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First District Congressman Brad Finstad on Tuesday met with Albert Lea city leaders, including Mayor Rich Murray, to discuss the city’s wastewater treatment plant funding as well as the general outlook for the city.

Finstad on April 8 announced that Albert Lea would be awarded $1 million for wastewater treatment facility improvements as part of more than $1.4 billion appropriated for congressionally directed water infrastructure projects for fiscal year 2024, according to a press release.

“In Congress, my top priority is advocating for the needs of our southern Minnesota communities,” Finstad said in the press release. “This major investment will contribute to improving Albert Lea’s aging wastewater treatment plant, directly impacting the day-to-day lives of its residents and benefiting them for years to come. I was proud to work with Mayor Rich Murray and numerous city officials to support this grant application and secure this win for the Albert Lea community.”

Murray described aging infrastructure as one of three major issues facing the city at this time. The other two, he said, are housing and child care.

The wastewater treatment project involves spending $80 million on upgrades that will not only fix infrastructure that has been in the facility since it was built in the early 1980s, but will also comply with new regulations on phosphorus removal set by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

“The million dollars that we’ve already received has been a big help, it’s helped push our first phase of the project forward, so we’re very grateful for that and thank you for that,” said City Manager Ian Rigg at the meeting. “We still have a long ways to go.”

He added the city of Albert Lea is seeking $40 million from the state to make further progress on the project.

“We’re not asking for a total bailout. We’re just asking for enough to get us to a point of reasonable affordability compared to other communities, and also meeting what’s the Clean Waters Act affordability rate,” Rigg said.

Albert Lea is in a tight spot, he explained, because Albert Lea is too large to get funding from the Department of Agriculture but too small to qualify for funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Finstad said he is currently working on a bill aimed to help Albert Lea and cities of similar population size qualify for USDA funding.

Many communities the size of Albert Lea, Finstad said, are facing the same issues in terms of infrastructure, housing and child care needs.

“I think there’s a lot of talk and ideas around it, just trying to figure out what we can do from the federal level to make tools available to you so you can actually do whatever works here,” Finstad said. “That would be kind of my final point on it; I don’t think the answer should be for the federal government to come in and say ‘here’s the solution,’ but if our part of the solution is, ‘here’s a funding mechanism or a grant or a new opportunity for you all to make it your own here at large and to solve the problem,’ I’d be more interested in doing that than in trying to figure it out in the federal level.”