Prior Lake votes Tuesday on designing a new city well in Wilderness Ponds Park
The Prior Lake City Council votes Tuesday, Oct. 27, on a $398,300 work order for AE2S to design Well 10, a new city well planned for the Wilderness Ponds Park property at the southwest corner of Blind Lake Trail SE and Fish Point Road SE, near Fire Station 1. It is on the consent agenda, which passes in one vote unless the mayor or a council member pulls an item, and staff recommends approval so design can start as soon as possible for construction of the well and its well house in 2028.
Prior Lake runs seven city wells and buys roughly 300 million gallons of water a year from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’s treatment plant to supplement its own, the staff report says. Demand has averaged 900 million gallons a year over the past five years, and in 2023 it passed one billion gallons for the first and only time. Staff wrote that the well is proposed to meet the demand future development will bring and to maximize the production capacity of the city’s treatment plant near Itasca Avenue SE and Summer Street SE, half a mile north.
AE2S’s proposal lists the Jordan Aquifer as the city’s preferred source and a design pumping rate of 1,200 gallons a minute. The well house is planned with a maintenance-free exterior, a metal roof and a natural gas generator. The $2,000,000 includes the design fee, and staff will bring an updated cost once design is done.
What's next: The council meets at 7 pm at City Hall, 4646 Dakota Street SE. Anyone can speak at the public forum that opens the meeting, up to five minutes each, and can ask the council to consider pulling an item from the consent agenda. AE2S's schedule has bids opening in September 2027 and construction from October 2027 to June 2028.