Maple Grove Water Treatment & Centralized Water Softening

The 2030 Water Treatment Plant expansion has been planned for more than 20 years and is based on projected population and water usage to ensure the City can meet current and future demand. The capital cost is currently estimated at approximately $120 million, with JPA partners contributing about $50 million, leaving roughly $70 million allocated to Maple Grove.

Because the design and commissioning process has a long lead time, the City is already exploring alternative well locations and beginning to plan for the project.

If you’ve lived in Maple Grove for any length of time, you know we have hard water. Maple Grove draws its well water from deep aquifers, not a river, meaning our raw product is much harder than other cities may experience. Our water is safe and meets all MDH guidelines and EPA regulations, but the hardness does impact many users in different ways.

It is consistently one of the biggest concerns we hear from residents. In the 2026 Community Survey, 40% of residents rated drinking water quality as bad or very bad, making it the only City measure that fell below the national benchmark.

If we want to address hard water on a community-wide basis, incorporating it into the water treatment plant expansion would be the logical time to consider doing it.

In response to concerns about hard water and increasing PFAS contaminants, the City has spent the past several years evaluating options and potential costs for centralized water softening.

We are currently finalizing the second phase of that study, which is validating the assumptions from the initial high-level analysis while incorporating community and business feedback and continuing to monitor PFAS levels and future EPA regulations.

The proposed membrane technology, similar to reverse osmosis, would reduce water hardness from approximately 26 grains per gallon (gpg) to 6 gpg while also removing contaminants such as PFAS.

The costs are still being refined, but initial estimates put construction of a centralized water softening addition at approximately $137 million, with about $7 million annually to operate.

To move forward with the water treatment plant expansion and centralized water softening, the water portion of utility bills could increase by roughly two to three times the current amount. When looking at your current water bill, keep in mind that it is billed quarterly, not monthly.

Residents could also potentially see savings from reduced use of in-home softeners and salt, as well as longer appliance and plumbing lifespans. There may also be intangible quality-of-life benefits that residents will weigh differently based on their individual preferences and circumstances.

Centralized water softening is expensive to build, operate and maintain. There is no way around that.

The question is whether the additional cost provides enough value to residents to justify the investment, recognizing that water usage, household needs and individual preferences will vary. We also have to evaluate the long-term impacts and trends of increasing PFAS levels and monitor that against the future expected MDH guidelines and EPA requirements.