Palisade, a town in central Minnesota, is grappling with the failure and deterioration of its water infrastructure. In part three of North Star Stories’ series marking the 50th anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act, we focus on infrastructure, examining how maintenance, upgrades, and funding are essential to ensuring safe drinking water and securing the future of rural communities.
Transcript
ANCHOR: You're listening to North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live, a daily newscast about what it means to live in Minnesota.
[Sound element: water running]
Victor Palomino: For part three of our series on the 50th anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act, we are focusing on infrastructure. How maintenance and updates play a critical role in securing drinking water, especially for small rural communities.
Gaylene Spolarich: I feel like we inherited a situation that it's too late and it's in critical place.
Victor Palomino: That’s Gaylene Spolarich, the newly elected Mayor of Palisade, a city in Aitkin County with just 167 residents. For nearly a decade, Palisade has been dealing with high concentrations of manganese in its water, so much so that tap water there often contains visible sediment. This has forced residents to rely on bottled water for cooking and consumption.
Gaylene Spolarich: We haven't drank this water for eight years. So once we got that discolored water, that's what I'm like. We are not drinking this water any longer.
Victor Palomino: But manganese contamination is just one of Palisade’s challenges. The city now faces the daunting task of raising nearly $18 million to repair its water and wastewater systems.
Gaylene Spolarich: This water system has been a part of our infrastructure for over 40 years. And then we added in the wastewater system. I'm going to say like 25 years ago, and that's been a roller coaster as well, because that initial system failed within five years of it being put in.
Victor Palomino: According to Mayor Spolarich, the situation is critical, and swift action is necessary. That’s why the city held a public hearing on February 18 to begin the process of securing emergency funding from the state legislature.
[Sound element: public meeting sounds]
Victor Palomino: During the meeting, the city engineer handed the mayor a letter outlining all the necessary documents to move forward, documents that had already been presented to the previous city council in January 2024. But beyond transition issues, the city’s top priority now is finding funding to maintain its infrastructure, a major challenge for towns like Palisade.
Gaylene Spolarich: Most folks here are retired and the median income is low. And if we charge any more than $81 per month for them to have water and sewer, I don't know how much higher we can go without everybody becoming delinquent because they can't afford it.
Victor Palomino: Mayor Spolarich hopes that the political representatives of the district hear their plea for emergency funding to solve immediate repairs.
Gaylene Spolarich: because there are some things that we could be doing just to limp the system along we could be doing if the water house and it's like a $25,000 fix and the same for the wastewater system just to get us by Intel. We do like the big fix. Um, and currently we inherited a bankrupt city
Victor Palomino: And Palisade is not alone. Just 20 miles away, the city of Tamarack is also facing a critical infrastructure crisis.
Gaylene Spolarich: they have the same issues with a price tag that that community cannot afford either because Tamarack is where that copper nickel mining that can occur is located. And it's like your water system. I mean, if they start drilling, that's another problem there. But that's a sidebar problem. But for now, their water is not good.
Victor Palomino: The Minnesota Department of Health’s Water Protection Report. says that the state has one of the highest rates of compliance in the country, but for small communities, the challenge isn’t water quality, it’s finding the money to maintain and repair aging infrastructure. Without a strong tax base, keeping up with these essential services remains a struggle. For now, Mayor Spolarich continues working to find solutions for her community.
Gaylene Spolarich: it's the elected officials that really need to start paying attention to the small communities that they represent and catching the problem before it's too late. Because I feel like we inherited a situation that it's too late and it's critical.
[Sound element: water running]
Victor Palomino: For North Star Stories, I’m Victor Palomino.
ANCHOR: North Star Stories is produced by AMPERS, diverse radio for Minnesota's communities, with support from the McKnight Foundation and the State of Minnesota. Online at ampers.org.