03-27-2023 City Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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CITY COUNCIL AGENDA ITEM 6E STAFF ORIGINATOR: Michael Grochala, Community Development Director MEETING DATE: March 27, 2023 TOPIC: Consider Resolution No. 23-29, Authorizing 2024 Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund Application for Water Stewardship VOTE REQUIRED: 3/5 INTRODUCTION Staff is requesting City Council’s authorization to submit a 2024 Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENRTF) application for funding implementation of the Water Stewardship Program. BACKGROUND The City of Lino Lakes municipal water system currently provides drinking water to over 17,000 residents and over 200 businesses. The City draws its public water supply from the Prairie Du Chien/Jordan Aquifer. Concern over decreasing lake levels of White Bear Lake led to court imposed restrictions on municipal water appropriation permits and the formation of the North and East Metro Groundwater Management Area. The DNR identified the area, including Lino Lakes, as an area of specific concern where groundwater resources are at risk of overuse and degraded quality. In 2022 the City wells pumped approximately 625,000,000 gallons to service demand. Our pumping volumes from November through May averaged 29,000,000 gallons/month. However, these volumes increased nearly three times to an average of 84,000,000 gallons per month from June through October. Most of this increase can be attributed to non-domestic use such as irrigation. Our greatest opportunity to reduce consumption is to change customer habits. Accordingly public education is an important component of the City’s water conservation plan. Providing timelier water use information is critical to this effort. More frequent access to data will allow residents to self-monitor water use and identify problems sooner and adjust accordingly. While voluntary, better and timelier information is anticipated to result in a decrease in water use. In order to do this, additional hardware and software is required. Staff is currently proposing to implement a tower based radio read system that, coupled with 1 gallon resolution meters, radio transceivers and a customer portal, would ultimately enable real- time feedback on water use to residents. The system would also provide customer alerts based on use patterns and provide operating information to water utility staff.