Progress made in water reclamation plant

(ABC 6 News) – The city of Rochester is making progress in their plans to replace 43-year-old equipment in the city’s water reclamation plant.

A study session was held by the city council Monday focusing on the overlook of a 2-year replacement plan that would be set to begin in February of next year.

The project is estimated to cost $69 million and not all the funding needed is secured yet.

“The other unknown here is that we’re dependent on the state bonding bill,” said Aaron Luckstein, deputy director of Rochester Public Utilities. “Right now there is not enough funding that has been allocated to be able to fund our project. There’s other projects in the que and a large part of that is that they are about two and a half to three years behind on funding projects so we need to get all the funding projects caught up to start moving forward.”

The Minnesota Pollution Control has the project listed as the 35th most important project in the state that will help reduce pollutants.

The next phase of the plan is for the council to approve advertisements for Rochester Public utilities to set bids for contracts to take on the project. Contracts can start to make bids with RPU as early as next month.