urbanMSP

Hard to take any article seriously when it says someone "nearly shat himself."

True.

I'd be interested to know if there are parts of Minneapolis where the added growth/demand is actually taxing the existing infrastructure. I know Xcel upgraded their distribution lines along the Greenway, and there have been some ongoing stormwater upgrades (although I think this is more based on historic flooding than on new demand). And obviously some of Minneapolis's infrastructure needs to be replaced based on age. But can we think of any instances where the water or sanitary sewer service has needed to be beefed up based on demand?

I did a juice cleanse a couple months ago

That's gotta be like one sewer unit right there.

To MNdibles point, I have no doubt there are growing places that have (or will) required beefing up the system. But every new unit in those buildings are paying the same amount as some single family home in Anoka or wherever (unless they don't have in-unit laundry and therefore qualify for a 20% reduction). I wrote some dumb post about this a while back, but the MCES annual budget is nearly 50% debt repayment for capital projects. The SAC charges paid by urban infill projects definitely cross-subsidize the SAC charges in new development, and neither of them are covering the repayment for extending/expanding the system. So we're drawing on wastewater charges (more or less flat rate per gallon regardless of how much it cost to serve you in the first place) to help cover that gap.

Anyway, to answer your actual question: I have no idea for sure. They definitely dug up and replaced some sewer lines near my house on 36th St and Dupont (plus over between Harriet and Calhoun), but I don't know if that was due to age, expansion, or both. It's pretty odd how tuned in people are to roads and bridges and transit (even the relatively uneducated could tell you the SWLRT budget), but basically nobody knows much about MCES.

It seems insulting to make a growing businesses need to pay to expand to serve a few more/employ more in a city that is over 100,000 fewer people living in it now than when it was originally built out decades ago.

It's not clear to me how much of the SAC charges go towards new pipes vs. new treatment capacity, but it's worth noting that back when Minneapolis was a city of a half million residents, the poop went into the same pipe as the rain and it all went straight into the Mississippi River.

Well, according to this, which lays out 6 years worth of capital spending (still a window in time and not necessarily indicative of all capital spending over maybe a 30-40 year period), 23% is on treatment plant and the rest on the interceptor system.

Within the interceptor capital total, 17% of spend is within Minneapolis, 8% in St Paul, 7% general regionwide spend (things like meter upgrades, odor control, lift stations). I don't really have the energy to dig into the capital plans by district to understand how much of each project is regular replacement vs expansion/extension.

I think your point about dumping to the Mississippi is maybe misleading. In 1938 the Pigs Eye facility began treating diverted waste from interceptors along the river. The combined sewers (wastewater and stormwater) would indeed dump a decent amount of mixed water into the river during storms (but even then not all of it). Separate storm/sewer had been built starting in the 20s, but older streets didn't get this until the massive street reconstructions of the 60s/70s. I'd say that Anondson's point is mostly true, that our peak population (40s-50s) sent the vast majority if its shit to a treatment plant and not the river.

Seperating storm and sewer water isn't about constantly dumping sewage into the river, it's about storm water getting mixed in with sewage and overwhelming the treatment system during a storm, causing the excess waste to get dumped into the river.

That's what it's about now, but the reason it's like that now is because it all used to get dumped into the river together.

Anyway, to the extent that I'm trying to make a point here, my point is that increasing the demands on the existing infrastructure in a place like Minneapolis does have real costs. I can't begin to quantify for you how much the guy with the Indian restaurant is or is not getting hosed, but him expanding his restaurant does in fact mean that he's creating greater demands on the existing infrastructure, and it's not crazy to ask him to pay for those costs.

No, it's not crazy at all. But would you agree that, given it's likely given existing pipe sizes that once served a city with higher population (and, commercial/industrial users) and aside from extreme cases like Uptown's growth, paying the same amount per residential unit (likely for 1-2 people) for infill as some family (potentially 3-4 people) on a 0.75 acre lot in the exurbs is fair? And that considering areas like Minneapolis are already planning/spending on interceptors and regulators as part of regular maintenance/replacement, that the marginal cost of a larger pump or wider pipe when doing so to handle infill makes things even easier relative to new infrastructure in the ground? I dunno.

I guess, the nature of this whole thing is that the finances are less transparent than a suburban family of four who knows exactly 40% of their MVST went to transit they don't use and hears the state government need to explicitly fund things like SWLRT or Bottineau construction out of the general fund. But that's kinda been the whole problem with regionalism as we defined it. A quick look at the comparison to other regions shows that some do actually charge less (or nothing!) for infill projects. Maybe I (or we, whatever) are making a bigger deal about this than necessary. But as a person who wants to see residential and commercial infill in Minneapolis and St Paul, and make it cheap and easy for small businesses, this certainly seems like something to talk about.

I'd agree that it would be great to understand these things better, and I suspect that you're right, that Minneapolis is probably at some not-insignificant level subsidizing the exurbs. I even agree with the Strong Towns argument that the infrastructure required to support the low density exurban development makes them financially unsustainable. On the other hand, I think it's unrealistic to be able to come up with a system that accurately reflects the real cost of one sewer hook-up vs. another. Given that, a system that somewhat crudely allocates these costs to those adding new demand is better than the other realistic alternative, which would be just to roll these costs into everybody's property tax bills.

Beyond that, there are so many variables involved that I don't even know how to consider an answer to the questions you're posing. If we believe the history that's been laid out above, then much of the sanitary sewer pipes were separated out in the 60's and 70's (and some even more recently than that, because this issue is still in the news), so it's not necessarily safe to say they were sized for a much bigger city. How much water does a family use now as compared to previously? How much of the cost of new sewer pipes is borne by the developer vs. the municipality vs. the Met Council? How much demand does industry create, vs. a restaurant, vs. a SFH?

Thinking back to how I usually feel for a couple days after eating at Gandhi Mahal, I think they (indirectly) make a lot of sewage

Thinking back to how I usually feel for a couple days after eating at Gandhi Mahal, I think they (indirectly) make a lot of sewage

+l

It sounds like, if a transportation bill is passed at all, at a minimum it will include some modest Met Council reforms, which could include staggered terms and more elected official representation on the nominating committees. Those are the reforms supported by the Citizens League and the DFL. Republicans of course are still trying to stick County Commissioners and Mayors on the council itself, which would be horribly undemocratic.

The modest reforms even picked up a few Republican votes in the Senate, but still faces an uphill battle in the GOP-led House.
http://www.startribune.com/senate-passe ... 378904101/

Those changes sound reasonable, especially staggered terms so the whole thing doesn't collapse at once when we wind up electing an anti-metro governor.

Yeah, you can hardly get less democratic than a system in which Annette Meeks was representing Minneapolis.

The whole idea of district "representatives" on the Met Council is just idiotic. This is a regional governing body. What does "representation" of individual districts have to do with anything? They should all be at-large seats.

Staff members could be assigned to districts as points-of-contact for local elected officials and residents. Then inquiries and requests could be funneled to the appropriate members based on committee assignment, etc. Of course Council members could still be contacted directly, there just wouldn't be this sham notion that they put the interests of your district above all others.

Whatever happens, we need to make sure that individual city councils or mayors don't have equal power, as was proposed last year with the "veto authority reform." That's even *less* democratic than the status quo, since Lilydale would have veto authority over St. Paul and St. Anthony would have veto authority over Minneapolis.

Open seats in advisory boards with terms starting in January 2017.

https://metrocouncil.org/News-Events/Co ... tan-C.aspx