Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

Recently I mentioned that the late Gordon Amble, who died at age 88, was one of the first organizational heads I got to know when I started at the Pope County Tribune in 1973. He was the administrator of what was then Glenwood Retirement Home.

We covered the construction of the Rainbow Unit, one of the first memory care units in the state at the time, the Plaza units and Park View Court, all major expansions. Somewhere in there were also the chapel and other renovations.

Not too many years ago my mother was a resident of the Plaza, Parkview Court and the nursing home itself over a period of 14 years. It was nice to have those facilities, which are excellent, so close by.

That was just like Gordon talked about back in the 1970s, the trend toward caring for people in various stages of life. The Plaza is independent living, Parkview Court is assisted living and the nursing home itself offers higher levels of care. The Rainbow unit offers care for those with memory issues.

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Another person recently died who played another key role in Glenwood’s infrastructure, Bruce Thorfinnson.

Bruce was a science teacher at Glenwood High School at the time. Glenwood’s sewage system at the time was a “Dutch ditch”, a racetrack shaped ditch through which effluent was pumped, exposing it to air and sunshine that did some cleaning, too. In the ditch it was treated with some chemicals to kill pathogens. And later it was treated with alum to precipitate out phosphorus. But some nitrogen still got discharged.

Then the effluent went into Lake Minnewaska.

The city also had a grantsman named Bob Moe.

Bruce was on the city commission about that time and he was one of the big pushers to get a new sewage treatment facility that would not discharge into Lake Minnewaska. As a science teacher he understood the weaknesses of the sewage plant at that time.

Long Beach had no system and the two got together to seek state funding. Systems that served more than one community got a higher priority from the state and by combining, the Glenwood-Long Beach project jumped from something like 22 on the state’s list for funding to 2.

Bob Moe went to work and the new plant was funded for something close to $11 million. This was in the very early 1980s when a buck was a buck.

Now effluent is pumped up to a 90-acre sewage lagoon system east of Glenwood. There are two sets of three ponds each that clarify effluent and, again, allow sunlight to help purify it. It is then treated to kill any pathogens and discharged in some nearby irrigation systems. Long Beach’s effluent comes to Glenwood, connects to it’s system and its effluent is also pumped up the hill to the same set of ponds.

The “racetrack” shaped ditch is still adjacent to the plant on 6th Ave NW. It is there for emergency storage of effluent should the pumping system fail. The old ditch was concrete, it has been lined with heavy duty plastic to keep it more effluent tight.

The system was upgraded a number of years ago with a mid-hill pumping station on 2nd Street NE to reduce the pressure on the four large pumps in the sewage plant.

It was said at the time that a person could drink the effluent from the new plant but to my knowledge nobody has tried it! I wanted to get a picture of that but there were no volunteers.

The impact on the lake over the years has been pretty dramatic in terms of water clarity as just about anyone over the age of 45 or so can tell.

At any rate Bruce was a big pusher for that project and his leadership at the time on the city commission was key. That system is now around 40 years old!