The City of Perham has let the Bureau of Reclamation know they are not welcome to take area groundwater to supply the Red River Valley in times of drought.
At their April 10 meeting, council members passed a draft resolution stating reasons for opposing use of ground water resources from the Ottertail Outwash and Pelican River Sands Aquifers.
In a letter to the Bureau providing comments on a Draft Environmental Impact Statement, Mayor Vince Pankonin states, For the record it should be noted no representative of our Community and to the best of our knowledge no representative from our area participated in the process leading to development of the alternatives presented in the Draft EIS. We note several of the communities that will benefit from the project participated in the work groups and review teams that developed the alternatives. Citizens in our area have had a very limited time to review the Draft EIS and evaluate the information presented.
The letter concludes, Quite simply, there is a great lack of data on the impacts of this alternative and any definitive knowledge of the impact of substantially lowering the level of these aquifers during a severe drought will not be known until the event occurs and it is too late to mitigate adverse consequences.
Over 100 people attended each of two informational meetings in Perham about the Red River Valley Water Supply Project. Red River Valley stakeholders have been meeting since 1998 to discuss future water needs. On December 21, 2000 the Dakota Water Resources Act of 2000 directing the United States Secretary of the Interior to conduct a comprehensive study of the water quality and quantity needs of the Red River Valley in North Dakota and possible options for meeting those needs was signed into federal law. The Act resulted in the creation of The Red River Valley Water Supply Project.
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All of the technical and policy planning are aimed at a way to develop and deliver a bulk water supply to meet the long-term water needs of the Red River Valley in North Dakota and Minnesota. The focus is on impacts that would occur during a drought similar to the 1930s. City of Ottertail Council members recently passed a similar resolution.
