LCO Public Works Gives Membership Report

Editor's Note: The following was provided to the Membership at the General Membership Meeting in January.

WATER:

We are nearing completion of the K&B Loop Water Main Project. This $3.SM project was funded through a Workforce Innovation Grant through the state of Wisconsin. This loop will provide water through Round Lake School Road, Hwy Band Hwy K to Tall Pines neighborhood. This project has allowed us to build along this route, including the new apartment building, as well as the new clinic facility. We have strategically placed this water main to locations where other businesses such as the Casino, Convenience Center

and Public Works offices are located, providing an opportunity for these businesses to abandon their current private wells and hook up to the municipal system.

Most of the drilling, asphalt repair and site restoration will be completed before winter sets in. After winter sets in, the contractor will demobilize their equipment until the spring. It is at this time that we will tie up the rest of the connections and complete restoration. We are hoping to have final completion before June 2024.

We have also contracted to do some tower maintenance on all four of our water storage tanks. This fall, we installed mechanical mixers in each tank. These mixers will help prevent the tanks from freezing solid over the cold winter months. This $100,000 project was achieved with help from Indian Health Service, as they paid for two mixers, and the tribe paid for the other two. Indian Health Service had also provided us with technical and engineering assistance to get these installed.

We currently have a project out to bid for other maintenance to our towers, such as cleaning and painting. We hope to have this project going in the spring of 2024.

WASTEWATER:

We were able to design and build a sewer system for the new apartments, using the grant funding we received from the State of Wisconsin from the Workforce Innovation Grant. This was a $1M project. With this project, Indian Health Service designed the Sewer wet well design, as well as the force main that feeds the wastewater to our main plant. We were able to complete this work at the same time as we were working on the water project.

We have two future projects funded through the Indian Health Service that will rehabilitate two of our wastewater plants in Reserve and New Post. In Reserve, we will be installing depth gauges and a discharge structure to ensure that we operate within our permit limits, as established by the Environmental Protection Agency. We will also get funding to repair our boundary fence, repairs to the berms of the wastewater pond, as well as the funds to purchase a side-arm mower. The New Post project calls for replacing the current Sand Filtration system with a new Attached Growth sewer plant that is more capable of working in our colder, northern environment.

SOLID WASTE:

For the past three years, we have been involved with Spring Clean Up. This is actually a monumental task, given the equipment that we have and the land area we are using. We were given a budget this year to continue the campaign next spring, 2024. One of the big things we are looking for is the purchase of our own loader. This will help our department out tremendously. We realize that we cannot please everybody, but we are trying our best to create a schedule that can be more accommodating. This is a project that we will be planning throughout the winter season, and we hope to have a more detailed announcement in the coming months.

LCO Public Works collaborates with a lot of other tribal programs on a number of other projects, included but not limited to: LCO Elder Center in Reserve, Signor Water project, Mandaamin subdivision, LCOOU expansion project on Froemel Rd, LCO Housing rehab projects, tiny home construction and infrastructure planning.

LCO Public Works currently has 11 employees, and our water/sewer plant is located on Gitigaan Road, just south of Sevenwinds Casino. Our Recycle Plant is located on Round Lake School Road, just south of Hwy B. We operate three wastewater treatment plants, two drinking water systems, and a Recycle Plant.