Lake Elmo officials review White Bear Lake work group studies, surface-water options and permit appeal timetable

Lake Elmo officials on an April 2025 council workshop reviewed ongoing White Bear Lake Comprehensive Work Group studies, the city’s appeal of a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources permit amendment and the timetable for court proceedings.

The council heard that the city and partner municipalities are appealing an administrative law judge decision and that oral argument in the Minnesota Court of Appeals is scheduled for April 16 at 11:15 a.m.; a trial addressing Lake Elmo’s objection to the DNR’s Sept. 10, 2024 permit amendment is tentatively scheduled for the third week of December, according to the presentation by Clark Schroeder.

The nut graf: The White Bear Lake work group has received a legislative appropriation to update a suite of studies intended to identify ways to protect lake levels and East Metro drinking-water supplies. Lake Elmo leaders said the results will be used to meet DNR conditions for water permits and to inform possible capital and operating decisions — including whether surface-water supply or other measures are practical for Lake Elmo.

Schroeder told the council the work group has identified about 15 studies funded initially with roughly $2,000,000 from the legislature and that additional funding requests of $1 million to $2 million are expected because the group may not be able to complete every planned study with existing funds. The studies under way include: possible surface-water connections to municipal systems, lake augmentation by treated surface water, stormwater reuse for irrigation, treated wastewater injection into aquifers, and measures to reduce per-capita potable-water use.

City data presented at the workshop show Lake Elmo pumped about 364,000,000 gallons in 2024 compared with roughly 543,000,000 gallons in 2023; staff estimate per-capita residential use at about 73 gallons per person per day and an overall system average near 100 gallons per person per day when commercial use is included. Those figures were cited by staff as context for the DNR condition that would require permittees to reduce per-capita residential use toward 75–90 gallons per day.

Schroeder summarized several surface-water concepts that the work group will analyze, including conveying treated Mississippi River water into regional lakes and constructing new treatment capacity. He said a full augmentation option would be expensive — the DNR-derived figure shown in the presentation cited roughly 780,000,000 gallons per year as an illustrative augmentation magnitude — and that treated surface water carries its own management challenges such as nutrient content, invasive species and temperature differences.

Engineering scenarios discussed at the workshop included raising lake outlet elevations (a one-foot raise was estimated in the presentation to capture on the order of 300–400 million gallons), redirecting stormwater for augmentation, and building new or using existing regional treatment plants (presentation referenced Saint Paul Regional Water and McCarran plant connections). The council was told the work group will update earlier hydrologic models (including a 2016 baseline study) with current consumption and population-growth assumptions; Lake Elmo staff said models now assume a long-term buildout population materially larger than today.

City leaders repeatedly framed surface-water connection decisions around cost and equity: who would pay capital and operating costs if some municipalities convert to treated surface water while others do not. Schroeder said the work group will include funding scenarios in its studies and that options could include a metro East taxing district, surcharges, state funding or bonds — but no funding plan has been adopted.

Council members asked for clearer breakout data showing how much each nearby municipality or large user contributes to lake drawdown (the presentation showed combined scenarios removing several nearby permittees from groundwater pumping and the modeled effect on lake level). Schroeder said the updated studies are intended to provide better cost/benefit comparisons and proximate impacts, but he noted Lake Elmo’s modeled impact on White Bear Lake is small compared with some larger nearby permittees.

Ending: Staff said the work-group studies will be posted publicly and that the city will continue coordination with the Met Council and DNR as the studies, court schedule and funding discussions proceed. The council did not take a formal vote at the workshop; the presentation concluded with requests for staff to follow up on specific funding and technical questions.