TRIMONT – The city of Trimont will be receiving $1 million in federal funding for its ongoing wastewater treatment project, secured by Congressman Brad Finstad.

Giving an overview of the whole project, Trimont City Clerk Kelli Harder said it covers several areas.

“Our wastewater facility is failing, and our water plant is aging,” she said. “We want to build ponds instead of having a mechanical waste plant. It’s more efficient and has less cost and maintenance. We also have failing infrastructure. Most of the infrastructure within the city of Trimont was installed in the 60s. We have a lot of water main breaks, so the city is spending a lot of money on fixing the aging infrastructure.”

The ponds system uses pools of waste and water that turn and rotate over time to break everything down and make it clear water again, as their current system does. While this would be a new system, it isn’t the first time Trimont has considered a ponds system.

“We used to be two different towns, Triumph and Monterey,” Harder said. “In 1959, we combined and made it Trimont. I found some paperwork that when they were combining the cities, they were already talking about making it a pond system, and it was going to cost $360,000 to do this back in 1959.”

This project is split into three phases: the first is working on and replacing infrastructure from Main Street South out, the second is doing the other half, from Main Street North out and the third is building their pond system and removing the current wastewater plant. Across all the work needed, it will cost around $64 million and is expected to take 8 to 10 years.

Up to this point, Harder said a lot of the work has gone into the tests needed to submit their Technical Evaluation Report (TER) to the USDA.

“The TER report had to be created, which was basically digging into all of our problems,” she said. “The engineers had to camera all of our lines. We’ve done smoke tests trying to see where there’s leaks, and we’ve done that throughout the entire town a couple of times. The rough design of creating the TER report is a very time-consuming thing, because they have to know what size of piping there is, where there’s piping, and try to figure out a better flow.”

With this $1 million secured, Harder said the assistance is greatly appreciated as they try to fund this project without taxpayer money as much as possible.

“That is going to make it more affordable for our city to be able to afford this project and not have to raise either property taxes or water rates,” she said. “I don’t believe our taxpayers will be able to afford an $18 million payment. We’ve got to get more financing for us, so hopefully the USDA can come through with that and get us the funds we need to make it affordable for our residents.”

Congressman Finstad said he is grateful for the opportunity to help bring this money to southern Minnesota as part of a larger $11.4 million package.

“I’m especially proud to secure $1 million for the City of Trimont, which will go toward replacing the city’s outdated wastewater plant with an improved, more advanced system that meets the needs of the community,” Finstad said. “It’s the honor of a lifetime to represent my southern Minnesota neighbors in Congress and advocate for this much-needed funding that strengthens critical water and utility infrastructure in the places we call home.”

Looking forward, Harder said the next step is working on further financing and the design process for infrastructure, which itself will take around a year. This would allow them to start working on and replacing the infrastructure for phase one in 2028, which would then take around two years.