Waite Park To Take First Steps To Clean PFAS From Contaminated Drinking Water

(KNSI) – Waite Park is taking its first steps to address per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, contamination in all three of its drinking wells.

Public Works Director Bill Schluenz told KNSI News that the city is requesting proposals to hire an engineer to help clean up their polluted water. “And what they’ll do is come in and propose a number of different options. They’ll do pilot studies, where they do a mini treatment system of their proposed methodology and see if it meets the drinking water standards.”

He says there are a couple of known treatment systems. The two main ones are granular activated carbon or GAC and reverse osmosis. There are some other emerging treatment systems. Waite Park also has to treat its water for volatile organic chemicals.

Waite Park gets its drinking water from an aquifer under the old Burlington Northern railway yard. Officials are still trying to figure out how the PFAS are getting in the water. “Our three wells pump from a shallow aquifer in the Superfund site. Where’s the PFAS coming from? We don’t know. The MPCA [Minnesota Pollution Control Agency] is trying to do a study on that to see where it’s coming from. But we don’t have any conclusions yet.”

Schluenz says the water treatment facility is nearly 20 years old and could be upgraded. The engineers will also help make those improvements.

The city hopes to hire an engineering firm this fall. It’s expected to take two to four years before a purification system is up and running.

Waite Park learned in October that the level of PFAS in its drinking water was above guidelines.

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