Lansing residents won’t face fines

Published 10:57 am Friday, July 11, 2008

Lansing Township residents threatened with fines by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for straight-pipe sewage discharge into the Cedar River can breathe a bit easier, according to the Lansing Township Board of Supervisors.

“They don’t want to fine people to bring their system up to code when they know something is going to happen,” said board member Lee Hansen during a township meeting Wednesday.

He and board chair Steve Persinger met with representatives from the MCPA, who they said wanted to discuss the township’s timeline for sewer installation should it be given the responsibility.

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Hansen said they requested a “worst-case scenario,” and then implied that residents won’t be required to bring their individual sewer systems to code unless Austin or Lansing falters.

“They wanted to know that they aren’t going to force anyone to do anything with something else in the process,” he said. “Their fines are not going to happen until the end of that worst-case scenario.”

It’s likely welcome news to residents who received letters earlier this year from the MPCA and Mower County Environmental Services, which threatened $500 a month fines for noncompliant systems.

It was a brewing issue as Lansing, Austin and several petitioning township residents wrestled over the best community-wide solution to the sewage problem. Since March, they’ve attempted to reach compromise together, though after two failed meetings opted instead for mediation with an administrative law judge through the Office of Administrative Hearings Municipal Boundary Adjustments.

They are scheduled to meet July 22 at Riverland Community College.

There they will discuss whether the township — all 698 acres — should be annexed by Austin, a move the city council passed last summer. The township board believes it should be the one to provide sewage, and in October voted to do so.

Several township residents petitioned to Minnesota to override that decision, and the three parties have since been involved in a guided process with the state.

Persinger said Wednesday the township has proposed the city take a portion of the township instead of the whole. He said given that Woodhaven residents have been the most outspoken proponents of annexation that they, and only they, be given rights to leave.

“We offered the city — if the Woodhaven area wanted to go, they could go,” Persinger said. “They said nope, we won’t do that without the whole city.”

“The township’s position is that we want to protect the people that don’t want it,” he added.

Austin city engineer Jon Erichson said that proposal won’t work, both due to Woodhaven’s location and the cost.

“First of all, Woodhaven is at the very northern part of the ultimate area,” he said. “That would put a very large gap between Austin and those residents …≠and utilities can’t skip to certain areas.”

Plus, he said, given that Austin has already designed a system for the entire township, “to go back and change it would make all the numbers wrong.

“So the most cost-effective way to do it, and the way agreed to, is to annex the entire area,” he said.

To annex all of Lansing would mean the eventual elimination of township property taxes, which would slowly be allocated to Austin. The city has proposed a $3 million sewage project to connect Lansing to its utilities. Lansing board members said Wednesday that they would have to reassess their costs. They’d initially projected about $3.5 million for sewage to a large portion of the township, known as the subordinate sewer district.

“We’re back to the drawing board, just because we will be looking at different options,” township clerk Bev Nordby said.

Nordby added that the township could still successfully install a system on about the same timeline as the city. Lansing has been working on wide-scale solution for several years, devising the subordinate system to help recoup specific engineering and investigation costs.

Dan Franklin, one of the petitioners seeking annexation, submitted a second petition Wednesday to dissolve the subordinate district for fear that residents may be responsible for extraneous expenses.

“I question what costs are going in there,” he said.

Norby and Persinger said that only those authorized by statute can be drawn from the service district. They also said that the local conversations have been plagued with misinformation.

“That’s what’s really sad — is that there is so much misinformation …we can only charge what’s legally eligible to charge,” Norby said.

Franklin also told board members an MPCA official told him the supervisor may be culpable for failing to resolve the sewage issue.

“I was told that you could be liable for increased cost to us, and for not meeting regulations,” Franklin said, adding, “I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you.”