MARSHALL — Marshall is one of two regional cities that will be benefiting from grant funds to reduce the amount of salt in city wastewater.
On Tuesday, the Marshall City Council voted to use the grant to help offer incentives for Marshall residents to adjust their water softeners, if they haven’t done so already.
The council approved a proposal that would offer $50 rebates for residents who get their water softeners optimized to use less salt, and a $500 rebate to replace certain types of less-efficient water softeners. However, there was some discussion first as to whether retroactive incentives should be allowed.
“That’s a concern I’ve got is, those that have already done it,” said council member John DeCramer. “Are we going to upset a number of people who were good in doing it?”
“Our real goal is to try and get adjustments on the units that haven’t been adjusted,” said city engineer Jason Anderson. “I think it would be hard to pay out retroactively if your unit is already adjusted.”
Marshall still has some work to do in order to meet its goals to reduce the amount of chlorides being released into the Redwood River, city staff said. Marshall Municipal Utilities recently completed a major project to pre-soften city water, but that doesn’t mean everyone in town has re-adjusted their water softeners yet.
Back in April, city council members approved an agreement with the engineering firm of Bolton & Menk for grant funding from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Bolton & Menk would be working with the cities of Marshall and Worthington on chloride reduction. The agreement included roughly $31,000 in matching funds from the city of Marshall.
“This gives us $100,00 of actionable funds to use in our community to help reduce chlorides,” said Marshall city engineer Jason Anderson.
Anderson said city staff proposed a program that would offer a $50 rebate for residents to optimize their water softener settings, and $500 rebate to replace older, timer-based water softeners. If there was enough funding after a few months, the types of water softeners eligible for the replacement incentives could be expanded.
“We think that offering a program at the start with these parameters gives us the best opportunity to make sure we’re getting softeners adjusted, and also make sure we’re getting rid of the most inefficient equipment,” Anderson said.
“We’ve been working on this for some time, so there’s people that already have had adjustments to their water softener and perhaps have replaced it. Are those rebates going to be retroactive to a certain date?” DeCramer asked.
“Any time you roll out a rebate program it’s going to be hard. There’s going to be people that miss out on it because they did the right thing early, or whatever it may be. But I don’t know how we would really defend against that,” Anderson said.
After more discussion, council members voted to support the rebate program.
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