City of St. Paul Park 

The City of St. Paul Park's goal is to provide high quality, safe, reliable drinking water that surpasses every state and federal requirement.  St. Paul Park is fortunate to have a very clean and safe water source:  the Jordan aquifer.  An aquifer is an underground lake imbedded in rock, in this case a sandstone rock layer.  Our wells are about 360 feet deep and we blast a cavity, like a large cave, in the rock at the bottom of the well.  We then draw our drinking water from the water that seeps, through the rock, to this cavity.  The Jordan water has spent many decades flowing through the rock layers to reach our wells. 

 

During this flow through the rock, the water dissolves some of the minerals imbedded there.  The only major impact we see in our water is from the limestone, where we pick up calcium.  The calcium from the limestone is the major contributor to the hardness in St. Paul Park's water.  Hardness is the measure of dissolved minerals that are in the water.  We have about 18 grains of hardness and this is considered very hard. 

Though we have a very good source water, we do take additional steps to comply with the Minnesota Department of Health rules.  We add Fluoride to the water to allow bodies to build stronger bones and teeth.  We have very precise equipment to add this item and we also test the water daily to assure we have the right amounts of Fluoride throughout the water system.  The state requires cities to have 1.2 milligrams of Fluoride per liter of water.

St. Paul Park has four wells, currently we are using only three wells.  St. Paul Park's average daily usage is about 400,000 gallons.  During the summer months St. Paul Park's daily average increases to 1,000,000 gallons.  The city's water system requires more than 300 valves and 25 miles of underground piping (at least 6-7 feet deep) to distribute the water to houses and the 200 plus fire hydrants for city emergencies.   The water utility is not funded through taxes.  Operating costs are covered by billing for measured water use.  We charge less than two dollars to pump, store, treat and deliver each 1,000 gallons of tested and certified safe drinking water to your house.