MONITCELLO, Minn. – The City of Monticello has hired an independent contractor to monitor groundwater for radioactive contamination its five municipal wells. The city earlier relied on assurances from Xcel, operator of a nuclear plant on the edge of town, for information onsafety issues. But the town’s confidence in Exel faded after a tritium leak was either unreported or underplayed for four months by Xcel. A city spokesperson, Haley Foster, explained the new monitoring this way: “While city officials are confident in the agencies and the science showing the tritiated water has not left the Xcel Energy site, we want to ensure the public feels the same confidence.” When news about the November leak broke this month, Xcel said there had been no leakage in groundwater or the adjacent Mississippi River. Then this week Xcel said radioactivity said it had just discovered radiation in groundwater at the plant, although not the river. It was then that the city decided to keep track of its wells independently. Also monitoring wells are the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the state Health Department. Both those agencies, it cannot go unnoted, were complicit in Xcel’s four-month news blackout on the initial November 2022 leak.
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A wary city. Xcel’s 50-year-old nuclear power station at Monticello, population 14,500, is midway between St. Cloud and Minneapolis on the Mississippi River.