Sartell City Council Approves Final Round of Costs for Water Plant Repairs

(KNSI) – Plans to give the North Water Treatment Plant in Sartell some much-needed repairs have been greenlit to proceed.

The Sartell City Council voted unanimously to approve the final round of costs for the plant’s repairs, including construction and contingency costs totaling $2,637,800. The council had previously approved $359,200 in non-construction costs, including preliminary and final designs and construction services. Funding for the project will be provided through debt issuance as part of a Series 2026A bond sale.

“We’ve budgeted for this for the last five years,” said Mayor Ryan Fitzthum, adding that the project has been incorporated into the city’s Financial Management Plan. “Tonight was the official sign-off saying, ‘Yes, spend the money in the way we told you in order to get the project done.’ It’s come from five years of financial planning and saving so we can go out and bond for it.”

The repairs will tackle numerous issues found in a comprehensive condition assessment conducted by Short Elliott Hendrickson in 2021. Among the problems identified in the assessment were aging HVAC systems, security vulnerabilities and coating system failures.

The North Water Treatment Plant is one of two primary plants within the city of Sartell, the other being the Southwest Water Treatment Plant on County Road 4. Fitzthum noted that an advantage of having both plants is that the city can shut down one to work on the other without interrupting the provision of drinking water to residents. Repairs, he said, will take roughly a year to complete.

“Other communities would have to suppress water usage during peak times to get this work done; structurally, we’re set up really well to be able to do this work. We just had to take a little bit of time to save up, and now we can get it done.”

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