MARSHALL — It’s been a long time coming, but starting this week the city of Marshall will have a new wastewater permit for its sewage plant. In an update to the Marshall City Council, wastewater plant superintendent Scott Truedson said the new permit will become effective on March 1.

Part of the wait for the new permit came from a variance request to help Marshall meet new, stricter limits on the amount of pollutants like chlorides that can be released into the Redwood River. Truedson said Marshall has been working with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency on the details of the permit renewal for about two years.

“The EPA needed to approve our request for the variance for the chlorides, before the MPCA could issue our new permit,” Truedson said. “On February 1, the MPCA let me know that the EPA did approve it, and they’re currently working on issuing the permit.”

The city will have new limits on how much of certain pollutants, like sulphates, phosphorus and chlorides, are allowed to be discharged into the Redwood River from the wastewater plant. Truedson gave council members “kind of a refresher” on the new limits.

Some of the new limits will be tough for the wastewater plant to meet. The plant isn’t currently able to meet the new sulphates limit, he said.

“The city has asked for, and received, a 15-year schedule of compliance. So that will give us time to work on source reduction,” Truedson said. “We will have benchmark goals and reports –swe’ll be working with our industries on that.”

Truedson said the limit on phosphorus isn’t a new one for Marshall, but the city would instead have to meet more stringent requirements each year from June through September.

“Currently, we can meet the proposed limit, but in order to move forward we’re going to have to make some upgrades to our failing effluent filter systems,” he said. Those filter system updates will need to be made soon, likely within the next few years.

The filter systems were installed in 2002, Truedson said.

“The technology was never designed to remove the level of (waste) solids that are necessary to keep the phosphorus limits down,” he said.

Truedson said a facilities plan will need to be done to find the most cost-effective way to meet the city’s phosphorus limits.

Marshall received a new, lower limit for chlorides back in 2014, which kicked off years of work to try and reduce the amount of water softener salt that makes it into city wastewater. Marshall Muncipal Utilities expanded their water treatment plant in order to pre-soften city water and cut down on the need for softener salt.

Marshall also received a 10-year schedule of compliance to meet the new wastewater chloride limits. However, Truedson said, the wastewater plant can’t meet the new limits yet.

“We asked for a 10-year variance,” he said. “The variance will require reduction work, benchmark goals and reports.”