At the spring planning meeting of the Mantorville City Council May 3, Mayor Luke Nash announced that long-time council member Annie Brannan has resigned. No further information was available except that the resignation was for personal reasons.

Brannan had been a member of the Mantorville council since December 2003. Her term runs through December 2012.

Also at the meeting, the council was informed that the city’s waste water treatment plant had failed compliance tests during a recent review by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).

Bill Angerman, city engineer from WHKS & Co., talked to the council about the violations and he and Mayor Nash reviewed a letter to the MPCA with the city’s plans to bring the plant into compliance.

There were three types of violations noted.

One type was the failure to comply with removal limits for total suspended solids and/or five-day carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand.

Angerman noted that many of these apparent violations were actually calculation inaccuracies.

The report also noted that the city had failed to file certain documentation concerning land applications of sludge.

Some of the results from the last three years will be recalculated and resubmitted as part of the city’s compliance plan for these two types of violations and city staff will begin preparing proper documentation for the sludge application.

The MPCA report also noted that the amount of sludge removed from the plant should be larger based on projections from data on biosolids reports.

Different methods of solids sampling are being reviewed to see if prior sampling methods were giving inaccurate data.

Angerman and Nash noted that the plant is audited every three years and these issues had not previously been reported.

The men also noted that the plant did not violate any discharge rules.

In regard to the report, Nash said, “The environment has not been damaged.”

In other business, the council discussed ideas for revenue generation for the city. Council members discussed storm water utility fees and franchise fees to residents for services such as electricity and gas as two examples.