Judge OKs Duluth sewer, wastewater upgrades

Duluth's efforts to keep untreated waste out of Lake Superior have satisfied the federal judge who ordered the city to fix its sewer system.

Between 1999 and 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates Duluth sent 47 million gallons of sewage into the St. Louis River and Lake Superior during heavy storms that caused sanitary sewer overflows. Rainwater seeped into leaky sewer lines and through illegal basement drains and overwhelmed the sewer system.

It was an embarrassment, Duluth Mayor Don Ness said Wednesday.

"For Duluthians, our most sacred responsibility is to protect the freshwater resource that we have in our backyard, to protect the greatest lake in the world," he said. "We were not fulfilling that obligation."

In 2009, Duluth and the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District signed an agreement with the federal EPA to stop the overflows by 2016. Since then the two local entities have spent $140 million to address the issue.

They installed five huge overflow tanks that trap water before it enters Lake Superior, and 10,000 basement sump pumps. They also replaced about 30 miles of sewer line, and 1,700 lines connecting homes to the main sewer system.

Those efforts eliminated about 29 million gallons from rushing into the sewer system during heavy rain events — enough water to fill 44 Olympic-sized swimming pools, Duluth Utilities Director Jim Benning said.

Untreated sewage last flowed into the lake during the record flooding of 2012. The city met the terms of the deal over a year ahead of schedule. Ness said failing to stop the overflows could have hurt the city's development.

"We have taken our responsibility to protect that freshwater resource seriously, invested tremendous resources to eliminate those overflows, and we have succeeded," Ness said.