Pires puslic WORKS DIRECTORICITY ENGINEER City Office Building ‘Box 755 320-235-4202 ‘STREET SUPERINTENDENT {801 W. Hwy. 40 320-235-3827 WASTEWATER TREATMENT 300075 Sret SW. 320-235-4760 Willa, Minnesota 56201 Fax 023840917 February 17, 2021 VIA ONLINE SUBMISSION ‘The Honorable Eric Lipman Office of Administrative Hearings 600 North Robert Street P.O. Box 64620 St. Paul, MN 55164-0620 RE: Proposed Amendments to Rules Governing Water Quality Standards, Minnesota Rules, chapters 7050 and 7053; Revisor’s ID 4335 OAH Docket No. 8-9003-37102 Dear Judge Lipman: Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the proposed amendments to rules governing the state's Class 3 and 4 water quality standards. I am the Environmental Specialist for the City of Willmar (“City”), which owns and operates a wastewater facility and holds a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and State Disposal System (“NPDES/SDS”) Permit, #MNO025259. Cities like Willmar are on the forefront of protecting Minnesota's water quality through our wastewater treatment facilities. Our goal as cities is to ensure that our state’s water resources are protected based on the best available science in a manner that allows for flexibility and ensures wise investments of limited state and local resources for clean water infrastructure. It has been a long-standing priority of the City and other cities and municipal groups to seek updates and revisions to class 3 & 4 water quality standards. The state has known that the existing standards are outdated and not based on the best available science since at least 2010 and that the standards are unnecessarily imposing costs and interfering with economic development in cities—especially in Greater Minnesota, Willmar’s current wastewater NPDES permit has limits based on the outdated Class 3 & 4 water quality standards. The existence of these limits in our permit is a significant concern for our community because these limits have the potential to limit our economic growth and require the City to make extremely costly changes to existing infrastructure in the future, It is unreasonable to require our city to meet permit limits that have serious negative economic impacts for our community where the standards those permit limits are based on are outdated and not based on the most recent science. From our perspective, itis critical to update these standards now so that we can work with MPCA to have the flawed limits taken out of our permit to avoid additional costs or negative impacts on our economy because of these outdated standards,Our City is committed to Clean Water Act compliance and protecting the local watershed. When our wastewater treatment facility was built in 2010 it was not designed to remove bicarbonates, hardness, total dissolved solids, or specific conductance. Willmar’s drinking water exceeds or nearly exceeds the future final monthly average permit limits for those four parameters. Willmar has two water treatment plants so implementing the technology to achieve compliance with the Class 3 and 4 limits has shown to be grossly unaffordable. Over the past 5 years, we have spent more than $2.5 million to reduce chloride use, identify and improve inflow and infiltration, and educate our residents on the environmental impacts of excess chloride. MPCA has gone to great lengths to complete new rigorous scientific studies and has demonstrated in its ‘Technical Support Document and Statement of Need and Reasonableness that the standards can be updated without sacrificing environmental protections. Nothing that MPCA is proposing gives cities like mine a free pass or will allow us to harm the environment. In fact, we fully recognize that our City may still be required to ‘meet a costly permit limit based on the updated standards. However, if the rules are updated as proposed, we can at least be certain that any future permit limit imposed on our community will be based on the best available science and there will be a demonstrable environmental need for the limit. While we are generally supportive of MPCA’s proposed amendments, we offer the additional comments to highlight some specific issues of concer for the city: * We are supportive of the Class 3 (industrial use) and 4A (irrigation use) standards changing from numeric standards to narrative standards. This change is needed and reasonable and is supported by the updated science. This change will not prevent MPCA from imposing limits in city permits where necessary; it will merely require MPCA to use the proposed narrative translator process to implement the standards into city permits, which is consistent with state and federal law. ‘+ We are generally supportive of the proposed narrative translator processes developed for both the Class 3 and 4A standards. This change ensures that MPCA will continue to impose effluent limits in city permits where those limits are demonstrably necessary to protect downstream waters based on site- specific factors and data. To ensure regulatory certainty, we would like to ensure that MPCA cannot change these narrative translator processes without seeking review and comment from the public beforehand, * We are concemed about MPCA’s proposal to adopt guidance about how to implement the state’s Aquatic Life Narrative Standards as a part of this rulemaking. This guidance is outside the scope of this rulemaking and is not something that was previously presented to cities or city groups. This effort should be completed by a separate rulemaking process. ‘* We respect the concems about aquatic life use protections raised by several representatives of Tribal Nations and environmental groups. However, those concems are outside the scope of this rulemaking and should be addressed via the public comment processes for individual permits of concer for those ‘groups and/or a separate rulemaking process. Thank you for considering these comments and for undertaking this rulemaking process. These rule changes are important to the environmental and economic well-being of our community. Respectfully Submitted, Sara Sietsema Environmental Specialist, City of Willmar