St. Cloud Metro Area Cities Talking Wastewater, Foley May Join

ST. CLOUD -- The six cities in the St. Cloud metro area are discussing wastewater treatment as Foley continues to pursue the option of joining the facility.

The wastewater treatment facility is owned and operated by St. Cloud. It opened in 1976 with Sauk Rapids and Waite Park sending their wastewater there, in 1996 St. Joseph and Sartell joined, and in 2003 St. Augusta came on-line.

Tracy Hodel is the St. Cloud Public Services Director. She says in 2013 they completed a $48 million expansion project.

With that expansion project, each of the communities bought into excess capacity and this is that capacity that we would sell for that portion of it to the city of Foley if they came online.

Last year the treatment facility had an average flow of 11 million gallons a day from all of the communities. It has the capacity to treat close to 18 million gallons a day. Foley currently discharges 240,000 gallons a day.

The question before each of the cities is, do they want to give up some of their excess capacity for future growth in their own city in exchange for allowing Foley to join?