09/03/2026
Let's talk about Greenfield's wastewater — because how we handle this decision will shape what kind of city we hand to the next generation.
Here's where we actually are. Our treatment plant is at the end of its designed life, and it serves only about 104 residential properties and a handful of small businesses — the vast majority of Greenfield is on private septic and well, rural residential, and staying that way. The capacity problem is concentrated in the corridor the city zoned for growth two decades ago and then never built the capacity to support. The Bleck proposal alone is over 600 units — homes, townhomes, apartments, and 30 acres of commercial. The Montgomery property adds hundreds more, a landowner who has already asked the city to extend sewer so he can start building. That's the growth that's been stalled — partly by the city's own lack of planning around the WWTF. The question is what we finally do about it.
So far, the city has spent over $65,000 on a study laying out three options, and is now being asked to put up another $25,000 so a neighboring city can study whether we should send our wastewater to them. That's nearly $90,000 moving toward one answer — regionalizing with Rockford — before residents have been given a full, plain-English accounting of what it costs us over 20 years, what we give up in control, and who benefits.
Let me be clear about something, because it will be misrepresented: I am not against regionalizing with Rockford. It may turn out to be the right answer, and if it is, I'll support it. What I'm against is treating a twenty-year, multi-million-dollar commitment as settled before we've tested the assumptions that made it look obvious.
A few things I keep asking:
The cheapest-on-paper number for Rockford is a projection, not a bill — and a large share of it is ongoing access and usage fees we'd pay Rockford for two decades. That projection only holds if Rockford's rates stay flat for twenty years. That's the one variable in the whole comparison Greenfield can't control and can't verify. If we own our plant and costs run high, we set the rates and manage it ourselves. If we rent capacity from Rockford and their rates climb, we simply pay it.
Greenfield exists today because we chose to control our own development instead of handing it to the Met Council. Becoming a customer of another city's system — depending on a council we don't elect for our rates and our capacity — sits uneasily with that history.
And the firm that produced our three-options study is a business partner of the same company that operates both the Rockford plant and our own we're potentially going to regionalize into. That may be entirely coincidental. But it's the kind of thing residents should be told up front, not have to go digging for.
My view is simple: our job isn't to protect the city as an institution or reach the tidiest answer fastest. It's to protect the people who live here, with an honest eye on where Greenfield is headed — which means putting every option, including one we own and control, in front of residents with real numbers attached.
I'll be honest with you: I'm in the minority on this council, and I know it. The majority tends to support staff recommendations without pressing on the facts underneath them. My approach is different. I dig in. I question proposed solutions and ask the hard questions — and I ask them to staff privately, before anything reaches the dais, precisely so they're never gotcha questions. The goal is never to embarrass anyone. It's to test the assumptions before we commit millions of dollars and twenty years to them.
Some call that combative. I'd call it doing the job residents elected me to do. There's a real difference between questioning a decision and attacking the person asking the question — and I'd rather spend my energy on the former.
Growth is coming to Greenfield. We can plan for it on our own terms, or rent the solution from someone else who has their own growth projections and capacity needs to worry about. I'll keep asking the hard questions and showing you what I find. You deserve nothing less.
