Rock County Rural Water puts down new, deeper well with pandemic funding

Rock County Rural Water will add a new well to the system, thanks to $100,000 in Covid relief funds allocated to the project.
At the May 3 Rock County Board meeting, commissioners approved Rural Water’s request for funds to design and construct a new well in the system’s current wellfield.
Estimated cost is $225,000.
“What this will do will help us in drought conditions,” system manager Ryan Holtz said.
“We had problems last summer with the drought pulling low on the wells. (With an additional well) the wells will be less vulnerable when the aquifer is lower than we are now.”
The new well site will be located west of Rural Water’s current pump station, which is six miles south of Luverne along County Road 9. The well will be located on the west side of the Rock River.
Commissioner Stan Williamson is the representative on the rural water board.
“The Rural Water Board made a tough decision to spend money and gamble, more or less, to see if this will work,” he said. “It was a good decision, and Rural Water struck gold. This will really, really take some pressure off by hitting that water.”
Rural water currently has 11 operational wells, and Holtz said the search for an additional well began last summer.
Engineers with LRE Water of St. Croix, Minnesota, completed the search and later conducted a study on the well’s sustainability.
The well is located 320- to 350-feet deep, which is substantially deeper than the system’s current wells. The deeper wells will be beneficial during droughts and will avoid contaminants from the vulnerable upper aquifer.
The well’s projected water availability at 300 gallons per minute would be sustainable for 39 years. At 200 gallons per minute, sustainability would be more than 100 years.
The Rural Water system pumps 1,200 gallons a minute to satisfy the current needs of its 800 customers, majority of whom operate livestock production facilities.
However, the new well’s water would be blended to improve quality.
“When we tested it, there were absolutely no nitrates in the water,” Holtz said.
“The only tradeoff is that the water is a little bit harder, but we can blend it with the upper aquifer and customers will ever notice the difference.”
The added well water will provide a buffer during high-demand times.
Previously the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System could supply more water over and above Rural Water’s contracted amount of 300,000 gallons a day.
Rural Water pumped 700,000 gallons a day in January this year and in July 2021 pumped 1.2 million gallons a day, purchasing more water from Lewis and Clark to meet the demand.
“They had more water than they had customers,” Holtz said.
“Now everybody, for the most part, is hooked up except two (members). We are down to our allocation now and what we get is what we get. We don’t have that big buffer there like we used to have.”
Bids to design and construct the new well will be let this summer, with the majority of the work completed before year’s end. However, the variable frequency drive controls might not be readily available.
The VFD gears down the well’s pumps for better energy efficiency when water demand is low.
Holtz estimated a possible wait of 24 weeks for the controls to arrive.