COON RAPIDS, Minn. — State officials are investigating after a second mysterious sheen was seen on the Mississippi River in Coon Rapids earlier this week.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said a sheen was reported Tuesday afternoon at the Highway 610 Bridge in Coon Rapids, and another was reported Wednesday morning near West Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park. It's unclear if the second sheen is connected to the one reported on Tuesday.
According to the MPCA, the first report came from the Fridley Fire Department around 1 p.m. Tuesday. The sheen was seen at the Highway 610 Bridge and was traveling downstream. As of Wednesday evenings, officials have not identified the substance.
"Crews on site deployed booms to divert the sheen away from city water intakes in Minneapolis and St. Paul," MPCA Communications Manager Michael Rafferty said in a statement. "They also gathered numerous samples from the river and the Minnesota Department of Health is analyzing those samples; results are expected early Thursday."
A second sighting of a smaller sheen was reported around 8 a.m. Wednesday near the West Coon Rapids Dan Regional Park.
A spokesperson with the City of Minneapolis said they briefly shut down water treatment operations, but it resumed Wednesday morning. The spokesperson said the drinking water is "safe and unaffected," adding that they're in close contact with the MPCA.
"The Minneapolis Public Works Department is taking additional precautions in its water treatment operations, including deploying surface boom, drawing water deeper below the surface, adding supplemental powdered activated carbon to the treatment process, and conducting regular testing at the intake and the continuous biomonitoring by river mussels," the spokesperson said in a statement. "The City remains in close contact with state agencies responding to the spill.”
A spokesperson for St. Paul Regional Water Services confirms that they also shut down the intake pumping station at Fridley on the Mississippi River, "preventing flow from reaching the chain of lakes within our surface water supply."
