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Mayors talk bridges, highways, other needs with Klobuchar

MARSHALL — Roads and water infrastructure are still major needs in southwest Minnesota communities. Area mayors said Friday they hope that the federal government’s investment in infrastructure spending could help meet some of those needs.

The mayors of area cities including Tyler, Slayton, Pipestone and Luverne spoke to Sen. Amy Klobuchar in a conference call Friday morning. The main topic of discussion was infrastructure.

“I want to find out what projects you have, and what your priorities are,” Klobuchar said.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in November will give the opportunity to “repair and transform” highways, bridges, and other infrastructure in Minnesota, Klobuchar said.

On Friday, federal officials released the first award amounts that will come from the infrastructure spending, which included $60 million for Minnesota bridge repairs. Minnesota is set to receive a total of about $300 million for bridge repairs and $4.5 billion for highways, Klobuchar said.

Federal infrastructure spending will also include funding to improve water infrastructure and broadband access. Both are needs that southwestern Minnesota residents have been grappling with.

“We have 144,000 Minnesotans without access to high-speed internet,” Klobuchar said.

Area mayors spoke on all those topics.

“The infrastructure help we really need is for our sanitary sewer reconstruction,” said Tyler Mayor Joan Jagt.

The city of Tyler is trying to upgrade part of its sewer, both to meet current needs and expand capacity for future housing development. Jagt said the city has requested $7.2 million in bonding money from the state of Minnesota to reconstruct the sewer. In the meantime, Tyler has changed its ordinances to allow residential septic systems in the city.

“Housing is that important to us,” she said.

Water infrastructure was a challenge facing the city of Pipestone too, said Pipestone Mayor Myron Koets. Pipestone recently completed a $14 million water treatment facility, but the challenge that went with the new treatment plant was cost. Water and sewer rates nearly doubled, Koets said.

Roads were another topic that area mayors spoke out on across the board. Slayton Mayor Miron Carney said the city needed to reconstruct a 4,200-foot stretch of highway, but the estimated cost was beyond the city’s bonding capacity.

Area mayors said highways in southwest Minnesota also need a lot of support. Regional corridors like Minnesota Highway 23 and U.S. Highway 59 are crucial for trucks, but the highways weren’t built to handle the kind of heavy traffic they now see, mayors said.

Jagt said area residents would still like to see Highway 23 be expanded to a four-lane highway across the state.

Carney said funding needs have postponed some needed work on U.S. Highway 59 in Lyon and Murray counties. “The road’s structural issues were beyond what they expected,” he said. The Minnesota Department of Transportation ran out of funding do complete the project as it was originally planned, he said.

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