Wastewater Superintendent working to improve city’s water and waste

The City’s Public Utilities Commission met on May 7, a meeting that heavily featured Wastewater Superintendent Scott Warner. Warner updated the commission on programming updates to the water treatment controls and process changes to the wastewater treatment plant, hoping to add efficiencies to both.

The first issue Warner addressed was a programming update needed for the Water Treatment Plant PLC and control systems. The proposal called for the company QualityFlow Systems, who installed the software initially, to perform multiple updates and small fixes.

“What’s going on is that [the] water cabinet control system was put in roughly five, six years ago, something like that. And what we need to do is work a bunch of the bugs out of the system,” Warner said. 

Some bugs that need to be repaired were under warranty, but the warranty has lapsed. 

QualityFlow quoted a price of $17,860 for the work, most of which would cover travel and lodging for up to a week while they performed the work. If the work is completed early, the total will be adjusted accordingly.

After future upgrades to the water treatment plant are completed, updates like these may be possible online.

Warner’s second item was an update on the wastewater treatment plant.

“When permitting the Heights development extension, the MPCA [Minnesota Pollution Control Agency] notified us of concerns they have regarding limit exceedances at the wastewater plant in the last 12 months. We reviewed the 29 exceedances in the past 12 months and concluded that they all resulted from excess sludge levels in the clarifiers,” Warner said in a memo to Councilor Craig Schulte and the Public Utilities Commissioners.

Warner quickly solved the problem and prevented any exceedances since September 2024.

“We reviewed what we’re doing and figured out ways of how we can make it better operationally for us,” Warner said during the meeting. “What we were doing differently before my time was well, it was pumping the water, pumping sludge out of the clarifiers, and pulling it out, like an hour or two a week. And the way you’re supposed to manage those solids is you’re supposed to work with them constantly throughout the day.”

Manual timers have been set at the wastewater treatment facility to ensure that the plant pumps out the same amount of water as it takes in, which Warner said is a best practice. The plant is built to take in up to a million gallons of water a day, far less than it currently takes most days, even during the summer months, as the city’s population increases.

A recording of the Public Utilities Commission meeting is available for the public to watch here.

Josh Hinke May 10, 2025