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LAKE ELMO CITY COUNCIL MEETING, OCT.'OBER 21, 1980 —11— Councilman Mottaz said we are losing sight of the foremost issue, 25% of the citizens of Lake Elmo stand a chance of ' waving to move out of their homes next spring while we figure out how to handle excess water that does not all come from Cimarron, And, maybe, should not be all stored at Cimarron, The only thing we have to address right now is making sure 25°yo of Lake Elmds, residents are not faced with this problem next spring and possibly be faced with finding alternate housing. This is what the Council has to consider, Jim Palmqui.st stated they are interested in the same thing. There is no question between people vs land downstream. People are of the utmost importance. The question is you have to pump it someplace and the first step is to look to Cimarron property, then downstream if that does not work. Mottaz replied, that is provided there is enough time before freeze—up. Jim Palmgiuist — we are not going to know the.viable solution unless we have a report or a study done. Councilperson Novak asked for a clarification on pumping and storage on —site. Larry Bohrer has not estimated what it would cost to build a storage site at Cimarron. Ile feels a storage site would have to be constructed if stored on —site, We are up against a time .frame. We have about 30 days left before it freezes up and pumping cannot be done. You can only transfer so much water in 30 days. Be has not estimated the cost of all the alternatives. They have been looked at in a, preliminary way. He still stands behind his original recommendations and .realizes the problems downstream, Steven Taylor — If the lake continues to come up and the facility overflows, we would have raw sewage running into a public lake. Then, we have water that is much more questionable as tow here you put it if ,you have to pump it. There has been no mixing of the water from the plant or either of the absorption ponds, to date. Al Lehman is still concerned about the protection of the treatment plant. The one proposal of blicking the culvert and pumping to the north side you have about 22 acre feet in Sunfish, 8 acre feet on the south side. In 1977, in a heavy rain, the lake rose !p feet. That's 88 acre feet of excess water, If ,you block the culvert ,you will get most of the water on the south side. That is a 10 foot rise on the south. You could have a rain. that is much less than in 1977; and still have problems. The gravity overflow between the difference on Sunfish now and Horseshoe with the friction loss in the pipe you are just barely getting flow with the present elevation of Horseshoe. If a storm comes ,you, still do not have good protection. The gravity pipe could only drop Sunfish 2 feet from its present elevation. Mottaz said the basic problem can only be resolved if we can pump some water from Sunfish to Horseshoe in the time we have. According to out Engineer this is the only alternative we have for the amount of time available. Larry Bohrer said water will have to be pumped at one time or another. This is the the time of the ,year to do this with a winter season to have it seep; than to try to pump it in the spring with run—off and everything else at maximum elevation. Steven Taylor said the longer ,you wait to pump the greater the risk of contamination. Armstrong asked the Valley Branch Board their reaction, if pumping is the only solution. Al Dornfield, Valley Branch Manager, said the feeling of the Managers is to retain as much water as possible. We have a very small flowage leaving Horseshoe and even that may cause problems like it did last winter when we had ice build up in the channel which created problems all the way up the line to the homes in West Lakeland between Horseshoe Lake and County Road 70. We still do not have the storage capacity downstream. We are very concerned about downstream.. We have pleanty of water coming down there already, Armstrong asked Mr, Dornfield if we take it as a given, that unless some water is removed there is going to be homes without sewage disposal in Cimarron, and we weigh those factors, do you foresee a great deal of damage or potential damage downstream if the water wereto be pumped today.