Clean Water:
Intern Kaye LaFond examines one of the water programs funded by the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment.
As with any plan for hydrologic sustainability, it’s important for Minnesota to recognize the vital role of water reuse in making the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment a success. Remembering, of course, that Mother Nature already recycles water for us, we have the opportunity to make her job easier by striving to get the most out of every drop. The Legislature appropriated $4.6 million in Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) for “Beneficial Reuse of Water Grants.” These grants will be handed out at the discretion of the MPCA for projects that (according to the legislative language) “use treated municipal wastewater instead of groundwater from drinking water aquifers, in order to demonstrate the beneficial use of wastewater, including the conservation and protection of water resources.”
To get a little more insight into the MPCA’s plans for the grants, I contacted Ralph Pribble of the MPCA public information office. This is what Ralph said about the types of projects that will likely be funded by the grants:
“The MPCA has long encouraged beneficial reuse of wastewater and has [previously] permitted a number of such projects. Typically the projects we permit have involved indirect use, such as spraying wastewater onto cropland to irrigate crops or to water either municipal or private golf courses. We also have permitted at least one project to use treated effluent as a cooling water source in a privately owned power plant and would expect to see more of these projects proposed in the future.”
As far as timeline, it seems that the MPCA is right on schedule.
“Currently our staff is putting together a program to accept grant applications and award funding. The schedule is ambitious, but we hope to be awarding grants by spring 2010. So far we have not solicited applications or received any proposals for projects to be funded by these grants, so we're not sure what we will see.”
More specifically, a portion of the funding is reserved for grants to ethanol plants that meet certain conditions.
“With regard to ethanol, there are some barriers to overcome in reusing effluent from ethanol facilities, particularly with regard to concentration of salts. But we'll be interested to learn more about any proposals that come in once the program is up and running.”
To stay updated on water re-use projects, or any other Legacy Amendment projects, be sure to frequently check back here. We will post any news/information that we receive as the projects come to fruition.
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