Trouble with Minneapolis Water Plant

The City of Minneapolis says its new water plant produces some of the cleanest water in the country. But the FOX 9 investigators discovered that plant has had problems from the get go and will now be shutting down for the next eight months.

That plant is located in Columbia Heights, with a back-up facility in Fridley. It provides water to Minneapolis, Columbia Heights, Golden Valley, New Hope, Crystal, the airport, as well as parts of Bloomington and Edina. The city of Minneapolis’s water treatment plant in Columbia Heights is state of the art, capable of delivering 70 million gallons a day, of the cleanest water you will find anywhere.

Two weeks ago, the plant shut down, and will remain that way, until June. Plant Manager Chris Catlin says the city is replacing turn of last century pumps and pipes that bring in water from the Mississippi.

"The plant has experience fiber breakage,” said Catlin. “These fibers have some microscopic breaks in them. We detect them with very sensitive equipment."

The high-tech membranes are part of a cutting edge ultra-filtration system that screens out impurities. They aren’t cutting out only chemicals and bacteria, but even microscopic viruses like cryptosporidium, which killed more than 100 people in Milwaukee six years ago. It was the Milwaukee outbreak that led the city to build the Columbia Heights plant, which opened four years ago, at a cost of $80 million.

Soon after the ribbon was cut, the tiny membranes, which cost $16 million, started to rupture. A shipment of new membranes and filters arrived the other day, still sitting in boxes. In March, the city of Minneapolis reached a settlement with the contractor, General Electric. GE agreed to replace the defective membranes, and extend the warranty, for an additional $1.5 million.

While the Columbia Heights plant is down, the city's water will come from the old plant in Fridley.

Despite its quality, it's also got a reputation. Every year the spring, runoff brings a certain foul taste and odor.

So last year, Mayor R.T. Rybak proposed spending $180,000 dollars on a PR campaign, called Tap Minneapolis, to promote city tap water over bottle water. The poster child of the campaign is the new plant in Columbia Heights.

The hope is the new membranes will be more durable and will out last the warranty. But the PR campaign continues promoting a state of the art water plant, state of the art, when it's working.