With a ceremonial groundbreaking on Thursday afternoon, the city of Woodbury began construction of its $330 million water treatment plant to scrub city water of PFAS chemicals.

It’s the city’s largest capital improvement project ever, and the plant when completed and turned on in 2028 will be the largest of its kind in Minnesota, capable of cleaning 32 million gallons of water daily.

“We are dedicated to ensuring that we provide clean drinking water to our community for now and for generations to come,” Mayor Anne Burt said, speaking to a group of city staff, elected officials, and others at the M Health Fairview Sports Center fieldhouse, where officials gathered for a ceremony and speeches after the nearby groundbreaking.

The new plant will be located at Hargis Parkway east of Radio Drive, adjacent to East Ridge High School.

The city expects to pay roughly 10% of the plant’s cost, said Jim Westerman, assistant public works director. The remainder will be covered by the $850 million settlement 3M reached with the state of Minnesota in 2018 for the contamination of groundwater under the east metro.

Originally estimated to cost up to $400 million, the plant’s total cost came in lower due to competitive bidding, Westerman said.

The plant will require 17 miles of new pipelines to connect the city’s wells. Installation of those pipelines began in August and will continue over the next four years along existing roads.

A temporary treatment plant opened in 2020 continues to scrub groundwater at nine city wells that have levels of PFAS above state health department guidelines. Once the new plant comes online, the temporary plant will be shuttered and its equipment either moved to the new plant or auctioned off, Westerman said.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has named Susie Wiles, the manager of his victorious campaign, as his White House chief of staff, the first woman to ever hold the influential role.

Wiles is widely credited within and outside Trump’s inner circle for running what was, by far, his most disciplined and well-executed campaign, and was seen as the leading contender for the position. She largely avoided the spotlight, even refusing to take the mic to speak as Trump celebrated his victory early Wednesday morning.

She was able to do what few others have been able to: help control Trump’s worst impulses — not by chiding him or lecturing, but by earning his respect and showing him that he was better off when he followed her advice than flouted it.

”Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected. Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again,” Trump said in a statement. “It is a well deserved honor to have Susie as the first-ever female Chief of Staff in United States history. I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”

Trump went through four chiefs of staff — including one who served in an acting capacity for a year — during his first administration, part of record-setting personnel churn in his administration.

Successful chiefs of staff serves as the president’s confidant, help execute a president’s agenda and balance competing political and policy priorities. They also tend to serve as a gatekeeper, helping determine whom the president spends their time and whom they speak to — an effort Trump chafed under inside the White House.

The chief of staff is ”absolutely critical to an effective White House,” said Chris Whipple, whose book ”The Gatekeepers” details how the White House chief of staff role shaped and defines a presidency. ”At the end of the day the most important thing is telling the president what he doesn’t want to hear.”

Wiles is a longtime Florida-based Republican strategist who ran Trump’s campaign in the state in 2016 and 2020. Before that, she ran Rick Scott’s 2010 campaign for Florida governor and briefly served as the manager of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential campaign.

The election season is finally over, but voters who displayed their support for candidates and issues with a plastic yard sign shouldn’t just throw them away.

Signs backing Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or the local school levy are recyclable. But not in the typical curbside bin.

Instead, several counties and cities in the Twin Cities metro are providing drop-off locations for residents to recycle political signs.

Keep in mind, some candidates and political parties will pick up their signs and use them again. But if that doesn’t happen, recycling is the way to go.

Angie Timmons of Hennepin County Environmental Services says several drop-off locations will be available from Nov. 12 through Nov 26.

“This work is in response to the many inquiries we would get this time of year,” Timmons said, noting it was one of the first ways the county was expanding the collection of hard-to-recycle items. “This is a small, but meaningful effort that aligns both with our priority actions to reinvent the solid waste system and address community concerns about plastics.”

St. Paul is accepting signs Saturday and the Washington County Environmental Center in Woodbury also takes them. Metal stakes should always be removed from the signs and can be recycled separately at scrap metal drop offs.

Cities and counties typically send the signs they collect to Choice Plastics, an industrial scrap plastic recycler and broker. The company was founded in 2001 and has an 80,000 square-foot facility in Mound.