One the city of Cottonwood’s water towers stands over the neighborhood around Main Street.This winter, testing found high levels of minerals like manganese in Cottonwood’s water supply. After a public hearing and discussion, the Cottonwood City Council opted to address the problem by connecting to Lincoln Pipestone Rural Water.

COTTONWOOD — The city of Cottonwood will be saying goodbye to high levels of minerals in its drinking water. At a special meeting Thursday, members of the Cottonwood City Council voted in favor of connecting to the Lincoln Pipestone Rural Water system, instead of using city well water.

The next steps ahead for the city will be going through the process to join LPRW, and applying for state grant funding to help with the costs of connecting to the system, said Cottonwood Mayor Corey Moseng.

“Time is of the essence,” Moseng said. Cottonwood has a limited window of time to join LPRW at a lower buy-in cost, and to meet application deadlines for an Emerging Contaminant Grant, he said.

It will still take time to build the connection to LPRW, Moseng and Cottonwood city staff said. The connection would be complete by about 2027, Moseng said.

The Cottonwood council’s vote came after a well-attended public hearing last week, on the high levels of minerals like manganese found in city well water. Options to reduce the minerals included connecting to LPRW, building a filtration plant or a reverse-osmosis system for Cottonwood water.

The total annual costs of connecting to the system would be about $453,000, or $265,000 if the city gets help from an Emerging Contaminant Grant.

If Cottonwood joins LPRW before June 1, they will also have a lower buy-in cost, said Cottonwood City Administrator Teather Bliss.

Bliss estimated that close to 100 people attended the hearing on Cottonwood’s water last week. While gathering information for proposed water and sewer infrastructure projects in Cottonwood, engineers from Bolton & Menk had discovered the city’s water had manganese levels more than seven times the state health advisory limit. Cottonwood’s water supply also had moderate levels of iron and high levels of sulfates and sodium.

“I don’t think this could have been done without Bolton & Menk,” Bliss said. “Our prior engineering firm didn’t catch on to any of this.”

Manganese is a naturally-occurring mineral that is often found in groundwater. It isn’t considered a contaminant that cities need to test for, said Kim Larsen, supervisor of the Community Public Water Supply Unit at the Minnesota Department of Health. However, having high levels of manganese in drinking water could lead to health problems, according to the MDH.

At Thursday’s council meeting, Bliss and council members said they hadn’t received much negative feedback on the proposal to join LPRW.

“We’ve had a couple people come in, thanking us for the public hearing,” Bliss said. “I got a couple of comments on Rural Water, and being in favor of that.” A livestream of the hearing on the city’s Facebook page also received a lot of views from the public, she said.

Moseng and council member Joel Dahl said there had also been a positive response to detailed fact sheets on the water question that city staff had made available to the public.

Council members and city staff said they will need to consider what will happen to the existing Cottonwood wells in the future, after the city connects to LPRW.

“One thing to think about, too, is . . . we’re going to have to figure out a plan of what we want to do moving forward with everyone that is out of city limits and is on our water,” Bliss said. There are a few properties outside of city limits that are currently connected to the Cottonwood water system, she said.