CRANE LAKE— Over the past two decades the Crane Lake Water and Sewer District (CLWSD) has spent millions of taxpayer dollars to build and operate their, at times, controversial wastewater treatment facility, all in the name of cleaner water.
They’ve faced criticism from local residents concerned about high monthly rates and even bigger tax assessments. Longtime sewer district board chair Bob Scott has been called “a dictator,” and worse, by some of those unhappy residents. Experts from the University of Minnesota, who were initially hired to advise the sewer district’s board, eventually walked away from the project after the board dismissed their suggestions for solutions that university professionals believed would be less costly and potentially more protective of water quality.
Since constructing its sewage treatment plant over a decade ago with a combination of state and local tax dollars, the sewer district has faced financial challenges due to high operating costs and a limited number of customers. They faced catastrophic freeze-up of portions of the collection system which were improperly installed. They have sought ways to expand their reach into neighboring areas, sometimes at baffling expense and in the face of considerable opposition, in order to increase the flow— and accompanying revenues— to a plant that was oversized for the community it served.
In other words, it’s been a challenging period for the sewer district board, its customers, and its detractors, who rarely see the district’s various difficulties the same way.
Permit violations
Among the many challenges the Crane Lake facility has faced in recent years is meeting the pollution standards in its discharge permit, which was reissued by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency earlier this year. According to a Notice of Violation issued by the MPCA to the CLWSD on July 29, the district’s sewage plant has routinely exceeded pollution standards.
The violation notice lists a total of 25 violations, documented between January 2019 and February 2021. Of those, six are for violations of fecal coliform bacteria. Since February, the facility has violated fecal coliform levels twice more, in May and July of this year.
Under the facility’s permit, they’re allowed up to 200 units of the bacteria in a 100-milliliter sample. Yet, on at least five occasions, and as recently as July, the facility reported 2,420 bacterial units in that same 100-millilter sample, or just over 12 times the limit.
Most of the other violations aren’t as drastic, and include modest exceedances of total phosphorus, suspended solids, and what’s known as biological oxygen demand, which is another indicator of bacterial activity. Yet, to critics, the violations confirm their worst assumptions about the district and its claim that it’s fulfilling its mission to protect Crane Lake’s water quality.
“Simply put, the CLWSD is polluting the very waters they claim to be protecting,” said Brent Bystrom, an engineer and seasonal Crane Lake resident. “They are incompetent, yet they expand their reach under the guise of protecting the waters of the only national park in the state.”
The MPCA issued no fine for the violations, but did require the sewer district to implement a corrective action plan within 30 days. According to the MPCA’s John Thomas, the sewer district responded in a timely manner to the notice and is taking steps to address the issues.
That includes a plan to install what’s known as a flow equalization system to even out the flows into the plant. “The influent flows and loads fluctuate as Crane Lake has a large population of tourist and seasonal visitors to the town,” wrote Rob Scott Jr., in an Aug. 24 response to the MPCA’s notice. Rob Scott Jr., the son of board chair Bob Scott, is superintendent of the Crane Lake treatment plant.
Bob Scott is confident that the sewer district has a handle on the problem. He said the district plans changes to the treatment plant, to install larger and improved recirculation tanks which will allow the plant to hold more wastewater and treat it for longer periods before being discharged back into the environment. He said those upgrades were in the works even before the MPCA issued its notice of violation. According to Bob Scott, plant operators were aware of the exceedances for some time.
“We finally said we needed to take care of the problem,” he said.
Board minutes show that the district had begun working with engineers from SEH on the flow equalization project more than a year ago. Plans for the upgrades are currently in the design phase, with construction scheduled to begin in the spring.
The district reported that it is also working with a company that provides equipment to disinfect the plant’s effluent using ultraviolet light to understand why the equipment doesn’t appear to be working.
“We replaced and installed all new bulbs, outer liners and end nodes last August 2020,” wrote Scott Jr. in the district’s response to the MPCA. “Since then, we have had several samples that showed high fecal coliform counts. We have done several water clarity tests and collimated beam samples to try and find the reason why the UV light system is not treating the fecal coliform as effectively as it should. We have stepped up our efforts in cleaning the effluent line leading up to the UV trough system and will continue these efforts in the future.”
While Bob Scott said the district is taking the violations seriously, he argues that the violations haven’t been significant, nor particularly harmful to Crane Lake’s water quality. He cited language drafted by SEH engineers in response to questions posed by the Timberjay.
“It should be noted that none of the discharge limit exceedances resulted in a degradation of the natural water body that receives the treated wastewater,” wrote SEH’s John Friel, in talking points he provided to Scott on Dec. 20. “The exceedances were intermittent and short-term and applied to a small percentage of the volume of water the facility discharges to the natural environment.  Such is the case with nearly all permit quality exceedances at other treatment facilities in the state.   Permit limit violations, while not something to take lightly or ignore, are problematic only when chronic and excessive, neither of which applies to the violation conditions at the Sanitary District facility.”
The MPCA’s Thomas says the impact of violations can vary depending on several factors.
“Concentrations of total phosphorus over 1.0 mg/l do not automatically create conditions that will degrade water quality, but depending upon the frequency/severity of the violations as well as other sources of phosphorus and environmental conditions (wet/dry summer, cool, warm summer, etc.) could impact water quality.”
While the fecal coliform levels on several occasions were well above levels that would trigger health warnings for swimmers, Thomas noted that any discharge from the treatment plant would be substantially diluted once it reached lake waters.
Regardless of the violations, Bob Scott was bullish on the quality of the plant’s discharges.
“I’d be more than happy to drink a glass of what comes out of there,” he said.
Questions about transparency
The revelation of repeated violations at the Crane Lake facility would certainly come as a surprise to anyone who follows the board’s activities by reading the minutes posted to the sewer district’s website. The board’s minutes make no mention of the MPCA’s notice of violation. What’s more, the district’s monthly minutes routinely quote Rob Scott Jr. indicating that the plant met all effluent limits, even when the MPCA’s records show otherwise.
The district’s Aug. 4, 2021, minutes quote Scott Jr.’s claim: “We met all effluent standards for last month.” In fact, the district had received its notice of violation just days before, and the July 2021 discharge tests showed violations of both fecal coliform and biological oxygen demand.
That wasn’t just a one-time error.
• At the board’s June 2 meeting, Scott Jr. reported: “We met all effluent levels for last month.”
Yet, according to the MPCA, the treatment plant exceeded its fecal coliform levels the prior month by nearly eight times the limit.
• At the March 4, 2020, board meeting, Scott Jr. reported: “February – There was not much new to report.  All MPCA effluent limits were met and the new chemical pump seems to be working fine.” Yet, according to the MPCA, the treatment plant exceeded limits in February 2020 for both phosphorus and total suspended solids.
• At the Sept. 4, 2019, board meeting, Scott Jr. reported: “Plant operations went smoothly for the month of August. We met all the effluent limitations.” But MPCA data show the plant violated standards for fecal coliform, total suspended solids, and total phosphorus by 2.3 times.
The discrepancies between the sewer district’s minutes and the results of their monthly testing has longtime critics of the board’s management of the system crying foul.
“Obviously, the CLWSD is not being transparent with their operation of the [wastewater treatment plant],” said Brent Bystrom, an engineer by profession, who has been sharply critical of the board’s decision-making for several years.  “This combined with the fact that they received a Notice of Violation from the MPCA that was not included in the monthly meeting minutes or even discussed, is beyond me.”
Bob Scott said he was surprised to see the discrepancies when the Timberjay questioned him about the errors. He said limited administrative staff can lead to mistakes, but that any discrepancies were inadvertent and he said he takes responsibility.
“I want to make sure we clean that up,” he said. “We’re not trying to hide anything.”
Scott noted that, regardless of what the minutes report, the monthly water testing all goes to the MPCA.
“That’s important,” he said. “We have the professionals looking at it.”
Planned expansions?
Even as treatment plant operators have struggled, at times, to meet pollution limits, the sewer district’s board has explored expanding its reach by annexing neighboring pockets of development in the area. One such area is known as Kicker Blvd., a pocket of cabins located just north of King Williams Narrows, on the south shore of Sand Point Lake.
The proposal faced considerable opposition from affected residents, who are mostly seasonal, and discussion of the proposal has been limited at recent CLSWD board meetings. But Kicker Blvd. residents continue to monitor the situation and worry that the proposal will come back again.
“After learning about the CLWSD’s pollution violations, it absolutely floors me that they would even attempt to add more properties to their system,” stated Jay Kanive, a resident of the Kicker Blvd. area. “They can’t handle what they have now.”
Bob Scott says discussion of the Kicker Blvd. expansion has been shelved for now, even though he said he’s often asked why that cluster of cabins was never connected to the treatment plant. According to Scott, the sewer district did attract some initial support for the plan from the MPCA, which provided a $50,000 grant to begin the process of annexing the area into the sewer district.
“But we hit a bees’ nest and they came screaming. I don’t see it coming to the surface in the near term at all.”
While talk of annexing Kicker Blvd. is now on the back burner, the district board voted last month to expand the district’s management program to include property owners outside the current district boundaries, a proposal that Scott says has been approved by St. Louis County. The latest proposal has raised suspicions among critics of the sewer district, but Scott insists the new plan is not intended to connect more areas to the treatment plant. He said the district is taking a page from Ottertail County, which has implemented a sewer district that manages individual septic systems for residents. Under Crane Lake’s new voluntary program, residents in more remote locations who wish to take part would be charged an initial assessment of $7,500 to buy into the program. That’s followed by a modest administrative fee (currently $8 a month) to cover the cost of oversight of the system. The district would ensure that the systems are well functioning and would take on the burden of replacing systems as necessary, at no additional cost to the homeowner.
“You never have to worry about that system for the rest of your life,” said Scott. “It’s a thing of beauty.”
While many of the more remote residences in the Crane Lake area are unlikely to ever be connected to the treatment plant, Kanive said he’s worried about planned expansions in and around Crane Lake’s Gold Coast, which almost certainly will add to the volume of sewage at the plant.
“The Town of Crane Lake is actively looking at a significant expansion of camping and RV sites in town as part of a planned visitors center,” noted Kanive. “In light of the past performance of the CLWSD, it would appear that there would be a high probability that significant adverse environmental impacts to the water quality in Crane Lake would continue with increased waste streams should nothing change.”
Bob Scott is confident that the upgraded treatment plant will be able to handle the anticipated flows.
“We designed a plant here to basically handle Edina,” he said. “We’re not even hitting 60-percent capacity even at the peaks. It’s a process issue, not a capacity issue.”