The city of Rhinelander has a couple options when it comes to meeting future water demands.
Right now, it’s looking at where it could drill a new well or bringing back the two offline wells and treating the water for PFAS.
“The interesting part about this whole thing is, with the development we have coming to the city, we’re probably going to have to treat [wells] 7 and 8 and in three years start looking for a new well too,” said Rhinelander Mayor Kris Hanus at Monday’s common council meeting.
PFAS are forever chemicals, which as the name suggests, are hard to remove. They’ve been linked to health effects like lower immune response, lower infant birth rates, and increased risk of some cancers.
When the wells were first shutdown in 2019, dealing with PFAS was relatively new. The state didn’t have any drinking water standards for it.
Greg Droessler with Town and Country Engineering has been working with the city on its water issues.
“I was part of the decision with the staff and the previous administration as we kind of took the PFAS idea of treatment and set that aside five years ago. At that time, there was not a lot of work in that field being done in our state, as far as PFAS treatment by other communities and to this level,” Droessler told the council. “We had some concerns about the technology, the cost, etc. Fast forward here, five years later, communities up and down the Wisconsin River are all faced with the same challenge.”
A new well
For the last several years, the city has been looking for a location to drill a new well.
“While it seems odd that we live in the Northwoods of Wisconsin and we have water all around us that Rhinelander has the troubles that we have in finding good water, both in quantity and quality, but that is the challenge that we face here,” said Droessler.
The city found a promising location that was on the Nicolet College campus, though it did have some drawbacks like the DNR limiting how much water it could draw each month.
As WXPR previously reported, Nicolet College declined the proposal for the well being drilled on its property after public feedback and its own environmental study which raise concerns about the impact on nearby lakes and wetlands.
Common council talked about withdrawing its application to the DNR for a well at that site, but Mayor Hanus still hopes there’s room for compromise.
“I think it's still worth trying to have that dialog to see if we could have any compromise and talk versus just abandoning the year and a half of work, the $100,000 of taxpayers money, and all this just based on one letter,” said Hanus. “I respect their decision, don't get me wrong, but I would still like to open up a dialog with them to see if we could meet somewhere in the middle, versus just running away from it.”
No action was taken regarding Nicolet College and the potential well site there. The common council did vote to take the first steps in treating the water in wells 7 and 8.
“There's a number of obstacles. Not only has the report today shown that there's a lot of problems with that site, specifically that don't meet our needs. On top of that, we have to talk to Nicolet to get approval to use that land. There's just a lot there that I'd much rather focus our efforts towards treatment and then exploration of other sites in the future,” said Alderperson Steven Jopek.
Removing the PFAS
A filtration system would cost millions of dollars to install and would add to yearly maintenance costs.
Droessler estimates the treatment system would cost about $7 million. A little less than half of which could potentially be covered by a DNR grant. The city also has about $1.6 million of earmarked federal funds it can tap into.
Leaving the remaining cost to the city at about $2 million to treat the two wells.
Another concern is that some of Rhinelander’s other wells have detectable levels of PFAS that may in the future require treatment as water standards become stricter.
“Our goal was to get to non-detect with PFAS in your water. When we first sat down with the city staff, that was the stated goal. I believe the phrase was along the lines of ‘Damn it, if we’re going to treat it, we’re going to treat it all,’” said Droessler.
Common council voted to direct city administration to explore pilot treatment options for the two wells and what the timeline would look like.
