- [Presenter] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(bird cawing) (upbeat music) Coming up next, "Off 90", join us for our final episode of the season where we take a special look at a few of the many water towers in our region, learning about their history, significance, and efforts to preserve them for our future generations.

It's all just ahead, "Off 90".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (gentle music) - [Steve] There's a lot of calculations in mapping and physics that go into water towers in the distribution systems.

- The life expectancy of water tower should last long.

I mean, you're spending, it's like a house.

You got houses that last a hundred years, right?

Or better.

Why shouldn't your water tower?

(gentle music) - We're not blessed with good geology for nice clean, soft water in this area.

(gentle music) (machine humming) - Challenges, there's quite a variety that you'd run into on a day-to-day basis.

- We have air dancers on some of our tanks that motivates the turkey vultures to find maybe a better place to roost.

(soft upbeat music) - We think of the form of a water tower as the name on it.

It's showing civic pride, but there's a function to that too, because it can be handy to know where you are by seeing the name on a water tower.

(upbeat music) My name is Stew Thornley.

I'm a Communication Specialist with the drinking water program at the Minnesota Department of Health.

(soft upbeat music) Water towers are a source of fascination to many people, whether they think about their function or just see them as we travel across the highways and know we're approaching a town, because we might see silos, we might see that water tower.

We know where we are when we see the name of the city on them.

I've always loved water towers and their different designs, their artwork on 'em, how cities use them as a source of pride, not just to get their city name on there, maybe to promote their local team or something that's notable about their city.

(soft upbeat music) So, sometimes water towers are intentionally built in different shapes.

There's the Tea Kettle in Lindstrom, Minnesota.

People know that one when they go through Lindstrom and they even have it where a couple of times during the day, steam is released from it.

It looks like it's boiling over.

(soft upbeat music) The bobber in, which is pretty much just a basic round water tower in Piquot Lakes, but the way it's painted and designed, is it looks like a bobber and pays homage to their fishing in that area.

(soft upbeat music) Sometimes they have those different designs that have become historic.

The conical top, the red tops, they were famous once too.

(soft upbeat music) There's an elevated water tank in Kasson, Minnesota that's got a stone base going up quite a ways to a steel tank on top.

I don't know what got them to build it that way about a hundred years ago, but sometimes it is people looking at both the form and function of it.

What's an efficient way to do this for maintenance, for making sure it holds up, but to make it interesting as well.

As the people in town walk by it, they see it, they wanna see something nice, but it's people from all around for several blocks or even miles that were going to see that storage facility, and it doesn't have to be just a shapeless functional piece of equipment.

It can have some beauty to it as well as the function.

(soft upbeat music) Some of these are being restored even in places where the water tower is no longer functional, no longer used.

It's become a city landmark and the local people take pride in that and they spend the money to restore the tower, sometimes repainting, making sure that it's structurally sound, because if it's not, they're going to have problems with that, but it's worth the investment to them as a city landmark.

(soft upbeat music) Water towers, we have for a couple of reasons for function.

One is to have a good source of storage.

This can be needed sometimes because in the summer, water system may need more water than it could produce in a day when the demand is high and it has more water in one of its towers or some of its other storage systems.

The good thing about a tower is it's elevation.

It's built up there for a reason.

A water tower might be put on the highest spot in the city as well, and that's so that we can get pressure out of it.

Even if there's an interruption in the service for a water utility, that water without electricity or anything else can still come down because of the pressure that's on there and get out to people's homes and still provide pressure in their homes.

So, pressure and storage are a couple of the major functions of water towers.

(gentle music) - Steve Robinson.

I'm the City Administrator here in Worthington.

(gentle music) We go through about 2 million gallons a day.

So, it's a constant regeneration and distribution.

So, it's probably these towers on a normal summer day probably will regenerate every two days.

(soft upbeat music) We're not blessed with good geology for nice, clean soft water in this area.

And it extends through a wide area in Southwest Minnesota and Northwest Iowa, Southeast South Dakota.

So, I mean, it was a problem that many communities had to address.

(soft upbeat music) Our wells are relatively shallow and are subject to drought conditions where the water levels will drop in the wells.

There's also concern that surface contamination could impact those wells.

So, we have to take great measures to protect the areas around the wells from potential contamination.

Most of 'em are located well outside of the city and we have to pump the water back into town to our treatment plant, which then gets distributed to our storage facilities.

We have our two main elevated water towers, and then we have a ground water storage tank too.

But really, one of the biggest challenges we've had over many years is we've had to be very conservative-minded with our water.

And if you look at how much water we use per capita, it's really well below most places in the state.

When you design it, you're looking at probably a hundred gallons of water use per day per person.

And we are probably average closer to 50 or 60 gallons per water per day, which is just been part of our long-term culture that we are very conservation-minded with our water use.

(soft upbeat music) Several years ago, after a number of decades, we connected with the Lewis and Clark System, which is originated in South Dakota by the Missouri River, where they pump the water out of the Missouri River, out of the ground surrounding the Missouri River.

It's treated and then it's distributed throughout Southeast South Dakota, Southwest Minnesota, and Northwest Iowa.

I think there's about 30 communities that are connected.

And so, we currently now receive about 50% of the water we use comes from Lewis and Clark.

(soft upbeat music) So, the benefits are we don't suffer from potential water shortages and having to go into more extreme conservation measures, like no watering of your lawn, don't want you washing your car in the driveway.

One of the added benefits we get with Lewis and Clark is that's treated for softness.

Our water is relatively hard, that our natural water that we get from our wells.

So, by able to blending that, we soften the water to a degree before it comes to your house and thus, reducing the softener needs that you have at your own home.

(soft upbeat music) Population-wise, we have been on a very high growth period over the last 30 years.

We've been averaging about 10% growth each of the last 10-year census periods.

So, about 30% growth from the 1990s.

It seems to be stabilizing slightly right now.

So, being able to connect with Lewis and Clark has been allowed us to expand our looking at opportunities for further economic development that not immediately having to shut down discussions with businesses that might be, that use a lot of water that we just didn't think we could provide them with.

(soft upbeat music) - I proposed on a water tower.

A little bit of trouble.

Had to paint over it right away, according to the engineer.

(laughs) (engine humming) (soft upbeat music) There's several of 'em that have been cut down and re-erected.

(soft upbeat music) They may have had an older tower that didn't meet their needs.

They may have had lead on it, they didn't meet OSHA requirements, and so on and so forth.

And then, they decided that it is time to put up a newer tower or a larger tower and they shop around to see if there's somebody who is dismantling one of that size of that nature that will work for them.

Like I said, towers, I see will last 100, 150 years easily if they're maintained properly.

The problem with those older towers is they weren't maintained very well from the early 1900s till the 1960s or '70s.

(soft upbeat music) (Shawn chuckles) There's been several towers where we've seen stars, so to speak, on the roof, and that's one of those that basically gets almost condemned right away to say, this is not a safe tower anymore.

Things like that can happen where the corrosion from the underside is taken over and allowing daylight to come through and it's time to put a new roof on it or get rid of the tower and put up a whole new tower.

(gentle music) You gotta remember, the first towers were built back in the 1800s, okay?

The first tower west of the Mississippi was down in the University of Iowa in 1897.

It's still standing today.

(gentle music) Water towers are strategically engineered for many reasons.

Number one, the hydrostatic pressure.

Number two, the seismic of the country that we live in.

But they are built through engineering specifications per AWA standards.

So, they're built by design with soil bearings, different foundations that we put in them, so that we have 'em so that they can stand hurricanes, tornadoes, whatever else is in there.

(soft upbeat music) Basic styles are you have the ground storage tanks, which are wider than they are tall.

The standpipe, which is taller than it is wide.

Then, you have the legged tank, the old riveted legged tank.

and then you have a DE that has support columns.

It's called double ellipsoidal.

Then, you have a single pedestal spheroid.

Then, a hydropillar like this tower here, and then a composite tank.

(soft upbeat music) The average size has increased since I started in this business over 40 years ago.

And I would say the average size is almost in the bigger cities is a million-gallon tank, a million and a half gallon tank.

(soft upbeat music) There's a lot goes on there when it's needed.

Most of the time, it sits dormant.

It's there to store water for fire protection and drinking, showers, whatever.

So, most of the time, it's sitting, filling and emptying daily, Okay, if they're operating their system right.

We don't want stagnation in the water.

There's mixers in these tanks.

We have age and water that we have to keep an eye on to provide a good product to the customer, consumer out there.

So, that's just one component of it is making sure that we are producing a good water.

And that's what the water utilities, the operators, the wastewater treatment plant, all of those guys are phenomenal at doing that, making sure that the water distribution is top-notch.

Can't give those guys enough credit for what they do, 'cause they gotta do it 24/7.

Water doesn't stop.

You open up the tap, it's there.

You flush the toilet, it happens.

So, those guys do a fantastic job of that.

What we do in the water tower part is make sure that the water quality stays good based on corrosion that can happen in these water towers.

We wanna make sure that the coatings inside is not giving any bacterial growth in the tanks.

So, we wanna make sure that they're clean, sanitized, and make sure that we have a good coating lining on the inside so we don't have corrosion and other things happening to it.

(soft upbeat music) The water that's in there is a good quality of water, okay?

There's no doubt about that.

It's chlorinated, it's been tested, it tests again.

So, there's no doubt that the water in there.

What we get in there, there's the inspection of draining it and cleaning it.

And then, there's also, you can swim rovers in there so you don't have to drain it.

They're disinfected.

They put in there, they swim around to find anything that could be contaminating the water, or coating failures.

And typically, you're looking to see how much rusting is going on and how are we gonna fix that in the near future.

But then, when it's being repainted, like this one was currently done, it's totally taken down for a few months to totally remove all the old coatings inside and out.

So, this is a major job when you have to strip it down and start all over, and it's very, very expensive.

(soft upbeat music) Looks can be deceiving.

Exteriors can say one thing, the inside can be something else.

And that's what you see, some of these tanks get moldy and mildewy on the outside due to the sweating that goes on in the summer months.

Doesn't mean the water's bad on the inside.

It just shows you that the tank is using a lot of water and it's sweating.

It's building up some moisture just like a condensation on a glass.

So, that mold is really an aesthetic thing that people see, not necessarily a water quality thing.

(upbeat music) Now, we're in a branding of the last 10 years where we're putting up really beautiful-looking signs and logos.

'Cause they know that they're gonna last, they're gonna be up there for 20 to 25 years if they're done right.

And that branding is something that all cities have done, depending on if they just want a simple block lettering in their name.

Some used to have the zip code on there.

And now, you're going into elaborate type of branding where we wanna showcase our community.

We wanna showcase something that's going on within the community.

(upbeat music) Painting a water tower isn't your typical job.

This takes real specialized people, people that are not afraid of heights, they gotta be on a safety harness all the time once they leave the ground, et cetera, et cetera.

So, when you're looking at that, they deserve every dollar they make.

It's very dangerous work.

Like I said, we want 'em all to come home at the end of the day safely.

(upbeat music) - Aaron Hauser, (upbeat music) I'll be the Water Superintendent for the city of Winona.

(upbeat music) One of the unique things around Winona is the bluff country.

So, we have a lot of difference in elevation.

So, from our main part of town, down by the river, we have to take that treated water, pump it up to different elevations as the developments kind of move up into the bluff side and in between the valleys.

So, we'll take that treated water, pump it up to another reservoir to get a high enough pressure to serve those communities.

(upbeat music) You always have aging infrastructure, things like that for one of the older cities in Minnesota.

So, there's a lot of older infrastructure in the ground there.

(upbeat music) This is our only elevated storage tank behind me.

The other four are actually embedded into the bluff side.

So, we use the bluff as a natural elevation for us and have a reservoir built into the bluff to give us that elevation for the pressure.

(gentle music) I think a lot of it is, depending on taste, is kinda what you grew up on and kind of what you've been used to.

So, a lot of times, if you get somebody from the country that's always been on a well at the farm or something, and they go into town, they have city water, it tastes different to 'em.

Somebody from, that's always been on a municipality service line goes out and takes a drink out of just a farmhouse well water, it's a lot different for them.

(gentle music) This one would be like an aquastore tank.

So, this is actually a glass fused to steel lining inside.

So, this one is pretty much that steel tank riveted together up top there sitting on a concrete platform.

(soft upbeat music) There's quite a bit of industry in the downtown over by the levee, more in the riverside there.

(soft upbeat music) A lot of industry for plastics manufacturings, things like that.

(soft upbeat music) Our peak flow this year is looking to be, so far, about 3.84 million gallons a day is what we pump out to serve the city of Winona.

(soft upbeat music) Challenges, there's quite a variety that you'd run into on a day-to-day basis.

Southeast Minnesota has the timber rattlesnakes and right behind the overflow of the tower, the elevated tower behind me, that's our, this treatment plant's mascot, we call her Rhonda, Rattling Rhonda.

So, that's our rattlesnake back there, our pet rattlesnake.

We just don't get too close to her.

(laughs) (soft upbeat music) - We're at the 50th Avenue hydropillar.

This is one of our larger elevated water storage tanks in the water system for Rochester.

It's 2 million gallons.

And the unique part about this tank, when you look at about the surrounding land uses, you see a lot of rural land.

And that may seem odd to have a large tank out on the fringe of a community, but it's so important for us to build that infrastructure in advance of land development so that the water supply is there to support growth.

Todd Blomstrom, I'm the Director of Water at Rochester Public Utilities.

That tank is in the northwest part of Rochester, and that is one of the fastest-growing areas of Rochester today.

(gentle music) We have 20 water storage tanks, and that provides nearly 17 million gallons of water storage for our distribution system.

(nature humming) This tank was built in 1924, and it was a really important addition to the early water system for Rochester.

It provided 200,000 gallons of storage.

And at the time, that was a lot of storage.

Now, the tank is no longer in service today, but we preserve it for its historic value and a great example of the early water system for Rochester.

To give an example of the evolution, just across the street is a St. Mary's Ground Reservoir.

That's 3.3 million gallons of water.

So, the system has certainly expanded over the years.

(soft upbeat music) So, Rochester for its size is a little bit unique.

We are an entirely groundwater system for a population of 125,000 people.

So, we're heavily dependent on the groundwater aquifers in the area.

We draw most of our water from the Jordan aquifer, which has been a very good formation for producing water.

However, as we're continuing to grow, we're looking at alternative sources.

(soft upbeat music) We have actually had a slight decline in industrial water consumption, and that is just the changes in industrial customers that we've had over the last 40 years.

But at the same time, that population growth has been driving the water demand upwards.

So, it does involve not just pure population growth, but the type of land use mixes that you have in a water service area.

And that may mean deeper groundwater aquifer formations, or it may become a combination of both surface water and groundwater for our supply here in Rochester.

(soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music continues) (soft upbeat music continues) (soft upbeat music continues) (soft upbeat music continues) (soft upbeat music continues) - We think of the form of a water tower as the name on it, showing civic pride.

But there's a function to that too, because it can be handy to know where you are by seeing the name on a water tower.

And pilots at times have had to use this when they've lost their navigation.

Famous situation, in January of 1960, the Minneapolis Lakers basketball team was coming back from St. Louis and had a lot of its systems fail.

It was off course.

The pilots didn't know where they were, so they buzzed a water tower in Western Iowa.

They couldn't even see because of a snow.

They couldn't even see all of the letters.

The first three letters were obliterated by snow, but they could see the back part of it and realize they were in Carroll, Iowa.

And they knew at this point, they were going to have to find a place to put the plane down.

And they chose an uncut corn field, made a forced landing.

All of the players, some Hall of Famers on that, Elgin Baylor, they got through that trip safely because the pilots at least knew where they were because of the name on the water tower.

(soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music continues) (soft upbeat music continues) (soft upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (bright music) - [Presenter] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(birds cawing)