the filters are changed out annually our priorities for the private well sampling program are um to work through that that 1300 backlog of residences that need to be resampled with the new method um we think that's going to take roughly one to two years where we've been working on it um then continuing to define the plume and U monitor Wells at the edges of the plume and uh monitor new uh test you know watch out for new areas within the East Metro that are seeing the past for the first time and investigate that uh and then for continuing resources I'm going to go to this slide first this um this is on our website if you Google uh mpca private well sampling um um it it'll pop up otherwise it's on the fact sheets that we've passed out it'll it's here on this presentation but the this is updated weekly the blue dots are uh residential Wells that have a well advisory and the green dots are residential Wells that do not have a well advisory um that have been tested and then the black squares are monitoring wells in this zoomed in map for Lake Elmo You'll see in the upper leftand corner the monitoring Wells are around the Washington County landfill area and the what's not showing on this map is the 650 Wells that we know as of those new um health-based values that now have advisories so we're working to put those on here and so if you look back in the coming weeks you'll see that um in Lake Elmo there's 234 of that 650 are in Lake Elmo and some of them are in the Tri Lakes area oh so I did want to talk about resources real quick we understand that um taking a sample in the fall of 2023 and getting your results in the summer of 2024 is not acceptable and that that um is not our standard standard operating procedure um that causes you know frustration and stress and um that is not our goal we had kind of a perfect storm when those health-based values came down we also had a lot of Staff turnover in our unit um and we we had retirement and um someone go to grad school and so now we've um we had we lost five staff but now we've have new staff and we're up and running we're working through that backlog um we're just we're really getting rolling at the speed that we want to be and we're also looking at increasing resources for how many samples can be taken um through additional laboratory resources or working on with other State Labs that are verified and on our State contract and also contractors getting another contractor on uh for installing those point of entry treatment systems we want to avoid creating a large bottleneck in the process so we're looking at where we can increase resources throughout the process and then so for monitoring the plume there's the four disposal sites we mentioned and um monitoring continues at all four of those sites uh and 3M continues to work both the p CA and um 3M are doing work at the disposal sites um I won't go into too much detail with that but the also with the project7 that if you haven't heard of it it's a conveyance system to reduce flooding in the Tri Lakes area that was constructed in um 1987 and unfortunately it um inadvertently spread pasos across the Metro so we're continuing to look around that Corridor for areas of concern and then here's just a um couple items if you need to have your well sampled you can sign up online on our private well sampling request form I will pass it off to Lucas I'm a little taller so I don't know what this thing was up but can everybody hear me okay all right great um my name's Lucas Martin I'm a district engineer with the Minnesota Department of Health um so I'm I go and do testing on the public drinking water systems that would be the City of Lake Elmo or any public water supply especially Community Public Water Supplies um so that's what I came to talk to you about today is what um what work we've done with the city and the public water supplies to to regulate their water system um the above picture is kind of an example of some of the work that we've done with some of the cities in the in the East Metro that's a um large Tre treatment plant that was put in recently um in the East metro area to treat and remove P contamination from that City's drinking water and there will be a lot more of those going in there have been a bunch going in and there's going to be a lot more and bigger warms going in in the future as part of that settlement funding is being applied to treat and remove these contaminants from the drinking water so Public Water Supplies are regulated through um the epa's federal Safe Drinking Water Act um it's so there's uh Federal through the code of federal regulations there's requirements and enforceable limits that Public Water Supplies need to meet for certain types of contaminants uh in April of 20 of this year uh so just a few months ago uh posos were added to that uh contamination to that uh regulation so posos now have as of April of this year have enforcable standards that Public Water Supplies will need to meet in the future those enforcement standards include what's called maximum contaminant levels or mcls um so those are the actual contaminant level that that uh water system has to maintain below that level and um so they're identified in the regulations for that and then um for this particular um regulation they created something called called A Hazard index we actually do something similar to this and have been in our state it's essentially past occurring a mixture right we talked to you about there's 5,000 different pasts we test for about 26 different pasts together in the testing that we do so we can detect um multiple past together in a sample so it's important that we look at the combined exposure to that and that's what that Health index that Hazard index excuse me does and we've also been doing that um at our with our state guidance um with what's called a health risk index too um so this table shows you the actual numbers um For What the maximum contaminant levels are that a public water systems required to meet for each one of the types of pasts that are being regulated um the first thing I would mention we're talking about parts per trillion here um no one's really gone into like sort of what that means right what is a part per trillion right so a lot of you probably don't really know um so it's a a part per trillion is one unit volume of contaminant in one trillion unit volumes of water so a way an easy way to maybe visualize that is one drop of water in about 20 olympic size swimming pools so it's a really small amount of contamination that we're talking about and um the fact that we can actually detect this stuff in the water too is is very recent so at this level at these part per trillion levels um detecting that has taken its own advances in the actual Li uh standards the the laboratory methods that have been created so what we're going to focus on um with the water primarily is this PFA and pfos the one that are highlighted there they have the lower limits they're the ones that we see more often out of these on this table um and they're the ones that usually are driving these Health advisories that are being sent to private water syst uh to private Wells or driving the um he the health risk advisors or um violations from this rule uh by the public water systems so um the other ones that are on here the pfhxs we have seen that in other places in the state um including in the East metro area in the Lake Elmo area um that one doesn't really have much of a factor Gen X is one that you here talked about maybe in the news nationally there's been some places other other places in the nation that have seen that specifically where that type of past has been manufactured nearby um we haven't seen it we've tested all of our throughout the state we have not seen any detection of that in the entire state so um that one for us in Minnesota is not really a factor either pfna is also detected very infrequently um we have seen a few detections of it but nothing near that 10 part per trillion so again not really looking at that um and then there's this Hazard index which essentially takes an additive assessment of that pfhxs genx pfna and then one additional contaminant pfbs um that we have seen a that we do see at low levels um I'm not going to talk about the actual calculation or that Hazard index because um for Lake Elmo that um we're we're not seeing that those types of contaminants in the water at a level that makes this Hazard index any kind of a factor at all we're really just need focusing on pfoa and pfos so part of the reason that we're all able to we're talking to you about this today um and that we're we're able to talk about this today is that we've been really proactive in actually testing the drinking water we've been doing drinking water testing for past I think probably the longest in the nation we were one of the first that started testing drinking water for these contaminants and um so we've been been doing very frequent testing especially in the East metro area uh for these contaminants we've also started uh back in 20121 we started uh testing the entire state for these contaminants ahead of when these regulations came out we didn't wait for EPA to you know come out with regulations we knew that these contaminants are in drinking water in certain areas and we wanted to find out where else in the state those that might be so that when these regulations come out we're we're ready to we know where it is and we know where the contamination is and we can already work with the Water Systems to address the issue so um like I mentioned the testing methods have gotten a lot more sensitive so we're able to see these contaminants at a lot lower levels now uh especially within the last few years so there's been some new testing methods that have come out we're able just to detect a lot lower than we used to be so um in Lake Elmo we started sampling uh back in about 2007 in Lake Elmo the first pfoa detections in the Lake Elmo City's water supply came we started seeing them show up in about uh 2011 that was in the well number two one of their three walls that they're currently using the other two walls at that time we were not seeing those detections of that contaminant uh I also there I've met a few people from simron Park that are here so I know there's some people hear from that water supply that is also uh public water supply they have their own Wells they Supply that Community we also test that water system the same way we test the and regulate they're also regulated in the same way that the city's water system is tested and regulated and required to be so um so we started we started testing there as well a long a while ago we didn't start seeing either pfoa or pfos in that water system through our testing until 2022 so a little bit more recently before that we weren't seeing it there the one thing I would just mention is that both of both the cities water system and simron Park's water system have met our health our our State Department of Health guidance for these contaminants prior to this year so it's not that the it's not the contaminant level that's changed it's our understanding of these contaminants and how they affect or potentially may affect people's health and what the health risk is that's changed so um this kind of shows just a chart of the cities of Lake Elmo three Wells and what those uh pfoa and pfos contaminant levels are they don't have any pfos in the in the cities uh all three of the city cities Wells we have not detected that contaminant but as you can see um well number two does have pfoa above that four part per trillion regulatory limit so because of that um once these now that these regulations are out and with us having already tested and been testing this these Wells we know and can work with the city to on on this issue and what their future plans are for uh for for making changes to their water system in the future and I think uh the city's going to talk about that um we have seen some lower level detections of pfoa and their other two well much more recently as these detection levels have gone down but they've been quite a bit lower than this uh this regulatory limit so and then for Simon Park um what we've seen in their Wells is that both of their Wells have contaminant levels above these uh regulatory limits through the APA so um they are right in the planning stages right now of working with um the the state and through the settlement through the uh the the Statewide 3M settlement to uh start planning for what their solution is going to be most likely treatment but there may be a couple options available to them too so this uh this EPA regulation requires a few few things of Water Supplies first they have to test um the water supply for these contaminants we've already done that so but we didn't wait for this regulation to come out so we're sort of head headed the game on this um but this as of April of this year EPA started requiring Public Water Systems to begin testing for it through the next three years and to complete that initial testing by within the next three years so by 2027 um we've already done it so that's done uh the next inform the public so in your consumer confidence report the public water supplies are required to send out every year through either their website or a mailer uh a notice about their consumer confidence report that shows detections of what's been in their water based on the testing that we've done uh posos will be be required to be added to that and actually um we're also a little bit this the communities in this area have been more proactive about that as well so you know Lake Al's been including p in their in their consumer confidence report as well as we just worked with this year um starting with this year's consumer confidence report for simron Park I believe they um included past in that as well so and then they're required to take action So eventually if these Water Systems um the rule requires within f after 5 years of implementation so 2029 is the point at which the Water Systems would receive an actual violation of this rule um that gives them that gives uh time to plan and Implement changes ahead of that which we plan on doing and working with the water systems through the settlement and the funding that's available um and we would go into uh if if a water system did receive a violation we would uh come into some kind of an signed compliance agreement through the state in the water system to provide a plan to show what changes they're going to make and how they're going to meet these standards one of the other things we did to inform the public when we started testing the entire state for p was create a public facing pfast dashboard on our website so there's been some some news um publicity about this um you can go on our website you can just or you can just search for past dashboard Minnesota whatever it should be the first thing that comes up and it's an interactive map where um you can you can search on the map um zoom in on your community and click on the dot that's on the community and it'll pull up the the detections based on the sampling we've done what's been seen in the water system so we did that for all just Statewide because we tested the entire State we wanted to make sure that that information was Avail readily available for people so there's a few things that water systems can do to address past contamination one of the things Some Water Systems have done um is shut down a well that's higher in past so you saw Lake Elmo had that one well out of their three Wells that's has that contaminant limit over that regulatory level um the city will likely talk more about what they're doing about that um sometimes if Wells connect together you can blend the water a lot of people don't like that idea because you're just it's still there right it's just at a lower level you're doing it to like kind of meet that lower level but not really getting rid of the contaminant but there are some water systems that do um what's called blending to meet those standards to make sure that the water supply to the system is is below that regulatory limit or uh there's treatment so the three types of treatment that are um applied for past are reverse osmosis ion exchange there's different newer kinds of ion exchange media this isn't the same kind of ion exchange that's like in your softeners it's not the same your softeners don't remove these contaminants um it's a very specialized type of newer media that's being tested right now so and granular activated carbon um which has already been talked about a little bit so a lot of people ask well what about home treatment what can I do in the meantime if these contaminant levels aren't zero yet in the water supply to my home that might be the long-term plan but for the next few years what do I do right um and so a lot of people have asked about home treatment um so there's there are point of use what I what I would say is look at something something that's for point of use um at the where you get your drinking water at your kitchen sink you don't um and so those are the more affordable options right um and so there are like uh water filters that can clip onto your faucet we've actually tested a couple of those um they work really well as long as they're granular activated carbon filters um which the ones that we tested are they they work pretty well to remove these contaminants so we have some testing information on our website about the ones that we tested that are similar to that so um little more affordable option um also reverse osmosis systems that like go installed under your sink for your kitchen sink um is another option for home treatment what I would say is any option that you're looking at for home treatment you want to make sure that there's a certification program called NSF National Sanitation Foundation they certify the products for removal of these contaminants you want to check and make sure that they're certified and that there maybe there is uh certification on the packaging that says that they actually remove these contaminants um the last thing I would say is that if you do install a home water filter maintenance is very important so don't just install it and don't ever change it out the reason is because you can end up with bacteria growth in the those filters bacteria likes to grow in these filters it's actually a really good environment for bacteria growth so if you just install it and leave it and never change your filter out you're going to end up with really nasty filters with bacteria all over them and you could get sick from that and actually get acute illness and that's you definitely don't want that so you you do need to be making sure that you change these filters out according to the manufactures recommendations and if you want more information about home treatment we actually have an entire website page specifically about past home treatment so I would encourage you to just again online search mdh pfas home treatment it'll be the first thing that shows up and please go there if you want more information about that good evening my name is uh Jack Griffin and I'm the uh city engineer for Lake Elmo and I'd like to talk a little bit about um what we're doing and what our plans are for the Municipal Water System or the public drinking water system for Lake Elmo so it's hard to talk about the system without first want to orient you to this map because you're going to see a lot of this um for this presentation but really what you're seeing is the City of Lake Elmo and you see a lot of these dark lines and these are the trunk water main distribution lines so um currently or for historically Lake Elmo has had three Wells that Lucas was talking about we call them well two well four and well 5 they're all located up in the Northeast quadrant of the city um and they pump into the distribution system and then they it carries it to every user that's connected to to to Lake Elmo so everybody in Lake Elmo that's connected to city water is getting their water from one of from these three Wells they basically all blend together within the distribution system there there isn't treatment other than a couple of chemical additions um so historically we've not had to treat our wells we've had a very clean um water supp Supply um and as we were going through in past years the plan when the contamination first started showing up in 200 uh 2004 2005 in Lake Elmo um the contamination was showing up down here in the southern region we drilled a well we call well number three we never put it in service because it was down here in the contaminate level um but now just recently um as Lucas just presented we now have the contamination in well to and we have to provide treatment for that well or just continue uh using using the water um so our supplies with these three Wells I Just for information these are the capacities of those Wells um and we also are a growing community and as we continue to add users whether it's through new development or whether it's through connecting neighborhoods that are existing um because of the past contamination um we need more Wells um in the future and that's typical of every Community is you need to keep adding adding to your water system and our our plan was to um as we were when you look at our 2040 comp plan and we look at our growth plan we were planning on adding two more Wells before 2040 um we're needing to add well six which is needing basically needed this year or next year and right right after that we're going to need well seven and that's for whole number of reasons and because of where the city's going um we're needing to add to the system the plan was to locate those Wells up north that was the historic plan and as I mentioned since well 2 is now showing up that it's got pasas in it above those thresholds um we've now abandoned that plan we're calling that plan no longer feasible and we we basically took a pause and pivoted and that was a decision made by the city council um just last year so what is the plan well the first part of the plan is to very quickly on basically on an accelerated project delivery schedule the plan is to put treatment on well number two so already uh Public Works who operates the water system has um reduced that the wells only been being used on a extremely limited basis really only on your um Peak summer days when irrigation um really maximized and and we're having hard time keeping the water towers full it's the only time it's turned on so we're we're fundamentally operating on on the two Wells four and five right now um and what we've done is we've gone to the 3M settlement funding and we applied for grant money um to do this study to to Pivot this project and to um identify what this whether treatment was feasible or not we finished that planning we determined that putting treatment on there is feasible and we're beginning the design stages of that of that project right now so we're just entering in design and construction the idea is to put ax past treatment facility constructed on well number two and then we're hoping to have that online before those Peak summer demands in 2025 so this is just for those that like these kinds of things this is wellhouse number two um and it's a pretty large building because it used to house a hydromatic tank and also a generator and neither one of those are used so that turned out to be very convenient for us normally the wellhouse is only big enough to house the well um but because we have this added space um we have this opportunity to put these two um treatment facility um this is what they look like we have this opportunity they fit very nicely in that vacated space we do have to take the roof off that area and raise the roof because these are 15t high uh pressure filters um so you'll we'll start to see this summer we'll start to work on building modifications raising that roof and getting these filters installed and as I mentioned the the whole goal is to have that operational for any Peak demands by next year so then moving forward we also um in order to meet our growing demands we also need to begin planning for well six and seven and as I mentioned before we're no longer going to look at the northern part of the city uh to construct those Wells we're coming down into the South area where most of the growth is anyway um and we're going to be putting in um two Wells down here in the South and the green dots representing a water treatment plant so rather than just pumping into the distribution system as they previously done these wells will pump directly both of them will pump directly to a water treatment plant and will and it'll either be a Gak filter uh system or it'll be a a and an exchange filter system but the water will be treated and then pumped into the distribution system so at that point when we get this system online um and again the goal is to have this one online by the spring of 2027 um and have one to two more wells in operation um so at that point we'll have wells um these two new wells and we'll still have these three Wells with well two being treated so it'll be two separate treatment plants basically and then we've also um spent some time uh studying Wells four and five um Lucas showed the chart where it showed there's there's hits or traces of evidence that there might be pfast starting in Wells four and five but they don't they don't rise to that threshold of needing treatment um so we did look at this as a contingency plan and have developed a plan looking to make sure we have enough space in the location of where well number five is um that if and when the time comes that we need uh to address these two Wells with treatment we can put another treatment plant in this location and do a raw water line to combine these two Wells and bring those two Wells to a North treatment plant so then we would have one treatment plant here for Wells four and five this treatment down here for these two new wells and well number two would have its its separate treatment facility that we're working on right now today and then the last thing I wanted to talk about is connecting uh neighborhoods um when the when the settlement funds first occurred in 2018 as I mentioned we we had a clean water supply and what we were talking about with using those funds was to connect existing neighborhoods that had a lot of well advisories in them uh to the water system so these are all neighborhoods that were already constructed already had private Wells operating they were more they had more homes con um combined in certain areas so it makes it a little more cost effective to bring in um city water lines to those and then also those neighborhoods their street it was it was time for their streets to be reconstructed so it was timing out well that we're tearing up their streets anyway water was already nearby in the in the trunk water lines um so the blue represent these blue purple numbers represent all the projects we have completed since 2018 so we've brought um we've connected um properties 292 properties in all of these neighborhoods shown here in blue um with separate projects so we were bringing water M into those neighborhoods in our Capital Improvement plan we we have a plan to continue doing that um in 2025 we were going to um extend water into the homestead neighborhood and in 2026 we were going to go into the Packard Park Eden Park neighborhood these two neighborhoods were approved in the clean drinking water supply plan based on the metrics they were using as to where it was cost effective we've recently been informed that that that program is paused so we don't know what that means yet that's very new information to us but there's going to be a delay at the very least in this whether this this program continues to happen or not um so we don't see these two connections happening uh in the as planned in 2025 or 2026 and then the sort of yellow orange uh color here um were neighborhoods the city was still continuing to argue for or advocate for uh based on densities being close to City Water um being more cost effective to get connected to city water all those reasons we were still advocating for those but they were not in the clean drinking water supply plan as approved neighborhoods they were listed as neighborhoods that this testing would continue um they would continue to be looked at and analyzed and and could maybe be brought in but um now as we stand today with the status of the settlement funds that again that's Beginning to Look unlikely so I think the big news and this is news just for the city even in in July of this year is that this program that we were on is is getting paused and may that pause could be permanent and then the city is also beginning to compile uh information on the website so um I just put up here if you go to the City of Lake Elmo homepage and there's a there's a button for water and then this is what it'll look like and the city is beginning to really um amass different pieces of information and things like that for you to to go to that's all I have wow that was a lot of information thank you for all the uh experts that uh had some uh had something to say about this so a lot of information to take in um couple ways you can get it PowerPoint will be online on that City website that Jack just showed and we'll put that up tomorrow the next day we'll also have printed copies of that PDF that you just saw so the links will be there the contact information will be there and the names of the people who spoke will be there then we'll have that at City Hall just come up to City Hall I think City Hall has summer hours tomorrow are only open till noon till noon on Fridays so um they'll be open regular hours after that the mpca handouts that were in back they probably are probably ran out so they'll have those on the website and we're going to go we're going to have um 20 minutes here of uh question and answers remember that we only have one microphone which is right here so we when we get to this point here you can raise your hand I'll repeat the question for one of the experts he'll come up and and speak to that question but we don't have anything to hand around and uh people who are leaving if you could just keep going down the hall so it doesn't get so noisy for the rest of the audience in here to hear we would appreciate that so with that I'll start taking questions question right here this question is for the um mpca in 2023 you produced this report for the state legislature that said that everyone in the area currently has Safe Water okay we have at least one resident that's been on a carbon system for a year and a half we've only only found out this recently and accidentally as neighbors started talking to each other we have at least five more Wells that are ident that have been tested and identified as contaminated and yet we have had no communication from either the department health or or the pollution control agency that we should even be worried about testing our wells and so that leads me to question number two because what what your first question was what I have to repeat it for the cameras why haven't they been notifying us so you know so so so the first question is why has not the Department of Health been communicating with people uh that are have are next that are next to Wells that maybe have a well advisor that their Wells might be contaminated because the plume has all right who wants to take that question all right Kirk is going to take that question thank you so the procedure that we're using is when we get results from individuals we communicate that directly with the individual that's their information to share as how they would like to the exact specifics we do Supply information in Mass we saw the presentation there was the purple and green dots where we are sharing that information on a wider basis through that method because it's it's easier to share that information to a large number of folks as noted there are over 7,000 individuals with private Wells adding that communication to others in the area of what their neighbors results are would just slow down our work which we're trying to focus on the sampling work in terms of who gets sampled and when what we're looking at historically has been where are we seeing contamination and have not sampled Wells already and then move in those areas and focus on that areas when there's changes to the health based values such as occurred this year or the new federal standards that really changes how we have to do this we have to start over and look at everything again because those numbers are much lower now where Wells at one point may have sampled for being um safe and not exceeding those levels May now exceed those levels or we have technology that changes we can measure things to much lower numbers that we couldn't before and as a result that's how we kind of see waves of the agency going out in sampling areas because of the changes in reacting to those changes thank you um to be fair to everybody I I'll come back to you if there was a time for a second question uh sir red shirt yes um is there somewhere on the website or can you put something up that would show the water flow at depths in the ground uh for the area so we can kind of look at where our well is how deep we are and figure out maybe uh where we stand in in the flow of the pfcs thanks for the question it's not something we have readily available at the state to be able to provide that it was mentioned the one project7 that is a project that we're doing in in some of the information where will be able to share is where we know Wells are sampled including some of our own monitoring Wells that we've put in on the depths that has some of that information although again just the way this travels though different depths in that may not be necessarily the great indicator whether or not a well is contaminated or not all right question I'm going to take one on the far side so I don't remember your numbers but if a well was tested say five years ago and at the time it was beneath the acceptable levels but at now that levels have moved down and down and down does that trigger an advisory because at the time it was tested it is now unacceptable so the answer is it depends it depends on the method that was used if it was a good method that were field is still reliable those are the 650 that you saw on the list which were those situations just as you said we had a really good detection method that we believe in that's showing accurate results and is now exceeding those numbers and so those are um homes that we are reaching out to now to provide treatment those where we may not had the right number the right method some of these methods would have not shown it even that low it would have only shown it if it was much higher so we have to go back and Sample those folks to make sure that we have the most sensitive testing methods to get down to some of these numbers those are the 1,300 additional homes that we have to go back and Sample with that new method to be able to see if we can really see down to those levels which we were not able to see before I hope that helps and we can um talk through some more afterwards too if you'd like okay I have going back to this side the lady there I'm in the Tri Lakes I have a property adj to a well that is that is getting delivered for description let's I recently had my well tested I've been told it's going to be 3 months before I get the result but as you said you're monitoring the city's well supplies what happens if my test comes back and it is under the threshold but this situation is evolving what protections are in place for us residents who may then see contamination at a later date from this clue moving I might not qualify today for a water system but I might next year so what what is being put in place for future protections for everyone so what we have done historically is reexamine those Wells on different times or on the edge of the plume that may not exceed at that time but we want to make sure they don't exceed in the future so depending on how close they may have been to the number we had a frequency maybe it's every other year or every year to go back and Sample a couple as tests right now because we have a very large number of Wells we need to sample those are going to be our priority first because those are wells that may have not have been sampled before or we have some information that is likely they may have an exceedence and we want to go get to those but that is built into our long-term program is monitoring over time on the edges where it may have been under the number at this time but we want to keep an eye on for various reasons in the middle area who's next here guy weighing back yeah what was the treatment um that was just recently removed that tablin part there was uh some water treatment going on at some of the city for the Ste samples so the the question was the treatment the if you've driven by tablin Park there's a blue container there that is called a saff system and they basically are pumping water either out of the ground or out of Riley Creek and they're testing uh techniques to basically remove the Posas from the water due to ariation and filtration and then they're skimming it off and then sending the Posas to be it elsewhere this is a this is a pilot study so it's just being dumped back into after it's being cleansed it's being dumped back into Riley Creek at a cleaner level than they pumped it out of so it's uh just a developing technology that I just happened to know about it cuz I toured it a couple weeks ago it was very interesting by the way thank you for the tour um so um there and there is some information down there on the board to walk by and see all right next question way in the back blue shirt um well so I appreciate that it costs a lot of money to do the things that you're doing and to to manage this problem and I appreciate you guys spending it wisely and working so hard on it it's wonderful is $850 million settlement sufficient to cover all those costs will there would be continuing ongoing additional Financial burdens to the citizens of Lake Elmo and all the citizens in the area to continue to cover and manage these costs so I'll speak a little bit to that as the former interm city administrator did learn something about this at least so as you can oh sorry I apologize uh the question was on the 3um settlement with the $850 million is that enough money to cover the contamination cleanup for the current needs and future needs for the citizens of Lake Elma so the answer to that is no uh the uh money will be running out we are working with the trustees this fund has been managed uh via a settlement with trustees and we anticipate it's going to run out of the next few years after that the um we have transition to a consent decree that THM had signed with the state in 2007 2007 so what's happening now is the trustees and the state are working with how does that transition work what will the management of that consent decree which does not have a c AP limit but it's going to have to go through some sort of approval system right now like the treatment plant that Jack is talking about down in the South area that's maybe $45 million Jack writes a report he does some analysis it goes to the trustees of the $850 million fund they in turn will give it this or give it up or down on that so we know what the process is for writing the grants and for the approvals of the grants so they're developing what what's going to happen when that $850 million runs dry and what they're trying to do is make sure we don't uh start any projects that can't be finished under that but they want to make sure that projects that start under the consent degree started under that so that's still a work in progress we're still working on it does anybody have anything else they'd like to add from their group all right Tony you had a question yes can can you tell us where we can find the results of the analysis of the samples from the monitoring well hello Andre dalm from the npca so we do have when we have results from the private Wells we try to send those out in a letter as soon as we're able to also that online map that Rebecca showed earlier that had all the blue and green dots um you can look at those and click on them and get some results from some of those Wells as well but the first way you'll see them is when we mail it out to you I'm sorry you misinterpreted my question I'm asking you you drilled a lot of very deep monitoring welds around the city where are the results from from those samples from those Wells okay yep just to repeat that so you want to know where the results are from all the wells that we've drilled so monitoring Wells those those do go yep they go pretty deep so those are all going to be included in our feasibility study so we're working on that report now it should be done later this year and that is all revolving around that project7 that folks had mentioned earlier so we're going to compile all of the data from the over 100 Wells that we've drilled um kind of along that area so that'll be all available that maybe this the it'll be publicly available yep it'll be made publicly available yep all right next question sir all right I Lake L ol and I've seen your final drinking water plan and the final drinking water plan says my will will not have any treatment or connection to a municipal Supply it's never been tested so who making the decision that my well will never get treated when it has never been tested so in terms of the minicipal water was alluded to earlier we did a cost benefit analysis to see whether we treat a whole home system or Municipal well what is covered is a snapshot of what we knew and had as sampling at that time in the conceptual drinking water supply plan however the plan talks about as we continue to monitor if we find new Municipal Wells or private Wells they would be Prov provided treatment that's really driven by the sampling so that we could have that information available knowing if things may change such as the health-based values that Department of Health talked about recently so especially on those edges where we continue to sample and if we see exceedences those Wells May today not look like they're getting treatment or don't have information to show they're getting treated but if they have data to show they're exceeding this the numbers then they would be eligible for treatment the plan is meant to be flexible it's not one time decision for the future well following up on that I had talk withm and apparently there's around 2,000 Wells that need to be tested private Wells and as I understand it last year your report to uh indicated there were 243 private Wells actually sampled and tested and that it's going to take over8 years to get the 2000 that you have now done what's the plan to move this along and get people analyzing a great question the question was there are a lot more Wells today and we mentioned some of the numbers 1300 and that and historically we have not been able to do that in a year so what is the agency's plans to move that forward one is we're looking at and mentioned briefly by Rebecca is that we're looking for additional places to do the the testing so Labs that will be able to run them the data that are acceptable in terms of the quality control so that we can trust them to be able to do more Wells per week per month per year that is something we have to grow and will increase over time if if we're able to bring on additional capacity so that is you're correct we are haven't sampled that much in a year before but we are looking to bring on additional resources to be able to meet that need it will take some time unfortunately and and know we've talked to some of the folks here today are experiencing some of those delays we apologize for those we are working to bring out more resources to do that but that is kind of what estate will probably be in for the next few months too unfortunately until we can get the new um resources in place all right a green shirt I understand there is a backlog for d as you said several times but what is the frequency that you're going to pass schols to C Wells and the private Wells so frequency of Wells we're going to take team here I'll start with the private Wells since mpca the frequency of sampling of Wells public and private so for the private Wells we go and collect the information if you have an exceedence we just move forward to providing treatment to that home that individual private well once they receive treatment they do not need additional testing if they do not exceed that number as I mentioned earlier we're we once we have gone through all the sampling we'll start putting what we'll call some Sentinel Wells or pick a few Wells along the edges to sample periodically to keep an eye on areas to make sure that things are not changing as we move on in time so there is a a frequency in terms of if it hasn't exceeded we're going to do periodic testing across the East Metro some in Lake Elmo but other parts of the East Metro too Lucas do you want to talk about the municipal samp yeah come over here so we get it on the recording yeah the city's uh public water supply Wells are tested quarterly so they have been tested quarterly they're going to continue to be tested quarterly so that's every three months those City results by the way are on the city website um and it's uh retitled at CCR the the consumer confidence report and you can see those reports on our City website all right blue Shir um my question is is there any data or looking into to absorption through the skin versus ingestion I'm worried I've just been thinking about our swimming pool and spending a lot of time soaking in the water yeah that's a good question um so right now the data shows that in that absorption through the skin would be a lot less than ingestion so the data right now says you don't need to worry about showering or swimming if there's past in your water um it's a fast moving area again that could change but as far as we are at this moment in time um it should be okay there there are looking at some biological models of skin and I know I've seen them on the news and I went back and asked my team about them those models that they were showing that you might have heard on the news there pieces of skin grown in the lab in vitro so in a pet tree dish and they have PE fats on them 24 hours a day and they're measuring absorption that way so we don't have any clear data on humans it has to go through your skin while you're swimming or showering okay question on that side black shirt yeah thank you so your settlement website uh I think does a good job of explaining the whole uh Grant application process for communities you showed it up on your map and that timeline is closed now but I'm wondering if now that there's different levels for affected Wells where there'll be any additional opportunities to apply for grants for communities that maybe weren't affected before with the previous special but now are well are you talking about a 3um settlement Grant sure yeah yeah so the 3um settlement Grant isn't closed yet but we can see the end of it um and so we're going to be working to try to figure out how to apply the grant process and transition to the consent decree I think we just we just saw on the website that whistling Valley for example we have some friends that live there that they applied for the grant money but that window closed in 2021 for that money and then in on the website it doesn't show that there's any further years that you could apply for the money to get connected to Municipal Water so the question was about Municipal Water connections for neighborhoods and so before we had the conceptual drinking water supply plan that we've been all talking about we had some money that we were using from interest being earned and we were taking individual applications at that time for neighborhoods we built the rest of those neighborhoods into the plan and so those are the things that were talked about a little bit earlier that we've neighborhood hookups um have been put on pause but for Community Municipal systems we are making sure that those can still come in so for instance the well to which was not initially in the conceptual drinking water supply plan that is eligible because it has the exceedances and we're going through making those dollars available through the process if someone has a private well that has an exceedence through the testing we talked about we will be providing those whole home treatment systems so whether private or public Wells there are still paths forward to be able to get treatment if you have exceedences okay so we only have the building for so long I apologize but we're going to base basically transition to these people being out in the hallway so you can ask questions out there I really appreciate everybody coming tonight and again look at the resources that we talked about earlier thank you for coming [Applause]