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Utility board joins fiber effort
The Lakefield Municipal Utility board joined the Southwest Minnesota Broadband Project Group in seeking to put together a plan to bring broadband service to the area at its meeting last Tuesday, May 12.
The group is committing $10,000 to U-reka Broadband Ventures LLC for its consulting services. The group also consists of the communities of Windom, Lakefield, Jackson, Fish Lake, Wilder, Bingham Lake, Heron Lake, Brewster, Round Lake, Okabena and a number of rural residences along the proposed route of the main fiber optic cable to be run between Windom and Lakefield.
These communities came up with approximately $9,000 of the necessary funds to hire U-reka and the Jackson County board has agreed to add $1,000 to meet the $10,000 total.
U-reka will “do the leg work on project development,” including writing contracts, engineering and other tasks needed to discern the project’s feasibility, said Lakefield City Superintendent Jim Koep.
The cost to each community in the group amounts to $1 per resident, so Lakefield’s portion was set at $1,721. Windom will kick in $2,000 because of the additional business the project will add to its network.
In other action, the board passed a motion to approve the capping of well No. 1, which is located on land that was directly below the old water tower. Koep informed the board that quotes still need to be obtained from contractors and added that the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s PetroFund should pay up to 90 percent of the utility’s costs.
MAY 13 WAS WATER MAIN MEETING
City Superintendent Jim Koep told members that the contractors’ meeting for the city’s water main project would take place Wednesday, May 13.
ENERGY RATES ON THE RISE
The board was informed that the utility’s energy provider will soon be raising rates by another 13 percent.
NEW METERS PURCHASED
Fifty new utility meters were recently purchased. According to Koep, the acquisition was necessary because it was his belief that usage wasn’t matching receipts, a problem he blamed on malfunctioning meters.
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